A nice holiday gift from the folks at Ma.gnolia with their announcement of APML support for their social bookmarking service. From the post by Todd Sieling, Ma.gnolia's product manager, they are using the Engagd service to allow Ma.gnolia members the ability to build an attention profile from their bookmarks.

APML allows users the ability to compress all forms of Attention Data into a portable file format containing a description of their ranked interests- their Attention, based on what they are tagging in a service like Ma.gnolia can then be ported to other services that support APML. This will be a very powerful way to filter information from multiple services a user might use to consume information. As their Attention profile changes in aggregate from the various services they use, consuming services of APML are automatically updated and able to deliver exactly what the user wants based on their ranked interests.

In the annoucement post, Todd goes on to say "these are still early days for APML, and as such there aren’t a lot of service providers supporting it and even fewer applications that can make use of this data. So, the hope in providing it for Ma.gnolia is that it will help stimulate development of APML-powered services that can offer us new ways of looking at what we do as we travel the web".

I have been a member of the APML Workgroup since early 2007, and believe that APML will have a transformative hand in information filtering, so i agree with Todd that we are still in the early days but am excited and thankful about Ma.gnolia's addition to the list of other services that support APML including some big Enterprise players like NewsGator that i have commented before on.

Ma.gnolia is also an early supporter of OAuth, which the open API authentication standard and another of the dataportability.org open stacks specifications.

Right on- and thanks for the lovely gift!

Lately there has been more and more support for APML (Attention Profile Markup Language) a topic that i have been covering and a standard that i am involved in. Today's announcement by Nick Bradbury that FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Inbox will soon Support APML is another great piece of news for those of us interested in establishing Attention standards. Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/WriteWeb starts his post on this new announcement asking Web users who are interested in personalization, privacy and increasing sophistication in their applications to take note and goes on to provide yet another good description of what APML is and what the benefits are.

Although i am certainly interested in Attention in the consumer space, it is the Enterprise space that i am the most interested in and as vendors like NewsGator that also have solutions that support enterprise users join in on the fun, things are only getting to be more exciting (although I suspect a long way off). Here is why:

Enterprise users especially information workers who do a lot of research typically have access to a handful of premium content tools to ensure comprehensive access to the information they need to do their jobs. If they are lucky (and there really are very few who are) they might have their logins managed by their single sign-on servers, most likely however they are logging into multiple ASP services. Note: the very very very few lucky ones might even have federated searching across some their services.

Once they are logged in however (yes i do believe that OpenId should also be supported by Enterprise information providers but let's leave that for another conversation although an important one) they probably have access to alerting tools across all those services to filter and deliver content exactly as they need it. So for each service they must personalize and tell the system what topics they are interested in so they can be alerted based on their 'attention' needs. Even if they use each service for a specific task- most of their information needs are the same across the set and can be aggregated. Every time the users 'attention' changes they need to update all the services manually. In addition not every service supports RSS outputs so the user is also receiving the content in multiple formats for example:

Today's announcement by NewsGator, one of the RSS market leaders in the enterprise space that they are supporting APML is a great step towards having Enterprise grade tools support the model that is needed (NewsGator has an Enterprise tool although this APML support announcement doesn't seem to address it). Another player in the market Attensa also has AttentionStream Prioritization that observes and analyzes explicit and implicit behavior as the user reads and processes feeds and articles- but this is post delivery which is great but doesn't completely solve the bigger problem of content ingestion not just consumption.

So obviously tools like for an example an Enterprise RSS server can act as intermediaries that deliver content based on the users 'Attention Profile' that is maintained in one central place- but in order for that to be effective in a diverse Enterprise the information pipes must be huge from the content providers or else the users still need to maintain individual filters on each service. In the graphic above the user sets up and maintains the filters in the multiple services yet only receive content based on their Attention Profile that is maintained as part of a enterprise tool in this case a RSS Enterprise Server.

