Archive for the 'How Bscopes Works' Category

5 Ways to Turn Down the Heat

By Brad on February 21, 2012 in How Bscopes Works and Information Overload. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Five ToolsAgain, in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen tons of upset, frustrated people complaining about Google Reader and Information Overload. A few are also trying to find ways to overcome the overload rather than just give up. In this post, we want to focus, not on the problem, but on solutions.

Start With Your Needs

Most overloaded readers experience one of two kinds of problems:

1. Amount Overwhelmed

Such @firstworldlife who feels like he has too much to read no matter how much time you can find:

and

2. Time constrained

Such as @chachictweets who has a few minutes, but doesn’t know where to start:

 

To start to address this problem, we select a solution method based on the goal and the constraints. What do you have time for? All of a single topic?  Are working on research about one single topic for a blog post, article or paper? These determine which method or tool to use and how to put them together.

Combine Five Tools

There are techniques available. We used to experience the same pain, but we’ve gotten to a better place. We have built and used a combination of tools and methods to help the logical side master over the emotion of overload.

Here’s how we we get from chaos —> order. There are five main ways to turn down the heat and sift through the overload (taken from the Bscopes secret sauce):

  1. Separate: Into topics or categories.Not all blogs are the same. Many cluster together naturally. Don’t jump around from shiny blog post to shiny blog post like a magpie. Find and work through all the posts in a single topic area at a time.For most problems, separation is the first step. If you haven’t already organized every feed and blog in to categories. This must be done immediately and continuously. Then, depending on your time and constraints you can attack one topic fully or skim across several. But tailor the approach to your circumstances. If you are working on a specific task, focused in one or two topics, you’ll prioritize by reading all available topic posts, independent of the frequency or last visit.
  2. Frequency: How regular or irregular the blog is.There’s a sweet spot somewhere. Is it a once a day, once a week, or maybe once a month? Goldilocks likes to have hers just right. The frequency also depends upon the type of source. Seth Godin blogs a few times a week. CNN 20 or 30 or more times a day. Go back to your goal an determine how that combines with the frequency of the blogs you want to read. It makes sense to read each blog post by a deep thinking author. The posts of a news service area ones you should not try and keep up with 100%.
  3. Recency: when was the last post?Has it been a month, or has it been an hour? Some blogs are new with recent content on something topical. Others are providing timeless information. Know whether or not this matters.You can and should factor in how recently the site has been updated. If there are no recent posts in the last year or two it is a very different site than one that has been updated this week.

    In addition, consider if the recency matters to your goal. Research can often benefit from ideas that have been tested. In areas such as the sciences, a bit of time can help an idea prove itself. In other areas, the world moves on and leaves a post behind. If you are looking for info on web development, posts last updated in 2002 may not be the most helpful ;) .

    You can slice off parts of the problem using recency. Catch up on all of the posts of a single topic, or read some of a series of topics since your last visit.

  4. Priorities: Measure the importance of the topic to your specific interests.Go back to your goal. If you are amount overwhelmed and need to find information to create a new blog post, then very few topics are high priority. They others may just have to wait.This is very much a battle between the emotional and the logical. What we are talking about here is classic Delayed Gratification. Make your tools help reinforce your logical side.
  5. Last Visit: How far behind am I on this blog?This combines with Frequency and Recency. Have you skipped this blog for the past few week or is this one your been able to keep up with?Depending on the topic of this blog, it may or may not intersect with the urgent ones. But over a longer time-frame, this must be tempered to balance the important against the urgent. So, this measure keeps them in balance.

Use What You Need

You need to mix and match these techniques. By combining them in various ways, you can have the tools you need to then solve your different problem. You’ll work differently if you have only 10 minutes than you would if you need to spend several hours catching back up on the latest in a topic, such as Internet Marketing in preparation for creating your newest material.

When you feel emotionally overwhelmed, stop. Think back to your goals. Determine your constraints. Then combine the tools to be as productive as possible in your given circumstances.

Let us know, in the comments below, how this works for you and your environment.

Bscopes Offers Services

By Brad on January 7, 2012 in Bscopes Features and Concepts, Freemium Business Model and How Bscopes Works. 0 Comments Tags: , .

We are branching out! We want to let other folks take advantage of some of the things we’ve learned building Bscopes. We have learned an amazing amount about cutting edge web technologies in the past few years. Plus we’ve created a few specific pieces of specialized software as part of Bscopes that we think might be useful to others as well. We have been asked to supply this knowledge to other folks.

As a result, we’ve created a new set of new services that we are offering:

  • Website Optimization -  Increase your site’s load and response times by 2, 5 or 10x.
  • Advanced WordPress Customization – a sophisticated web presence tied to a content management system
  • Automated Social Media – leverage technology to promote your content across multiple sites automatically
For more details, check out the services page or contact us.

