(HEADLINE) The WWW finally has enough quality copy to be informative!

I like to keep up to date with techy things. From age 8 or so I've been mucking about with computers and it got to the point where I realised that being on top of it all would be a full time job so I switched to merely staying in touch with it.

Blogging has seemed like THE THING to me for a long time so i plucked up the courage to have a go myself (see previous post). Does everyone feel so insecure about posting their thoughts etc? Looking at that first post it seems soooo achingly self conscious. It was either traumatic or completely unrewarding (I cant remember) since I haven't bothered to try again until now. But blogs haven't gone away (and neither have I).

A few interesting things have crossed my radar in the last few days. Looking over it I must be well behind the cutting edge but a little ahead of the mainstream, anyway -

Flock:

First it was Mozilla, then Netscape, then Firefox (any connection to the book Firefox down?) and now its Flock. The Tom Peters site 'big upped' the idea which either means its pure genius or very very well funded hot air. I can't quite commit the energy to work out what it does exactly, but seems to revolve around 'social browsing'.

Since I'm too scared (and my computer is too stuffed to the gills already) to actually download their self-confessed monster trial program i can only make prejudiced guesses about it.

However, more interestingly, it has prompted me to browse through the blog/RSS-sphere and haply I can report that it is much much more interesting than in 2004. Unfortunately for the mass blogging unwashed the main improvement is the arrival of people and news sources worth listening to.

Speaking from a mainstream idea of what interesting news and views are I believe the tide has turned and that there now are enough high-quality facts and opinions out there to make it interesting for a media hungry punter to browse through. In the case of Flock that means that leveraging social networks to navigate them is worthwhile and well timed.

RSS:

In the last day or so I had another go at using RSS to keep me up to date with the news. I would like it to be the main source for all my current affairs interests (rather than the Evening Standard, Guardian, Sun, Daily Mail, FT Weekend Edition etc.). There are two ways I would like to use the service, 1) to browse and have breaking news items 'pushed' toward me & 2) searching for information in the news about events or people of particular interest.

The good news is that several of the papers I mentioned now provide RSS feeds so that helps the browsing. The bad part of it that when I try searching these feeds for things that are currently top of mind for me I get no good results and a Google news search is much more fruitful. Lexus Nexus may be threatened but there are no killer blows here yet.

Nancy Vonk & Neil French:

For my sins I work in and around marketing which is fascinating because its all about people and having some class of understanding about them. What happens when you outsource an integral part of your business to a company (in this context read - 'group of people') with a radically different culture? In fact, lets go a stage further and ask: What happens when you and the group-of-people you are working with have a radically different culture to those you are trying to market your goods to? I have been working in client organisations when 'the consultants' turn up. Trooping in single file across the floor in dark (expensive) suits, looking young and eager, clutching their laptop bags and (psychologically) cutting a gaping swathe through the deeply intimidated staff they will shortly be lording over. Of course marketing consultants rarely have this effect but the reverse is hardly less appetising.

Really good communication is either coldly factual or it plays on the icons and memes of culture. How can patriarchal, sexist (no matter how modern and well meaning) company cultures communicate with a domestic society that has left them behind?