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The big 4 announced they are banding together to form a new consortium, the Information Overload Research Group (IORG) to address exactly the same problems around information overload that we've been talking about and working on here at Eluma.

The resulting flurry of news items, blog posts, and conversations has been impressive.  We're glad to see folks waking up to the impact of information overload on productivity, for both the mainstream online world, as well as for the web 2.0 hyper-connected crowd.

One thing most of us need to pay attention to is to try to improve our self-discipline.  Just because I have a new email, or my Blackberry buzzes, or my laptop is open at home at the dinner table, doesn't mean I have to check it right now.

But from a technology perpective, we should demand better tools.  As we've been saying all along, the right answer is not to limit our data streams.  Instead, demand that technology providers work on better tools to collect, aggregate, organize, filter, and display information, so that *each* person gets the right (most relevant) information presented to her, at the right time, in the right format.

If some percentage of developers take this as a wake up call to stop working on that web 2.0 social website for (insert plural noun here) and instead work on helping to alleviate this problem, we'll all be better off. 

After lots of hard work, late nights and weekends from everybody here, and some awesome feedback from our loyal group of private beta users, we launched Eluma 2.0 in Public Beta today.  We are all pretty jazzed!!

Eluma 2.0 is now available to everyone from our website at http://www.eluma.com/.

We hope you try it - please remember we're still in beta - so please send us feedback so we can hear what you like, and what you think we've missed.

Click here for an overview of what we've added since private beta.

Click here to read the press release.

Eluma automatically synchronizes all of your content and favorites across all the different machines where you've installed Eluma. This works great when you want to access your favorites both from your work and home machines.  Our next phase is to provide you with secure access to your stuff over the web, for when you're traveling and you didn't bring your laptop.

We're in the process of implementing our user web portal, so you can access your favorites on any machine via a Web browser just by logging in. The first phase of this portal will be released in early July and it will allow you to see all the favorites you've collected in folders, tagged, flagged, etc.

We're also in the process of upgrading our current public portal pages to give better access to public Eluma collections to those people who don't use Eluma everyday. Public collections let you benefit from the organizing someone else did. So while Eluma is valuable to collectors, Eluma collections are valuable to everyone.

This first phase of the user portal will provide read only access, and we will be continually updating the portal with new features so that you will be able to do most of what you can now do in the Eluma Desktop directly in the portal. This will make it easier to add to and manage your Eluma items from any machine, regardless of whether Eluma is installed, although we don't expect this portal to replace the desktop client. There are still some features like managing and collecting large collections while browsing and offline access that Web applications just don't do as well today. 

Below are a couple of portal beta screen shots that show how we are trying to keep the familiar Eluma user interface in the new portal so the learning curve will be minimal.

Every company should have an "elevator statement" which is techy-speak for how you would describe what your company does if you had someone's attention on a short elevator ride.

Here's our version, at 1 minute and 11 seconds, with an assist from Dave Matthews.

There, I've said it!

And even though sometimes it seems like a momentous task to wade through the virtually endless supply of information to find and view the information that I want without wasting hours each day, there is hope. The truth is there are great tools and technologies now at our disposal, and even more exciting ones on the horizon, for tackling the information overload challenge.

First, the reality is that many people are not aware of the advances in the "mechanics" of information capture and organization. Surprisingly, what's still by far most common is to simply bookmark web pages in the browser "favorites" or "bookmark" menu. Although using the favorites menu in the browser works well for quickly storing a web page that you might want to re-visit, in terms of organizing more than a handful of links, or viewing more than one piece of information at a time, it falls far short.

For sites that have information that I want to see on an ongoing basis, I am a big fan of RSS. RSS allows me to select just the information, or feeds, that I want to stay current with and any new information that gets published in those feeds is automatically sent to me, eliminating the need for me to visit those websites. If you're not using RSS, go to a site you frequent (like http://www.cnn.com/) and look for a link to a page where they keep all their RSS feeds. You'll find that almost every site now syndicates their content via RSS.

Browsers have features built in to subscribe to, and view RSS feeds, but with a browser I'm limited to selecting and viewing feeds one-at-a-time. A better experience cruising RSS feeds is to use start pages like iGoogle and My Yahoo! that let me organize multiple feeds in viewing panes on a page, so that I can quickly scan the information for new items of interest.

Similarly, web widgets allow me to embed a wide selection of content or functionality into my start page (or any web page), and I can use desktop widgets to display information directly on my desktop, without needing to have my browser open. For example, you might use desktop widgets to display the local weather on your desktop, and a web widget for alerting you to discount airfares between specific cities.

But even with these technologies, some problems still exist.

As convenient as start pages and widgets are for letting me view information that I know I want to monitor on an ongoing basis, they are not meant for letting me easily collect items that I happen to come across as I'm browsing, and don't provide visual display for web pages (as opposed to RSS feeds and widgets). Browsers are great for letting me quickly collect web pages, and even RSS feeds, but are cumbersome for organizing the information (for example, some browsers don't yet support tagging, and some don't let me select more than one item to move or delete at a time), and browsers only let me view one item at a time.