What if content information providers supported APML?

The Enterprise User could maintain and 'own' (yes i know that 'ownership' is a big issue in the Enterprise space!) their Attention profile- having it dynamically change as their attention needs change and quickly be applied to new information services their companies might subscribe to.

Marjolein Hoekstra over at the CleverClogs blog which often covers news alerts services has a good post on Attention Profiling for non-techies that describes some of the purposes and benefits of Attention Data and provides details of what an Attention profile can be based on such as :

• pages you bookmark and tags you assign
• your favorite videos, music and TV shows
• hyperlinks you follow and share with your friends
• things you write about and topics you keep track of
• items you click on in your feed reader
• things you buy from a web store
• places you visit and events you attend

As people are learning and participating in conversations about Attention Data and the capabilities around capturing and sharing one's Attention a lot of the conversations turn to target Advertising or even recommendation engines (see this post on Read/WriteWeb). Although those are certainly two important uses that i guarantee we will be seeing a lot of services popping up around, I also believe that Attention can be a great way to target News to users both within RSS feed readers and destination News sites.

In Marjolein's post she provides an example about how she sees the benefits of a News site that removes sports pages from the home page that she might land on because it is clear that she is not interested in soccer and baseball. News sites today typically offer personalization based on a user setting up a profile that requires registration and setup and it usually is not utilized (especially in the enterprise News portal space). Personalization based on the users 'real time' Attention Profile that they 'bring' to the site without the need for ongoing explicit action could be very powerful.

The post also takes you through the simple steps to create your personal Attention Profile using the Engagd service. My Attention profile is also publicly available and as i have written before i am a member of the APML Workgroup.

Bloglines was one of my first browser based RSS readers- one that treated me well until Google got in the game. If it is true that they are adopting APML then they might win my heart back from Google Reader (although rumors claim that Google is also looking to support APML as well) - which might turn my RSS reader choice into a battle of the bands or rather a battle for my attention! (i use many RSS aggregators )

I got my info on the Bloglines APML support first from the Particls folks and there have been a handful of other posts on the topic today as well.

APML stands for 'Attention Profile Markup Language' and you can learn more from these APML FAQs. i passionately believe that it is one of the solutions to the information overload we are dealing with- both in the consumer and in the enterprise space.

I am a member of the APML workgroup because from the minute i discussed the concept of Attention with one of the founding members Chris Saad, i knew that this was going to be essential in ensuring that information delivery in the enterprise continues to evolve. The consumer space is simpler (although scary advertising issues always come up) when we have discussions about Attention.

i also participate in the Attention Data Meetups in the Bay Area- we haven't gotten to really discussing enterprise use of Attention. There are many challenges to Attention gathering, ownership and distribution in the enterprise and i hope to explore this topic more over the next few posts.

Just today i had two conversations- one with a colleague and one with a client- where the topic of my 'attention' came up- there are a lot of people that constantly ask me how do i have time to keep up on everything- well i am special (read 'addicted') so i spend a lot of time tracking, tagging, consuming. My Attention Profile is public and as tools become available in the marketplace that help us share our Attention with others that have similar attention needs- i envision a "few in the enterprise being the eyes of many".

BTW- my wooing Bloglines- One big negative that Bloglines NEEDS to fix because the majority of the real world is just not ready for OpenID.....when i requested my password it sent the password in plain text back to me- NOOOOOOO good! I usually unsubscribe from any service that does that immediately since it is such bad practice... but because they are offering OpenID i won't - yet hoping they fix that.

Memorial Day here in the States is NOT one of those holiday's that Hallmark has manipulated into a card giving holiday, so that means no gifts either but today the good folks over at Particls have managed to go into public Beta giving you a special gift.

Click To Play

The New York Times today had an article titled 'Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game' that caught my eye. Just last week i was discussing with some colleagues the learning and collaboration benefits of 'games' but creating a 'brokering' game around attention and collaboration within e-mail conversations is a great idea and i am anxious to find out more about how enterprises may actually be able leverage this.

