This diagram struck me:

Via pedersondesigns

As we have alluded to over the last few weeks, we are now working on what will become the first Beta build of Touchstone. So as we start to tie up loose ends, work on optimization and generally focus in on the little details it’s great to come across posts like solving big problems by paying attention to the small things from Matt of 37Signals.

It’s true that by polishing off what is already there and making it painless, easy and even glossy - the application truly feels more stable, pleasurable and intuitive.

See, Touchstone Alpha is not the only product that crashes Checkout this photo of a giant electronic billboard in Times Square, New York City. Link.

Over the Christmas break, the Touchstone development team has taken some personal time out to remind their families that they are still alive. Since this naturally has slowed the pace of development, it has taken some of the pressures away from me as a director and founder to take 5 minutes to reflect on the past year and realise the massive steps we’ve taken both professionally and personally.

After this reflection, I have realised how lucky I am to have a partner and friend like Chris. I know there are many other ‘dual founders’ out there, but I’m sure none of them have quite the same relationship as Chris and I. We’re both burdened with an over-abundance of passion and opinion, and while this has on occasion raised some eyebrows in the office, we never let ego get in the way of decisions and we’re very careful to support each other when it’s needed.

Plus, there isn’t anything quite so depressing when you’ve fallen in love with an idea or aspect of the business, and your co-founder tells you that it can’t “be that way” – and you knowing in your heart that he’s right. But when he doesn’t hold this against you, you realise how lucky you really are.

Chris, you are an intelligent and co-operative friend and colleague and I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you for your effort, tenacity, patience and inspiration which helps push me past what I previously thought impossible.

Thankyou buddy.

Hi everyone - I hope you had a great 2006. I know we certainly have. In just one year, Touchstone has gone from the back of a napkin to a funded, flying company with a number of great staff, friends, advisors and testers. We wish to thank you all very much for your efforts this year - we literally could not be doing this without you.

Here are the highlights from the blog over the last year in reverse order (most recent at the top).

Hitting the Mainstream 2
Information Overload hits the mainstream media for a second time - in a big way.

Hitting the Mainstream 1
Information Overload hits the mainstream media for the first time (or there abouts)

Democracy Now!
Web 2.0 has barley hit and people are talking about Web 3.0. We discuss how absurd that is and why YouTube is NOT Web 2.0.

Show me the money (or pain!)
Some people (read:head in the sand) think there is no information overload problem. This post explains why there is.

Filtering vs. Ranking
Some people are still talking about filtering RSS. Filtering is so 5 years ago.

Aggregation is King
Content used to be king. If that’s true, then Aggregation is now master of the universe.

Desktop vs. Web-based
Web 2.0 implies that stuff is on the web. Not true. This post talks about the value of desktop applications in a web world. By the way - did you know the Browser is a desktop application? Shock/Horror.

What is Attention Data?
And no - it is not just OPML or Attention.XML.

Personalized Content
Some claim that the battle for ‘People Powered News’ is over. Digg and others have won. I make the argument that People Powered News MIGHT be done, but Personalized Content is just getting started.

There is no more audience
Participants have killed the audience. Media outlets that treat their audience like eyeballs are doomed to fail in a Media 2.0 world. This is a short rant about the death of the Audience.

Touchstone funded by Angel
Touchstone get’s funded by an Angel Investor. What more do we need to say about that!

The Long Tail of Attention
Chris Anderson describes the three factors that have made the Long Tail a viable market. I then explain why a Tool like Touchstone empowers the ‘Long Tail’ (that’s you and me) to take advantage.

Personal Relevancy
What is Personal Relevancy exactly? It’s when your interests and personality become the basis for choosing content, rather than the whims of one editor who decides what ‘the mainstream’ should care about.

Tune Out the Noise
Touchstone is not about alerting - it is about NOT alerting. Think about that.

Attention, Scarcity and Demand
Markets work on Supply and Demand. Price is dictated by Scarcity. So in an era of abundance, the scarcest resource is our Attention.

Power Back in your hands
Amazon Recommendations are great… for them. They help cross-sell and up-sell their customers. But what if you could use the same technology to take control of your information across all the sites you visit?

Anti-Web 2.0
Touchstone is a desktop application. Does this make it Anti-Web 2.0?

Not a Gadget Engine
Touchstone compared to the current rash of Gadget/Widget engines out there.

RSS is not just about News
Imagine using RSS for something other than News. Feed readers fail for most of those other applications. Touchstone picks up the slack.

Thanks again for sticking with us. The best is yet to come!

Chris, Ash and the whole Touchstone Crew.

Ilya recently posted some great data and analysis on the current state of RSS reading habits.

He goes on to explain many of the issues I alluded to in a previous post titled “Show me the money (or the pain)“.

I think the question of information overload is answered. Yes there is an overload. But RSS is not the problem. In fact blogs and user generated news are not the problem either. They are just one source of information in our lives.

There are application events, presence changes from our friends, internal memos from head office, applications on our desktop and more all clamoring for our time…

So tools that try to cluster and suggest content from blogs and mainstream news sites are only (very) useful for part of the time.

Ilya goes on to make a great suggestion in his post. He recognizes that collaborative filtering has limitations, Keyword filtering is ‘so 5 years ago‘ and that any one ‘community voting’ measurement will fall short.