 

 

Strategic Planning is For The Birds

By steveg on December 9, 2011 in How Bscopes Works. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Powerful bird watching us

Kicking off our regular all-day Friday marathon working session with the usual coffee at Starbucks.

As we left, we were greeted by this large raptor in a nearby tree. We assume he’s yet another RSS Power User scanning separate wheat from chaff. Or mice from rats.

Anyone who knows exactly what type of bird this is, please leave a comment below.

– Steve and Brad

Bookmark Your Personal Heatmap

By steveg on August 19, 2011 in Bscopes Features and Concepts, How Bscopes Works and Information Overload. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
My Heatmap

My Heatmap

Many users have asked “How can I bookmark my heatmap, so I can easily come back to it and so I can send it to other folks?” We’ve now made it possible to do that. Through the magic of the Apache Web Server and a little elbow grease (ok, maybe a lot of elbow grease and a decent sized wrench) we got it done.

The latest Bscopes release that gave you your own Personal Heatmap includes the ability to Bookmark that Heatmap.

Your Bscopes heatmap can be easily found by using the string “user” and your User (login) Name to the Bscopes URL in the pattern: http://www.bscopes.com/user/loginname.  As a demonstration, we created a heatmap specifically to collect blogs about Information Overload in a user with that login name. The Heatmap is at http://www.bscopes.com/user/InformationOverload.

This makes it possible for you to include a link to your own personal heatmap page on Bscopes.

We believe that the ability to bookmark your heatmap, leaving comments on other user’s heatmaps, and Gravatar support are a very important part of how we envision the Bscopes community working.

Give it a try. Look at the  Information Overload page. Check out the heat, and while you are there, leave us a comment!

How Many Kinds of Overload? Let Me Count The Ways

By Brad on August 2, 2011 in Bscopes Features and Concepts, How Bscopes Works and Information Overload. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning from wikipedia

Infinity Symbol

Infinity by doug88888, on Flickr

Blog/RSS Overload

We’ve written a lot about overload. Most of the time at Bscopes we are addressing the problem of trying to read too many blogs and websites. It’s our position that we’ve addressed the most common issues in our secret sauce with the Bscopes Heatmap as a tool to survive it.

Now into the second decade of the 21st century (does that make you feel old?), people are discussing a number of different sources that make them feel overloaded.

Other Kinds

Here’s a list of the Top 5 other overload sources that we see:

1. News Overload:

Some folks are news junkies. They want (need) to consume the latest news. Despite the death of “old” media like newspapers, there is more news than ever before. And tons of sources. And almost as many content aggregators — from google news to vertical niche aggregators like Techmeme. The Bscopes secret  sauce uses frequency and update interval to account for news feeds that spew content into our space.

2. Internet Marketing Overload:

If you google “overload” and look at blogs and websites, this discussion is everywhere. Apparently not only do marketers talk (and sell and market) but they talk to each other. So much so that anyone trying to learn about using the Internet for marketing seems to get overloaded very quickly. This is best controlled with a simple filter and put into its place.

3. Social Network Overload:

This is a newer form of overload. Robert Scoble seems to find the limits of each new social networking site out there. People have been complaining for a while about Facebook Overload and how they can’t keep up with the river of information in their Twitter stream. Now, within weeks of Google+ being opened up to users, people like Alexander McNabb are now complaining about how that is making them overloaded.

Google+ has finally pitched me into information overload. I’m dealing with too many streams of information and it’s becoming uncomfortable. I know I’m an unusually ‘connnected’ person: quite apart from the Twitter, Facebook, Blogger triangle, I handle reasonably large volumes of email and follow a lot of blogs and sites. I’m rarely truly offline. It’s one reason I find it funny when my bank tells me they tried to get in touch with me but couldn’t. I mean, there are people who actively try to avoid me and find it hard. It got so bad that when we returned from getting stuck under the Tikkipukkapokka, or whatever it was called, Icelandic ash cloud, I actually gave interviews to media amused that I had been caught offline in a totally analogue rural lighthouse.

 

We took special care to account for social streams in Bscopes Heatmaps. They are important but only in a temporal fashion. That is a text message or Tweet is HOT at the point it is written and does not typically have a lasting value. Nor does it have any value outside of the author and its recipient.

 

4. Conversation Overload:

I’d say this is superset of Social Network Overload. Certainly conversations occur there. They also occur via e-mail. And by Text Message. And even good, old, voice-mail tag. Folks like Tom Foremski complain about interpersonal aspect of this kind of overload:

As a journalist I have trouble keeping up with the conversations in my email, yet today I have conversations everywhere and in new places. There’s email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, my two blogs, then there are SMS messages, voicemail (which I never check) and the latest is: Google Plus.