In this article two services are reviewed, one is a CRM solution Entellium that provides some 'gaming' like functionality and the other is a very interesting concept out of a Palo Alto company Seriosity. The idea is to create a virtual economic community within the Enterprise around corporate e-mail communications. From the Seriosity website "It tackles the problem of information overload in corporate email using psychological and economic principles from successful games". E-mail information overload is indeed a huge problem in the enterprise- things like Subject line 'rules' (e.g. Proposal Approval) and Outlook flags do attempt to provide some sort of priority but how powerful would attaching monetary value be?

The service includes an e-mail add-on called Attent and is described in the article as "Employees assign one another “Serios,” the currency in Attent, for ideas, completing tasks and so on, and use them to help distinguish their e-mail from normal corporate spam. Over time, Attent users can gain not only Serios but also badges of excellence for, say, linking engineering and marketing, much as public skills rankings are widely used in online multiplayer games. Others in the company can see the badges, and presumably tap those people for help when they need it."

I always try to maintain a high level of personal 'currency' within the corporate groups i work with- the question would be would i be savvy enough to use my Serios to my advantage?

Last week i was blablering to a whole bunch of people about APML, APML, attention, attention, attention~many probably thought the hot orlando sun and the poolside gin-n-tonics had something to do with it- but it isn't so and yesterday a whole group of new participants were announced as part of the APML group i am participating in adding some more industry leaders to the group that is tasked with converting the current specification into an agreed standard.

What does 'APML' stand for>
Attention Profiling Mark-up Language

Why will it be important>
On tuesday on the way to work i was listening to Travus T. Hipp on KPIG one of the best radio stations in the Bay area (online streaming available). Every chance i get to listen to Travus for his 8am rant i take it, and on tuesday the rant was on Too Much News and how no one has the capacity to take it all in and how it is becoming "damn near impossible to keep up on the number of stories I need to have some background knowledge to produce opinions of better than average prediction". I was in the car- saying it is all about attention Travus all about attention-and he is just talking about consuming 'news' media, print, online, radio, tv etc.

Although as a consumer and a self professed news junkie i am looking forward to investigating APML for my own personal use, my primary interest with leveraging attention is in the enterprise- for example a user's profile as a worker using specific company provided systems (portal,CRMs,subscription services etc.) and internet online 'free' resources (with the ability to turn off attention tracking easily of course on non-enterprise tools)- this however brings a whole bunch concerns by knowledge workers that i am sure you can imagine and i will touch upon on future posts.

What will APML do>
From the website:
APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.

The new participants announced this week include:
Sam Sethi (Vecosys)
Daniel Winterstein (ThinkTank Maths)
Steve Williams (Programmer, Digg)
David Cancel (Co-Founder, Compete.com)
Richard Giles/Graeme Sutherland (Co-Founders, Scouta.com)
Elias Bizannes (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

They join the existing group:
Chris Saad/Ashley Angell (Co-Founders, Faraday Media/Touchstone)
Paul Jones (Senior Architect, Faraday Media/Touchstone)
Mitch Ratcliffe (Co-Founder, Buzzlogic)
Chris Messina (Citizen Agency)
Phil Morle (VP Attention, Yoick)
Ben Metcalfe (Social Media Consultant)
and me.

The group has started its work with a revised spec. More information can be found on the APML website at http://www.apml.org/

And yes, we invite all the players in or around the Attention Economy to join us in refining, implementing and evangelizing APML. To join the Workgroup please contact us with your qualifications. Members of the general public are invited to join the mailing list (via the APML.org website) forums or blog to provide feedback.

Via the Touchstone Blog a good find on a Microsoft authored paper on feed reader behavior that attempts to define terminology for news aggregator applications. It looks like it was published for the upcoming Computer/Human Interaction 2007 Conference in San Jose, CA according to the small print on the front page.

