brad garland

This may not be a recent or even an original thought but I’ve recently been thinking organizing my information flow and this idea kind of hit me. RSS was, five years ago, the next big thing until it died. Syndicating your content you read through a ‘news feed’ that people could subscribe was going to revolution the way people got their information on the Web. It took off for a while and services like NetNewsWire and Google Reader acted as the traffic cop services of all the feeds but it never really went mainstream.  Until a communication utility came, put a cutesy name and verb around it (tweet, tweet!) and everyone grabbed ahold.

Think about it, Twitter works like a RSS service with all the people, brands, and websites you care about so you can ‘follow’ them and keep updated on all their information. The information could be personal, professional, or anywhere in between but the fundamentals are the same. Subscribe to the content, and it’s pushed back to you whether its Kim Kardashian or NPR.

Couple points of note:

1) Isn’t it interesting that once again a better marketing plan and simple interface won yet again? Course, nobody really owned RSS, it was a pretty technical idea for many of those years.

2) Twitter curation - I was attempting to segment the people that I follow on Twitter from the brands/websites that I follow. I’m finding it easier to follow someone instead of finding their RSS feed and adding it to my Google Reader.  Problem is I can’t find a good iPad app that can just show me just the content I want in a Twitter list (that works well).  For example, I’m using TweetMag (side review: awesome app but highly unstable, please update! Still use it though…)

Since there hasn’t been much fanfare or any reviews talking about the iPad yet, I thought I’d start. If you didn’t find the sarcasm in that, stop reading now. I’m not interested in talking about the hardware specs, all the features, iPad apps, etc.  I’m interested in talking about the evolution of computing and technology advancement. 

I posted a quote a couple of days ago that I think is particularly relevant here by Sir Arthur Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So, let’s talk about the magic and technology convergence through a couple of stories.

One from my buddy Brent Dixon featuring his grandfather via The Optimist:

Several ACU students attended the release event Saturday, including Drew Dixon, sophomore Biblical studies major from Sugar Land. Dixon was with several family members who traveled to Abilene for the holiday weekend. Randall Dixon, Drew’s father, and Al Dixon, his grandfather, huddled together around one of several display devices and took turns exploring.

“To an 80-year-old, it’s amazing,” Al said. “I very well might get one to have communications and information like that in any place you can think of. It’s wonderful.”

And another from the younger side of the age spectrum that has been trickling around the Interwebs the past few days where a 2.5 year old experiences the iPad for the first time:

To me, the iPad is no longer about being grouped with all the “techie” stuff. It’s removes all the setup, coding, or configuration and let’s people just play, work, or share.  So whether you’re an 80-year old male or a 2.5-year old girl, it just works and is immediately fun for you. That is magical.

Update: If you want a killer technical review, check Gruber’s review.