The problem with conversations is that they are more important than not reading that great article… Conversations are with people that I work with, that I meet at conferences and events, potential business partners, friends, family, readers, supporters, and more. I want these conversations because I respect these people.

But I don’t want it to seem that I’m ignoring people or that I’m arrogant in some way, but I have to admit this — I can’t keep up! And I bet many others can’t keep up too.

I don’t know how many others. I once felt this way when I had a very different kind of job. But now, as a software developer with only one business partner, tools like GTD allow me to manage this well enough. But then again, I only follow two dozen people on twitter. And I let my wife tell me if I miss anything on Facebook. So maybe I’m not overloaded only by not participating. Or by being an anti-social nerd. ;)

5. Cuteness Overload:

Ok. No so much the same kind of overload, Cuteness Overload still ranks very high if you search google for the word “overload”. And I certainly can get overloaded on cuteness almost instantly. Heck, I’m overloaded after even one picture of LOLCats. But, then again, I’m notably snarky.

Different? The Same?

Are these kinds of overload the same as what we’ve been discussing here on the Bscopes blog? Or are each of them fundamentally different? I can certainly see some similarities. Most importantly I think they all have the same effect on each of us. It provokes an emotional reaction. It triggers our fight or flight response and ups those stress hormones that are already too high in most of us.

What I’m not yet convinced of is if you can use the same tools to assist in each different kind of overload or if you need different tools for each job.

What This Means

I think it’s kind of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back” kind of issue. Any one of these is bad enough. But when you add each new fire hose of stuff coming at you… Well, it becomes overwhelming.

What Do You Do About It?

For some folks it is ostrich mode. You just bury your head and forget about it. You hope it goes away. For those folks, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Some folks, like Kristi Hines, give out advice on how to get organized: she makes lists on Twitter and Facebook. She trims down her use of Stumbleupon. She’s a pro at Gmail lablels. She puts her RSS feeds into folders.

Techniques like that will take you far. For some folks you can even get far enough. For others, eventually the volume increases and the overload returns.

What Do You Want?

I won’t pretend to know all the answers here. But we are curious. Bscopes has focused so far on Blog Overload and helping to manage website URLs and RSS feeds.

Since you’re a Bscopes fanatic and have thoroughly digested the Heatmap technology, the question now is what else, if anything, should we include in Bscopes?

As always, your opinions are wanted. Leave a comment below.

15 Ingredients That Make a Blog Hot or Cold — Spicy or Bland

By Brad on March 3, 2011 in How Bscopes Works. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .
Witches Brew Soda Can, 1960's

Witches Brew Soda Can, 1960's by Roadsidepictures, on Flickr

Jen Weber recently wrote and asked:

Maybe this is a trade secret or something, but what I want to know is how your program determines what is hot and cold for me. What criteria does the program use–keywords, update frequency…?–and are they unique to me? Why should I trust this software’s judgment?

Sorry if the answers are in your blog somewhere. They weren’t in the four posts I read.

I actually dumped my reader contents recently after getting so bogged down that I couldn’t bear to open it for an entire year. I have essentially stopped reading blogs because I can’t keep up with them all. Everyone I know feels overloaded.

We’ve never really given much info on how we define Hot or Cold on Bscopes. Internally, we refer to our combination of characteristics that we boil down to a 1 to 10 ranking as the “secret sauce”. And while we wouldn’t want to spell out every last detail, an overview should help to answer Jen’s question.

Some of the things we measure and evaluate are based on an entire blog. Others are something we look at per blog post. Then we combine all this info together to determine the heat of a blog. Exactly how we combine them all is the secret part of the recipe for the sauce, but here are the most important ones (in no particular order):

Ingredient List

  1. Recency

    2. How recently has this blog been updated. No posts in the last year? Definitely ice-cold (like vichyssoise). Just posted a few hours ago? It’s red hot (a habanero).

  2. Updated

    3. This a true/false measure. Has this blog changed since we last checked it?

  3. Posting Frequency

    4. How often are posts made to this blog. Of course, this will change over time, so we look at the average value.

  4. Frequency Rank

    5. How well does the Posting Frequency compare to the Bscopes ideal? This one is controlled by our virtual Goldilocks. She’s very particular. So the blog can’t update too rarely, or too frequently. She is happiest when it is juuuuusssst riiiight.

  5. Update Interval

    6. Is the Posting Frequency increasing or decreasing? Regularity is more important here than some absolute value. (must not make prune references… must restrain myself… must stay out of the gutter) We determine if the blogger is slowing down in their output, or suddenly posting a lot more. We like predictability in our blogs. But a sudden rise in frequency can also be an indication that there is something here to see.

  6. Authority

    7. Is this blog recognized by others in its niche? Places like Alltop or Technorati try and measure this. But they still don’t cut through the clutter. How the Bscopes users view the blog also influences this measure. So it’s kind of a Heisenberg thing going on as the observer changes this measurement.