But there are developments happening in the industry to merge the best features of each of these product types into a single product, eliminating the need to choose, and use, various products based on different types of content or based on the preferred way someone likes to work. These new products work with the browsers to allow collecting any type of objects while browsing, with superior organization capabilities that make it easier to organize, and hence more easily find, objects when they're needed. For example, sometimes I want to organize by folders and subfolders, sometimes I want to assign multiple tags to an object so that I don't have to search for it later (I can just find it by any of its tags), and sometimes I just want to flag something as important and view it later. These products also provide me with the at-a-glance viewing capabilities of start pages, so I can view large sets of content at once, without having to bring up each one sequentially. They aim to be one single place from where I manage all of my online information.

But so far I've only addressed the mechanics of collecting, organizing, and viewing information.

The thornier symptom of information overload is finding what I want to read in the first place.

With seemingly endless sources of information at our disposal, we're still often mired down trying to find the right data amidst an overwhelming surplus of information. How do we quickly locate and parse the necessary bits of data for work productivity and personal activities? How do we separate good from bad in the nebulous online realm? Even simple tasks like shopping or making travel decisions can sometimes seem overwhelming.

We're seeing some new and interesting approaches to help sift through the online debris to more easily find the gems.

For example, social bookmarking and rating sites like Digg and Reddit have emerged to help people find articles that others have ranked highly. Searching by category lets me drill into different subject areas to see what's most popular with the crowd. The same approach is being used by YouTube for videos, and Flicker for photos, and on and on.

These sites are great for me when I want a brief diversion. But for finding a needle in a haystack? These sites tell me what a huge community of millions of people think is the best content. So, the latest Britney snafus and Angelina rumors filter to the top. Of course this doesn't show me the most pertinent content, just the most widely read or recommended. What I really need is a way to find the very best material, instead of merely bringing the lowest common denominator to the forefront. Ultimately what I really want is not to find the best content for everyone, but the very best content for me.

By contrast, collaborative filtering addresses this need by either explicitly (Netflix) or implicitly (Amazon) learning about my likes and dislikes, and tailoring the experience based on what it has learned from other users like me. Collaborative filtering, though there are still some kinks to be worked out (see Jeffrey Zaslow's article in The Wall Street Journal about what happens if your Tivo thinks you're gay), promises to help each one of us find just the information that is most likely to be of interest to us. StumbleUpon is one of the market leaders in this space, combining an interesting and offbeat universe of content that one might find on Digg, with the personalization aspects of Amazon.

Another technique that's been gaining popularity is social sharing. Although similar to collaborative filtering in that I can benefit from the interests of others, the way I determine whose profile I like is explicit instead of algorithmic. For example, once someone has already done the work of identifying the information they're interested in, I can subscribe to the feeds or pages they've identified (provided they first agree to make them public). A person like me has already done the work to find the content they like. I can benefit from the work they've already done. And users can give out as much or as little personal information as they want, so that they can still remain anonymous if they choose. The content is what holds the value.

Ultimately, the confluence of these different technologies offers the promise to filter the incoming data flow and raise the bar on how we cope with information overload.

When I manage all of my content from a single place, when I bring together the "cream of the crop" of content across different domains, from different sources and services, it opens up the possibility for an entirely new level of personalization. If I have the ability to apply the explicit ratings of Netflix, the implicit recommendations of Amazon, and explicit social sharing, across all of my information, not just my movies or books, then I can have a system that crosses domains to deliver high-level personalization across a larger set of content, while providing the filters that deliver only the most targeted information to me.

Sound far fetched? Not as far fetched as you might think. This is one of the reasons that most of the social sites are busy creating API access to their applications.

Ultimately, information overload is a surmountable challenge. The trick is to distill down the overwhelming amount of information to the manageable subset that is the most targeted to our various areas of interest. Certainly we'll never be free of the vast sea of data hitting us every day, but I believe the day is near when I will be able to say, "I am still an information junkie, but I no longer suffer from information overload!"

Originally published as a contributed article in Tech News World.

1. Tagging
Most social bookmarking services let you use tags. Compared with using folders, tagging content can be a great way to label things you want to find again in the future, and a great way to find things that other people recommend. If you've ever filed away a document somewhere and then decided later on that it was easier to re-search for it using Google than try to find it in your directory structure, then you need to start using tags.

2. When You Don't Know Exactly What To Search For
While Google lets you find a needle in a haystack when you type in the exact search phrase, social bookmarking services return links that lots of people have deemed interesting or useful on a subject. If you want to find out what happened to your high school quarterback and prom queen, use Google. If you want to find interesting new content to learn about hybrid cars, try a social bookmarking service.

You can drill into people whose recommendations you like to find more content you might like. Or you can view the other tags that people assigned to a particular piece of content you like, and drill into those other tags to find more interesting content. Either way, you're bound to find things you'll like that you didn't know to search for.

3. Sharing
Are you still just emailing links to your friends when you find something interesting? There is a better way.

4. Community
Part of the social aspect of social bookmarking is to encourage comments and ratings on content. If you find the underlying content interesting, then the comments from like-minded folks can add a layer of information you won't get just from reading the link. It's like the difference between just reading a book yourself, and reading a book and then going to a book club meeting to discuss it.