With Touchstone we have gone to great lengths to cover all these usage scenarios. We have built a platform that accepts ‘items’ not ‘RSS’. This means that we can source content from places other than RSS and then cache, rank and route them in a unified way.

Our ‘rank’ is not based on collaborative filtering or keyword filtering or community voting or previous reading behavior. It is based on some and none of these things at the same time. As such, our technology can work in a vacuum on a personal item behind the firewall, just as it can work on a news item that the whole world can see and link (read:vote) to.

Also, there is no ‘handshake’ period where our application tries to track your reading behavior over time. We are on the client side which means we have access to your browser history/cache, documents and email for an instant, broad and ongoing base of ‘Attention Data’ in order to determine your interests.

Ilya rightly compares this to PageRank. While PageRank uses incoming links as a vote to measure authority, it relies on a broader set of factors to make a decision and produce a number.

And because the result is a number rather than a binary ‘yes or no’ filter or an opaque recommendation, Touchstone can make intelligent presentation decisions when displaying the alert/content/information. The bigger the number the bigger the item on the page.

My friend Adam also posted about the ‘Feed Overload Problem‘ on his blog.

As you may have noticed, the Touchstone blog is starting to move away from the academics of Attention Management toward the more practical goals of helping people manage their media consumption and business relationships/execution. So in that spirit let’s talk about the mainstream media for a second…

I’m watching Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN at the moment and they have spent TWO segments about the Rosie O’Donnell Vs. Donald Trump publicity stunt feud that is going on right now. Don’t know about it? Don’t worry it is a pointless waste of time.

Suffice to say there were some inflammatory statements made on both sides and now Donald is threatening to sue Rosie for defamation.

Anderson brought in legal analysts to discuss if Donald had a case etc, etc.

Are you serious? Anderson is the guy who confronted Mary Landriew live on CNN about the governments slow response to Katrina and he is now hosting a lightweight pop culture show!

Perhaps John Stewart said it best when talking about the TIME magazine declaration of ‘You’ as the people of the year.
In response to the TIME spokesperson’s statement that, in regard to Media, “…there has been an ebb of power from the few to the many” Jon Stewart said:

“It’s almost as though consumers have moved on because mainstream media has abdicated its responsibility….”

Watch the segment here:

There have been plenty of false statements that deserve legal action in the last few years. Statements that have resulted in the death of thousands of people and massive worldwide unrest. I think Rosie and Donald’s little feud does not deserve prime time CNN airtime and legal analysis when those issues are still unresolved.

With the volume of real and valuable information out there about issues that affect our lives, it is my hope that attention management and engagement tools will help users see information that really matters, instead of stupid fluff pieces.

Perhaps, also, those same tools will help publishers/outlets understand the value (in terms of affluence and conversion rates) of participants who prefer real news over the false buzz generated by empty pop culture feuds that chew up valuable air time.

I’ve been tagged by Jeff Pulver’s Tag game! I have a feeling this is some sort of sick game that Jeff is playing on us and we are all his pawns.

That’s ok with me I guess, I’m a fan of his work! Thanks for including me Daniela.

Ok here it goes…

1. I am truly a TV/Media Junkie/Addict. I watch about 20 different TV shows on a regular basis. It is my vice. From the The Family Guy to Battlestar Gallactica. My favorite show of all time is The West Wing.
2. I used to be a radio presenter and could have easily ended up doing it full time. It turned out the technology was more interesting to me than the presenting part. The show was actually about IT though, so I was never far from home. Podcasting has been calling me for a while now - but I’m still holding out.
3. I don’t have any pets (I think I am too selfish to keep something else alive right now) but I do have a younger brother who is a whole decade younger than me if that counts. No siblings in between; big gap!
4. I was on local TV at age 10 espousing the value of the Internet as an important emerging phenomena (I didn’t use quite those words back then). How wrong I was hah.
5. I have never worked for someone else (in the strictest sense). I have always been in a contractor, owner, director or CEO. I like to feel like I have ownership over the direction of stuff I’m involved with.

Leave some comments to tell me stuff about you guys - time to delurk! You know you want to.

Passing it on… Tag to:

Ben Metcalfe
Cameron Reilly
Martin Wells
Marjolein Hoekstra
Mark Jones

Update: Shout out to Marianne and John for also tagging me.

Are we now at a stage where online distribution and discovery via search means that media creators need to Search Engine Optimize the name of their TV shows and Movies?

I just discovered a mini-series on Sci-Fi Channel called ‘The Lost Room‘ because I was searching for stuff about ‘Lost‘.

Was that a coincidence, or was there a decision to name the show in such a way that it would get discovered by online fans of another, very popular, property targeted at the same audience?

I wonder…

In any case, it worked. I am now watching the 3 part mini-series.

Everyone said Twitter was cool - but I didn’t really get it.

Jaiku gets it though. They are Twitter++. They call it a ‘Presence Stream’ (which I love) and they allow you to publish all events about your life to a unified stream. Very, very cool.

In fact, they are a perfect partner for Touchstone. Just like AIM/Skype/MSN does a popup toast when a user logs on, I’d like Touchstone to alert me when any event occurs in the life of one of my friends/contacts.

Based on the event importance, it could be routed in various ways and to various devices/platforms.

I love it.

Via Library Clips