There’s a lot of information out there – we all know that. When managing a business, it is especially important to keep track of all that is going on. This means visiting many sites regularly, reading a lot, talking to people, subscribing to various newsletters, searching in Google, cutting and filing articles, etc. There is still no easy consolidated way to get all the information that we would be interested in.
Perhaps this can change. My weblog over the past two-and-half-months has now captured a lot of my interest areas. I have told my blog all that I like, including links, quotes and comments. So, can this be used as a mechanism to get me other related information – old and new?
For example, suppose with every post I give a phrase (which could be the title) which describes the post. I can use the Google API to do a search and show related posts – we do this now using the GoogleBox. But this is static in time – it does not change or alert me to changes in the search results.
What I’d like is that with every post, I want to create a search option which showsme the top 10-20 searches on Google and links to my own previous posts. The Google search should be run every so often and if a new item comes up in the search, I should be alerted. This way, at least I am able to continually track what I have written about, which would mirror my interest areas.
This also helps chain posts together. After adding all my previous Tech Talks, there are now over 800 posts in this weblog. Today, they stand alone – linked only through the Tech Talk category page, Search and the Prev-Next option. They need to get connected among each other.
What this will do is to create a “network” of my thoughts. There will be hubs and clusters of ideas. It would be good to see how this changes over time. This can now also be used to connect me to others with similar thinking. And through the blogs of these other people, it will perhaps open up new ideas for me. Which is what I really want to do when I am doing all the reading and thinking.
In essence, we are looking at a way to connect to the incremental information that is being produced, so I can stay in touch with recent developments. The danger otherwise is that the thinking will age since I am only able to track a few interest areas. Google and blogs with some additional monitoring software can help make this a reality.
Also see:
– A Personal Knowledge Management System
– Google + Blog = Personal KMS
