I have meant to post about AideRSS for months now, but I have been so busy at Suited Media gearing up for the launch of Pokerspace that I have completely disregarded this blog and its readers. Rest assured I will be able to put more time back to this blog in the coming months.

For those that are still listening, there is a something you should check out. Simply put, I am very impressed with some software, a web application, created by a small team of local professionals including a fellow UW graduate, Ilya Grigorik, the Chief Architect of AideRSS, Inc.

AideRSS may be the first tool I have found in a long while that has the potential to significantly improve on my Bloglines experiences. Bloglines has been my tool of choice for blog reading for years, but as past posts have detailed I have found some difficulties navigating and enveloping hundreds of feeds a day, many of which post a lot, some of which post rarely. I used to subscribe to almost 500 feeds, but I am now cut down to about 335.

After meeting Ilya I knew he was creating innovative and potentially important software. I met Ilya at my UW graduation ceremony a few months ago. We exchanged some of our experiences and entrepreneurial interests. Conversing with him before the ceremony confirmed my initial impressions that Ilya was a very interesting individual. We exchanged contacts and I actually added him to my LinkedIn, which is something I have never done with someone I have known for such a short time. Now, a quick glance at his LinkedIn profile shows he is linked to more than 100 very interesting people - I not surprised in the slightest.

I played with his site for a few hours one night after work and found it to be a very well designed web application. I explored the site throughly and found it be an exemplary example of modern web design. I imported my entire OPML feed of into the site and it performed flawlessly. The interface was clear and easy to follow. I especially liked the quality feedback it gives the user at the apprioriate times and places. Looking at the CSS confirmed my guess that it was a cleanly coded site. Without any hesitation I subscribed to the AideRSS blog.

I am also impressed with their technology, PostRank. In fact, I use a lot of the same ranking techniques myself and have
experience with most of the sites (Bloglines, del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.) that enable the AideRSS application. I still use a lot of these services to run what I call “tracking feeds” for myself, my company, and other key words I care about so that I can hear immediately whenever these terms are mentioned online. I used to love PubSub (if you remember of it… if not, research it). I wish it was still around. Wow, apparently it is coming back…

PubSub is undergoing redevelopment at the moment. We’ll be relaunching as PubSub 2.0 this winter with a host of exciting new features and services.

Anyways, I suggest you check out AideRSS.

I have been running Echo Generation since 2003. In that time I have made almost 500 posts on a wide variety of topics that I find interesting. So, which posts have been post popular? Since the inception of the site, the top 10 most highly accessed posts are:

1 - Making space on the wall for my University of Waterloo Honours degree, Bachelor of Computer Science w/ Business Option
2 - Finding the Blog Influentials
3 - MyDensity maps 2 degrees of the social network around any URL
4 - Acoustic analysis shows how temple transforms echoes into sounds of nature
5 - Ning, a free social application playground
6 - iUpload blog coverage
7 - Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, shares tips on startups
8 - Mitch did notice my MyDensity post
9 - Advances in invisibility / stealth technology
10 - Cool Mind Hacks stories

Although I have not made any posts in a while, I still continue to follow a large number of blogs. So, just how large you may ask?

It has been a long while since I posted to Echo Generation. Too long. But why? I was too busy with the previous school term, and than with holiday festivities. But now that I am back on campus and into school mode I have started to blog again as well. In the meantime, with only occasional blog reading taking place, I now have about 14000 unread posts in Bloglines! Time to do some more culling.

This term should be quite enjoyable. I am taking a number of interesting courses, including two 4th year CompSci courses. CS 480 - Information Systems Management is right up my alley, covering many of the topics under my personal research umbrella. CS 498 Image and Vision Computing seems even more cool. So much of what we have covered in the first few lectures is actually making sense to me primarily due to my experience with audio and synthesizers. Low-pass filters, sampling rates, Fourier transforms, and so on, are topics I already know about from on my on going quest to learn as much as I can about audio/sound/music.

