Social Information Overload

My first overload was with online news. Hundreds of sites to visit and later to pull into an RSS reader. Then I cut down the feeling of overload with the decision to simply read things filtered by bloggers.

Second was blogger and by extension, news overload, where there were hundreds of bloggers to read, and all the news articles they pointed to. Then I cut that down by topic filter searches that were pulled into my news reader.

Third was photo and video overload, where I had tons of sites to look at photos and videos and was spending hours a day seeking out whatever was going on. Then I cut that down by using 1001 for photos and using people to filter videos, by hand selecting a few each day in either topic areas or for things that were just interesting. I use Dabble a lot for this.

Fourth, and I'm not sure how I'm going to cut this one down is social network info overload. Upcoming, Facebook, Myspace (less so but still!), Dopplr (travel YASN), Linked In, plus every wiki I'm in for different events and groups, as well as all my Google and Yahoo groups, plus groups at Magnify, Vodpod and Flickr, maillists that have grown much more around social interaction than they were in the past where they appeared more as information I could take or leave. There are the games and mobile groups I'm in, Twitter, and I'm sure there's more but I just can think of it all. In other words, the social interaction and information overload has become high pressure.

I'm looking for some filter to go through and just grab what I need and not have to know about or read or watch the rest, or reply to it, unless I want to and it fits in with an event or need or desire.

In the past, I've just gone skipping around, and at other times been immersive, but it's all so random right now, there is so much, I'm feeling anxious all over again, as I watch it all scroll by.

I don't know the answer, but the question might be, what happens when you have Social Information Overload? What is it, how do you manage it, and what can you use to filter it? Don't tell me use my bloated RSS reader which I abandoned when it had 450,000 unread (no exaggeration.. I can't open it) items. There must be something to solve this.

I was at a talk two weeks ago, where the speaker said that 5 years ago, 3 percent of online activity was at social sites, and now 31 percent is. I can say that I spend at least if not much more than 31 percent of my activity online in social spaces. That doesn't include the games and mobile stuff.

So.. how can I be informed, but not rude, comfortable without anxious worry about missing things, immersive but only when it's fun? What is the answer?

US Internet Speeds are Really Slow..

Via Dave Farber's IP list from Press Etc:

Average broadband download speed in the US is 1.9 Mbps. It is 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, 17 Mpbs in France, and 7 Mbps in Canada.

I've talked about this before.

Americans are falling further and further behind, in socializing with technologies like high speed interent access as well as cell phone tools and service that are much more dynamic than the rest of the world has. This is due to terrible public policies around these technologies and selfish companies who provide the services in monopolisitic ways.

Two to four years after I first talked about this, we are further behind than ever. It's appalling but you can read about the $200 billion scam on the US by Verizon, QWest and the Bell companies here.

Getting Real

Bob Lefsetz explains why the music industry is even worse off than I thought, pushing them deeper into the hole they've been digging for years. They are so far removed from what is real and passionate in the art of music and in how people connect to the artists that this must seem perfectly reasonable to them, from a business point of view.

This summer in the east hamptons there will be a 5 concert series, costing $15,000 per ticket which buys entry into all five shows, with Prince, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Tom Petty and Dave Matthews.

He aptly compares this concert series to Mitzvahpalooza where Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks spent $10 million dollars in 2005 on his daughter's bat mitzvah, and hired Don Henley, 50 Cent and Aerosmith among others to play two floors of the Rainbow room in NYC for the event.

Bob's right, it's disgusting for the fans, not to mention the idea of the artform, as well as commentary on the state of our society, which has gotten so gluttonous and cynical that even to people who can't afford it, which is most of us, this kind of thing seems reasonable and in no way a slap on the soul of music as an artform.

IIW Project Recap

Today at the IIW (internet identity workshop) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, I took notes on the presentations of the projects in existence for more than 6 months. They are below. But I also noticed that they all said they did the same set of things, to make their own projects play with all the rest. Yes, they all have slight variants, like one or another is in php, or java, or ruby, or whatever. But they talked about trading identity bits around like they would send around email. And let's face it, we all have different email clients written in different languages, but the email itself moves around regardless of that.

So I'm wondering what the real differences are. If this is a matter of semantics, between projects, I'm hoping that by the end of the conference (Wednesday afternoon) they've all combined and will work for a less confusing and more aligned identity space.

I had the sense, while taking notes, that each project was slightly restating the same terms, so I aggregated them below. But this could have been buzz word bingo, for all the similarities we were hearing about each. Help us out here, tell us why we really need all you!

Notes start here:

1. OSIS -Dale Olds, Johannes Earnst

Open source identity selector
Johannes
Kim Cam
Dave Winer
Michael Graves
Early 2006 met to work on this and it became what is now called cardspace
Aligned multiple distributed systems for trust
coordinated MS cardspace project spec for making it open source
they want to do more with open implementations but don't endorse standards per say
want to collaborate multiple systems into something interoperable
steering committee / working group
they've worked on a bunch of the projects that will be in the speed geeking session

they focus on:
interoperability of standards, meaning of data, and types of information
determine relying parties and help make agreements for that
help determine consistent user experience

2. SAML, Liberty Alliance, openLiberty, and Concordia - by Eve Maler
federated identity means distributing identity tasks and information across domains
XML Based frameworks standardized at OASIS for marshaling security and ID info and exchanging
SAML is about assertions about subjects
Comes in layers
-- assertions get used by protocols to get used by certain tasks
-- specifies single sign on

History: SAML, Shibboleth and Liberty framework have converged over time
Shibboleth is now part of SAML2 as of 2005
Liberty is == to SAML

LIBERTY ALLIANCE = 150 governmental agencies, businesses, orgs and agencies
mission: foster a ubiquitous interoperable privacy
dev. open tech standards
human to application standards
Liberty people service: groups and roles are defined and shared
they are starting to offer

CONCORDIA PROGRAM
initiative to make umbrella standards to harmonize identity protocols

3. CARDSPACE - Mike Jones, MS
About bringing about convergence in identity space with MS and other partners
Care about threats to online safety
Criminal situation is bad
Try to bring usable, safe DI to users
Think about claims made by an issuer by a subject
7 laws of identity
-- Consistency is very important
usability, usability, usability

Microsoft Open Spec: cardspace.netfx3.com

4. THE HIGGENS PROJECT - Mary Ruddy
higgens is a species of tasmanian long-tailed mouse
open source
user centric and privacy centric
interoperable system for authentication
-- example where no password is required
doesn't share some info.. let's users choose
powered by interoperability framework
-- interoperate with lots of situations: financial, employment, etc
multi-protocol
all tokens/protocols/ systems
modular

5. OPEN ID - David Recordan, Bill Washburn
interoperable, single sign on
control URL in OID 1.0
added / extended to support iNames last summer

Single sign on
FOAF support - ex. could pull in AIM list
consumer level light weight ID
90 million Open IDs
(including every AOL/MS user)

problems: yes.. but solutions will be discussed here

Bill Washburn - openID Foundation
foster and promote openID for user centric ID on the net
Dick Hardt
Scott Kveton
Johannes Earnst
Drummond Reed
David Recordan
Arthur Bergman

join!

6. SHIBBOLETH / INTERNET 2 MIDDLEWARE - Bob Morgan (Univ WA)

They focus on attributes - work with Higgens
Shared identity with more than just handle style login - need more assertions
Education focused - work with universities

iiw2007

Online Community Map

Don't know who did it, but I like it.

Update: Justin (in comments) points out the original version. And Kevin Marks points out that they forgot Gaia and Club Penguin.