The paper is written by four authors and is a short read that they hope will lead to further discussion on the topic of user interfaces for RSS news aggregators. i would label the aggregators that are being addressed- a self subscription RSS feed model (user find feeds and subscribes)- which is different from the traditional news aggregators that bring a universe of news content to the user that is already indexed and rich with metadata and then the user filters within that aggregator's content domain. The findings however are useful to both.

The majority of the paper addresses things that people in the information delivery business already know, but i think it is good to define a common vocabulary. Some interesting items from the paper:

• A vocabulary for the characteristics of the application's environment in which the software is executed, 'Desktop', 'Web-based', 'Widget' and 'Mobile' aggregators
• A vocabulary that describes the user interface of the aggregator, as well as the actions the interface affords
• Although a very small user behavior study (34 users interviews), several user patterns emerged around 'Folder/Feed Selection', External Navigation Techniques and 'Session Termination and unread items'

When doing user interface design work for tools that deliver content to enterprise users, it is always important to understand the user behavior within the content set that they have access to. I constantly think about my own RSS reading habits and talk to enterprise workers about their consumption habits and needs as well. After looking at the user patterns that emerged around which folder or feed to read first, i would put myself in the 'Routine' strategy- which is defined as having a specific routine that i always read, frequently in a specific order, depending on the place of mind i am in (work vs. home). That is find and dandy today but as my attention is further thinned out as feed content becomes a big part of my enterprise content consumption- this routine strategy will probably become inadequate, hence why i think that aggregators that will provide attention strategies will in the long run become the choice of enterprise users.

And here is an interesting aside, the word 'aggregator' is not recognized by my Blogger spell check. I remember that it used to be in my custom dictionary in Office suite (just checked and it is no longer so perhaps it was added by Microsoft recently?) and the Merriam webster dictionary doesn't have the word 'aggregator' listed as well although other online dictionaries that cover computing do.

Yesterday i walked another one of my co-workers through getting a RSS reader and subscribing to RSS feeds from blogs, wikis , web sites and some of the subscription services we have available to track our customers and industry. i recommended Google Reader- because it is easy to use for a first time user and its recent enhancements have impressed me enough to make it my primary RSS reading tool.

I use multiple tools to consume my RSS feeds (i have over 150 feeds i monitor regulary and i use OPML to move my subscriptions around different services) including:

-Google Reader - browser based - allows me to check my feeds from my multiple computers - since everything is stored at google i can see which feeds i have read, i can subscribe to feeds from multiple places etc. I typically 'know' which feeds i am going to look at- they are doing some neat things with usage trends and i can view my feed within the folders i have or all items.

-Bloglines- i have used this reader for a while and haven't dropped it completely with my use of Google Reader- it is also browser based and i still use the mobile version on my Blackberry

-Internet Explorer IE7 RSS reader- of course i couldn't resist when i upgraded to IE7 but it honestly has not kept my interest. (and i find it super annoying when i click on an RSS feed and IE automatically tried to subscribe to it in the IE7 reader)

-Attensa in Outlook (commercial version) (i have a customer who is in pilot phase (enterprise version) and i have been testing along although i recently uninstalled it as it was slowing down my outlook). Aside from being in outlook which is a natural place for the enterprise user they are also providing some valuable display options for feeds that you use most often.

-Touchtone - Attention Management desktop engine in Alpha- i have a few 'important' feeds and it has presented positive results in getting my attention. It will hopefully be great once the next version comes out because unlike the readers i mention above- i don't need to know what feed i should read- it will tell me what i should be looking at [if you are interested in testing this service let me know i have a couple alpha invites available]

-Sharepoint RSS WebParts - i maintain multiple team sites and have specific feeds into those sites that i share with co-workers.