  7. Popularity

    8. Is this blog read by a lot of other folks? There are a number of places that try and track this from Google Reader to Technorati to Alexa traffic scores. Again, it is a measure, but not enough to separate wheat from chaff. (And chaff isn’t much fun to find in your cake.)

  8. Posting Amount

    9. How many posts has this blogger written? Is this a small blog or a big one? It’s not that size doesn’t matter. Size always matters. But it is also how you use your blog.

  9. Exhaustion

    10. How fast do new posts go away if they are not read? A blogger that writes 10 posts a day and only keeps 10 posts in their RSS feed only gives you a day to see a post before it is gone. That adds to the urgency of that blog. That can be both good and bad. Conversely, too much time between posts and I can safely ignore a given feed for a while. (“Well, what am I supposed to do? You won’t answer my calls, you change your number. I mean, I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!” Bonus points awarded if you recognize this quote. Leave a comment.)

  10. Dialogue

    11. Another true/false measure. Is commenting allowed on this blog? For some folks, dialogue is what a blog is all about. For others, it doesn’t matter much at all. So we keep track of this.

  11. Comments

    12. How many comments does any given post have? In general, the more comments, the more interesting the post. The reactions of the community tell you about the relevance of the blog post.

  12. Size

    13. How big is the post? Smaller posts can generally be consumed faster. But then again, a large post may have a lot of valuable content. This ingredient doesn’t mean much on its own — only when combined with other ingredients. Think of it like parsley —it’s a garnish.

  13. Freshness

    14. How recent is this post? In general, a post from 6 months ago will need some other ingredients to make it Hot. After all, it’s not like a blog post comes with an expiration date. (Hmmmm. I wonder if some of them ought to?) Some posts are timeless such as this one from Seth Godin.

  14. Links

    15. Does this post link out to other web sites? Other posts on its own site? Does anyone yet link to this post? Links are the currency of the web. So how rich is this post? (Are we talking Donald Trump? Scrooge McDuck?)

  15. One Way Push Penalty

    16. Some blogs are like a fire hydrant of content just spewing out at you. A high frequency of posts. No comments or dialogue. These blogs make it hard to keep up with them and hard to want to keep up. But, they might be important sources of info so I’m not comfortable dropping it and not reading it, either. So we automatically classify them, and in so doing we knock ‘em down a peg or two so they don’t dominate the rankings. Like you would if you were reading these.

Taste Test Needed

Our experience with Information Overload tells us that everyone deals with this differently. Every cook changes the recipe to suit his/her taste. Tweaking the mixture is something that will show up as a feature on the paid subscription plans in the future. What ingredients would you add? Do we need a pinch more of this? A cup of that? Should it be spicier? Or is this batch too hot?
This is your chance to influence the recipe of the Bscopes secret sauce. We want folks to participate. Share your ideas with us in the comments below.
To join the Bscopes community, enter your email address in the form in the sidebar and subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed.

Conversations in Bspaces

By steveg on February 6, 2009 in Bscopes Features and Concepts and How Bscopes Works. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

conversation213x141.jpgOne of the many uses for Bscopes is the discovery of what we call ‘Conversations’. Our use of the word is more similar to the way Technorati uses the phrase, than to the way that TechCrunch uses it. (Feel free to agree or disagree and add your own comments to this post. We could use a good flamewar over definitions… we haven’t had one since comp.lang.* got overrun by trolls).

We think of a blog conversation as multiple authors writing about the same topic, referring to each other by hypertext links in their posts. A while back, Jeremy Zawodny complained about having difficulty tracking these kind of conversations through the Blogosphere. It has not been easy.

Now, Bscopes can help discover conversations. A Bspace graph shows visually what can be difficult to see through the clutter of the text of the posts. The goal of a Bspace is to give you a birds-eye view of a part of the Blogosphere.

The Bspace below is a great example. I have three blogs tagged with ‘Leadership’:

Leadership Conversation

This Bspace clearly shows that two blogs cross-referencing each other, while the third is entirely separate. I had not been aware of this before. In fact, it was invisible to me until I created this Bspace.

Time now to start our own meta-conversation on the topic of conversations. Write a post and link to this one. (We’ll certainly graph that). Or leave a comment on this post. Or both. Or neither.

Sharing the wealth on del.icio.us

By Brad on January 5, 2008 in How Bscopes Works. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

del.icio.us logoIf you are reading this on the blog directly then you can see in the sidebar on the right side that we’ve added del.icio.us support on our blog. (And if you are reading this from the RSS feed, give a click through to check out the sidebar.)

We decided to share the collection of resources we’ve been assembling with the blogosphere. Check out the different bookmarks we’ve added to del.icio.us/bscopes. Some of them have been saved by lots of other folks. Others are more unique.

Anyway… that’s enough for tonight.