Information Aggregation

Information Visualization and Aggregation

June 10, 2013

The way I think of Information aggregation are processes which organize the incoming flow into various streams or channels, yes, channels like  television. These channels could be, for example, like sections of a newspaper, “Sports”, “Current”, “Politics”, and can be grouped further by how well you trust the source such as: qualified information, unqualified information and advertising Information, or by the information being pushed up or down by other site users, such as on reddit.

There are way too many applications to individually name, but I am particularly interested in mobile apps, and the best appear to be: Flipboard, Google Now, Google Currents and Taptu.

Taptu has a nice interface, but ignores social media sites and only has access to news.

Google Currents does not aggregate between information providers, so you cannot see just a general category of ‘Sports’. But you can view the articles in the LA Times, for example. The information display feels to be displayed more by a program than by human design.

Google Now places applications on the google search page to customize information selection and the display dynamic, such as providing current conditions effecting the daily commute.

Flipboard is one of the more interesting applications. They provide access to social networking posts from your friends, magazines, newspapers and current trending social networking and news feeds. Some of the magazine articles are the initial teaser and then you are prompted to subscribe if you want to read the entire article. Flipboard uses a pictorial interface, like an advanced Tumblr., and Flipboard does display Tumblr. blogs better than Tumblr. The interface feels designed, less robotic.

Finally Android OS and the various widgets can fit into this category allowing aggregation updates, but each widget has a slightly different look and feel, not providing a uniform experience.

Next I expect we will see News TV aggregation would pull out snippets of the news programs for you to view only on the topics you were interested. You could build your own 30 minute news TV show from the various programs. Probably a few copyright issues to clear first.

Another along the same thought would aggregate articles on a single topic eliminating redundancy creating one article with all of the information. Be kind of interesting to run editorials from opposing points of view.

And an aggregation stream that will include radio and social tv channels, along with social picture, blogs, and the pay for media sites.

Finally, the big changes will come when some company can provide a subscription service which includes most all of the various premium content for one monthly fee. This will encourage a pay stream for internet content which is currently underperforming compared to other content/information delivery systems.

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