Today in my Techsoup.org feed i saw this article by Robin Good from Master New Media, on "Why RSS Newsfeed Aggregation Can Save You Time and Money". In this piece he provides some simple tips including creating searches across multiple blog sites or using aggregation sites.
One of the questions he answers is:

Can you share your total time savings and earnings generated by having adopted RSS?
This is a difficult question to answer, as making reliable and publishable calculations is always a source of debate. But, since there is no gain or understanding unless we share a bit more of what we know, here are the numbers and unpretending calculations I gave Kathleen:

Time Savings: Two hours per day at $50 an hour for at least two consecutive years = 50 x 2 x 6 (workdays a week) = $600 x 52 (weeks in a year) = $ 31,200 x 2 (years) = $62,400, or 1,152 saved hours (144 days!) of my time.

Earnings: Since I only utilize RSS in a very limited way for direct revenue, it is much more difficult to calculate this one.

Yes- calculating how much revenue a employee can attribute to their use of blogs (both consuming and publishing) would be a very interesting thing to look at. I have posted before about my use of blogs in my sales cycles and can certainly attribute finding opportunities to reading specific blog posts.

I have been back for a couple of days and have to say that it is hard to get the brain going after forcefully disengaging myself from work-partially because i just have so much i want to do and can't figure out where to start.

But have no fear something ALWAYS gets my brain going just when i thought it was giving out on me- what is that something? spending time with clients and remembering that information delivery in the enterprise-even with all the nifty little web 2.0 tools out there still has a long way to go.

One of today's interesting conversations that got my attention was when RSS delivery was brought up as an option to deliver company and industry specific content (news, financial reports etc.) to teams that might be working on specific client engagements and using wikis as a collaboration point. The interesting thing is not that we were talking about RSS to do this but that fact that it seems that in a little less then two years, I have gone from having conversations about 'what is RSS' to 'wow, there just is too much of it, the tools to use it are cumbersome and we just can't deal with it'.

i have certainly seen the increased adoption of RSS as a delivery mechanism of content in the enterprise (especially news content)- but i still haven't seen an enterprise tool that is blowing every one's socks off. Many talk about the new Office platform and IE7 as a potential - but from what i have seen so far it might just be a stop-gap as it stands- a tool for new users of RSS that will quickly be outgrown because of the volume of content being produced and the need for the consumers of that content to be able to manage it efficiently.

So something that i know i will be talking about in 2007 is... Attention

And i won't be the only one paying attention to 'Attention'

i had already started this post on Attention and i remembered that in my inbox was a note from Greg Narian with the subject title 'Continuous Partial Postponement?' that i had seen coming in this morning but had not clicked through before i left for my appointments. It is an interesting look at two sides of the attention theme. The first one Continuous Partial Attention - constantly needing to be connected so we don't miss anything, the second is what we lose when as we constantly postpone one thing to get to the next. Kathy Sierra also has a good post on the problem of continuous partial attention from early December that links to multiple posts she has made about user behavior due to attention issues.

We are starting to see some of the main players in the RSS reader market address the need to manage a users 'attention'- the big news this week is Google Reader's trends which provides some reading trends for the user which is one step towards what their 'attention' is. Some have been talking about it for a while like the folks over at Touchstone who have an Attention Engine that i have been using (gem: found this good overview of their current Alpha here). and are taking the lead on APML (attention profiling mark-up language) which is an open standard for encapsulating a summary of a users interests based on their access across various tools, devices, tools etc. All things that i think are going to be needed in one way or another to help get the right information to enterprise users when they need it as well as assist in the knowledge sharing we are constantly looking for -so what is Joe the expert at XYZ paying attention to?

I got the news today about the Yahoo partnership with a consortium of seven newspaper chains, from the New York Times article via a Factiva Editor Choice Track Folder on 'Online/Intranet services'.