5. It's Not Just For Fun
Social bookmarking is now being used in work environments. Are you researching the competition with a team at work? Share the links that everyone finds start some threaded discussions on the links. Tracking blogs related to your space? Planning an event? You'll find that some social bookmarking services allow you to create a private group and then share links and engage in discussions just with members of your group.

Most everyone is familiar with using folders to organize their files, thanks to Windows Explorer, Mac OS, and the gazillions of products that use the folder paradigm.

Not everyone is familiar with tagging, though.

Sometimes using a folder structure works better, and sometimes tagging works better (which is why we built Eluma to allow objects to be classified using both tags and folders).

Some of the advantages of working with tags over folders include:

• You can add as many tags as you want to an object, so that you can later find the object by any of its tags. With folders, you'd need to copy the object into multiple locations.
• You can easily add and remove any tags on an object to reclassify it.
• Content within tags is self-organizing (watch the video to see what I mean by this and how folders don't enable this).
• You can usually infer what an object is about by reading its list of tags.

We created a short, informative video to illustrate the differences between folders and tags here:

Amidst the hullaballoo for FriendFeed, the new service that aggregates feeds from the various web 2.0 services like Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon, has been the emergence of desktop clients built specifically to expose FriendFeed data as soon as it gets published, so as not to incur even the slightest delay watching the real-time chatter :-). TechCrunch recently wrote another post on that topic here.

Since Eluma is built to aggregate any feeds or content you choose, and one of the things that Eluma does is to expose feeds as desktop alerts, I thought I would see how Eluma stacks up as a client for FriendFeed. You will notice that there was no API integration required - just out of the box functionality for exposing FriendFeed feeds as alerts.

Here's the video. Please tell us what you think!

...or "What I did on spring break"

It turns out that launching in a private beta release was a very good idea :-).  It helps a lot to get feedback from some new people that are starting without any preconceived ideas, or at least different preconceived ideas, and are certified kool-aid free.  We're also fortunate to have beta testers that used Eluma across a wider set of use cases than we could ever hope to do internally.

So what did we learn?

Web Access

Although we always had browser based access to a user's data high up on the product roadmap, private beta escalated this requirement. So as a result, we are implementing browser based access to public collections, and we're also working on providing browser based access through a secure sign on process so that an Eluma user can see all of their folders and subfolders, tagged and flagged items, and smartlists from any machine via a browser.

Offline Access

Eluma's offline access capabilities were an important feature to many users.  There were some good suggestions for how to make it better, like caching more content (such as web pages) for offline access.  So you'll see even more content available when you're offline.

Local Search

Providing a local search tab (restricting search to your local data) was also on the list for this release, so it was no surprise that the beta testers confirmed that it's a vital feature.

More search engine options

This one snuck up on me. I am pretty much search engine agnostic so I was OK with having no search engine options. However, based on user feedback, it appears that users don't want to be forced into using a specific vendor's web search, so we now allow you to choose between Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and Microsoft search in the browser toolbar, and Google and Yahoo! search from the desktop application.

Usability

We've put a lot of effort into improving the usability of Eluma, consistent with our goal to make using Eluma be second nature, especially for casual computer users - people that just go online to check email and search for a few sites.  Some of the features we're adding include:

• Improved navigation menus and behavior in the Eluma Desktop.  You'll see that our left hand navigation pane provides a lot more room for objects, and the behavior is more predictable.  We've also changed the navigation tree based on some good feedback we've received.

• There are new options for desktop alerts. One new option that we are working on that may NOT make it into this release is the ability to Collect/Rate/Tag/Flag an Alert item from the popup. I hope that we can squeeze it in, but we have to draw the line somewhere. :-)

• We have added the ability to Collect/Rate/Tag/Flag individual RSS items in a feed, and we treat the items like bookmarks. I love this feature, it makes reading very active RSS feeds like Engadget or Digg so much easier and more efficient.

• We have improved the navigation of collected content from the browser toolbar.

• We now support automatic completion of tag names, and we support multi-word tags. These two were really "no brainers" we just had to get to them on the list.
   

Performance and Additional Platform Support

It might be boring to the typical end user, but I am glad that we were able to make significant performance enhancements across a variety of areas in the product, including search, synchronization of content across multiple machines, and for communicating with the server.  We've also added support for 64 bit support machines, and for the Firefox 3 browser.

We think that these new features promise to make the public beta version of Eluma 2.0 significantly more functional and even easier to use than the private beta version.  We're excited to wrap up public beta and get it out to you shortly.  We appreciate all the feedback we've gotten from you so far.  It's hugely helpful for us.

Thanks!

Right on the heels of my last post, Erick Schoenfeld of TechCrunch writes that after installing Twhirl, his information overload problem got worse, not better! He makes the case that he needs less data, not more. "There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise... what we really need are better filters."

Exactly!

Coincidentally, today Tech News World published an article that I wrote for them that discusses exactly this issue, titled "I am an information junkie, and I suffer from information overload!"

Of course, we couldn't agree more with Erick, and that's exactly what we're trying to address here at Eluma :-)