Maybe my experiences and work habits are from being a information junkie-because who really has the time to test out all the gadgets like me! But here is how it went:

I have this factiva news folder feeding into my RSS readers (currently Bloglines, Google Reader, and Attensa) (i am running some usability tests and i just updated them all with the same OMPL) as well as a new 'Attention Management Engine' called Touchstone that is 'almost Beta' that i have been testing out. (i came across Touchstone back in May, was invited to participate in the Alpha which sat in my inbox but after meeting Chris Saad this month at the Web2point2-un-conference and having a couple of conversations about what he is doing, i knew i had to give it a try).

I had a late start today because i am feeling a bit under the weather today. So when i mustered up the energy to start-up my computer i already had business to take care of in my inbox so no time to browse my news feeds.

So where did this article get my attention?

>>it first popped up in the ticker feature of Touchstone early in the morning (i didn't do a screen capture so this link is a standard view)
>>i clicked on the item to read the full text of the NYT article within factiva.com
>>i read the article and forwarded to a couple of folks- had an IM quick chat with one of them
>>Later on in the evening when i had some time i went to Techmeme to 'listen' in on the conversation around the topic. And what an interesting conversation it has been (expand the discussion function once you hit the page).

This is not the first time Yahoo! or Google has tried to become more of a player in the main stream media aggregation business and i am sure it won't be the last.

Working for a content aggregator in the media business should worry me- but it doesn't because as i talk to clients what they are trying to do is deal with the information overload that their employees are being bombarded with. They are not looking for more free content- but more relevant, timely content that is free of distractions and tools to faciliate the redistribution of that content in order to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Credibility in delivering information to enterprise workers is key (and mainstream media brings that credibilty hence why Yahoo! wants it) but consistent delivery tied to the employee's profile and what they are trying to do is just as important. While free search and news services are trying to acquire 'premium' content for consumers, we have been busy delivering enterprise solutions that meet very specific needs in the enterprise information delivery world- using years of experience in the space to deliver solutions that bring main stream media as well as new media sources like blogs to the user at the right time, in the right place with little effort by the end-user. Maybe they will eventually come into this space once they build out their content distribution model (i see Google specifically going into the enterprise space) but we seem to have a 25+yr lead on them at this point.

and a reminder if you new to reading my blog and haven't read the disclaimer above: The posts on this blog are provided ‘as is’ with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my past,future or present employer.

Back in March, i posted about a couple of things including TechCrunch a "weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new web 2.0 products and companies". On a daily basis Michael Arrington posts on various types of web 2.0 products. Thanks to TechCrunch, i have spent hours playing with Web based applications, have more usernames in various applications then i care to have and i am definitely on my Tech help desk hit list of people who download/use non-standard applications and browser tools . oh well...

If you are interested in Web 2.0 applications and how it will affect not only consumer interaction but also enterprise interaction with the web, you should definitely check them out once in a while- throw it in to your RSS reader.

Yesterday's post about Mytago was quite interesting because of the bridge between online and offline interaction. The concept is a user creates something that looks like a barcode and puts it on a poster or some other physical item, whoever sees the physical tag takes a snapshot with their mobile phone camera as a bookmark for the event. What comes next seems a little convoluted- but will definitely be streamlined with user input in the near future. Check out the 'who built Mytago' section on the help files- weekend tinkerings- lot's of that around here. This could potentially be a great way for vendors at conferences to interact with booth visitors-right?

An interesting application that i found through a comment on a different blog, by one of its creators is a "Attention management engine" called Touchstone. Back on the East coast i worked with a couple of clients that wanted functionality like desktop alerting of highly relevant news content. Client slide applications however tended to be a huge deterrent if we were looking at custom built applications. We even came out with a 'Factiva Alert' product that is no longer in the product line because it was client base and it didn't really fly with corporate IT support groups (and honestly the UI functionality was weak). Most alerting therefore is email or browser based. That was about 3 years ago, and i think that a convergence of the Web 2.0 functionality with client sided applications might be very interesting in today's enterprise world. I am going to keep an eye on this...perhaps even volunteer as an Alpha tester.