I have been quietly building a lot of posts lately, gathering more information for each post before I make it. I figure that my previous posts show a lot about what I am interested in already. In future posts, I will try to add more value to the blogosphere by combining more sources, over more time, with more of my personal comments added. I would like to focus more on emerging synergies from different personal, academic, and business niches — with less posts about a single cool idea. More perspectives = better information.

Matt Galloway hits on many great ideas in his post about influential bloggers.

It is quite simple: (good) bloggers = Influentials

To stay ahead of the curve:

1. Find your blog influentials
2. Listen
3. Repeat step 2

Why I blog this? Now that we have this huge blogosphere to play in we need to start data mining the meta-data it generates. Information overload is my new problem - high quality information at that. I am reading over 500 feeds now. It is become overwhelming - too many blogs to remember/manage in my head. So, how exactly should I be identifying blog influentials? This I do not know. As far as I can tell, identifying blog influentials programmatically is an as-of-yet untapped area with growth potential.

How exactly do we identify blog influentials?

via The Basement, BusinessWeek, RatcliffeBlog

It is good to see that Mitch is still keeping busy playing with interesting ideas. I posted about Mitch’s RatcliffeBlog and MyDensity a couple of times (1, 2) back in March.

I am subscribed to a PubSub feed (that I created) to let me know when anyone in the blogosphere references iUpload. Today I noticed some new incoming links related to a recent interview that our CEO (Robin Hopper) had with Infoworld.

Thanks PubSub, for letting me find the following blogs:

• Ray Schroeder @ Techno-News Blog
• Andy Lark’s Blog
• Jeremy Wright’s Ensight
• Tom Raftery’s I.T. views
• Directions Magazine

Why I blog this? Because it is an excellent example of the power of the blogosphere. It did not take me any extra effort to see what people were saying about us. All of the extra meta-data that blogs generate is so incredibly valuable!

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Technorati Tags: iUpload

I highly recommend playing around with del.icio.us direc.tor: A High-Performance AJAX Web Service Broker.

Johnvey Hwang has created a really cool AJAX web application which builds off of del.icio.us. Essentially, it is a completely new GUI for del.icio.us written by somebody outside of del.icio.us. This is the power of web services in action. Johnvey even explains how he built this cool web application. And he has released everything using GPL and CC licenses.

Why I blog this? Needless to say, I was impressed. The web is finally moving in the right direction. Get ready for much richer web interfaces than we are used to. The del.icio.us direc.tor gets a spot on my bookmarks toolbar.

via Ajaxian.com

My previous post was written the typical way, using the WordPress interface.

For this post, I have bypassed the WordPress interface completely. It only took me a few seconds to write up this post using our new Perspectives QuickPost tool. I had to find a copy of xmlrpc.php for old (1.2) WordPress install, but that proved quite easy.

I have also added a Technorati Perspective with a couple of relevant tags to this post. Cool.

Anyone can use this tool now, for free. Click here to sign up for Perspectives.

Why I blog this? This is a first for me - a blog posting on my own blog using a blog tool that I helped create. I am sure you can understand why there is a smile on my face today.

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Technorati Tags: iUpload, Perspectives

Only months ago, iUpload made a with a big splash at the annual DEMO conference - a leading industry conference for launching innovative technology products. At DEMO, the world was introduced to iUpload Perspectives. So, what is Perspectives and what does it have to do with blogging?

iUpload Perspectives lets you live in and communicate from one blog rather than wasting time going to different communities to submit content. You probably read your content in a single application - why not write it in single application as well.

Using iUpload Perspectives you can publish content to multiple different communities (such as Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Yahoo Groups, or even your own MovableType or Wordpress blogs) with ease. Or, you can choose to limit who can view your content by applying Perspectives such as the Salesforce or Plaxo Perspectives. In addition, you can add valuable, content specific Perspectives, such as a Technorati tag or the office favorite, the Google Maps Perspective. Included below is an example of the Google Map Perspective, in this case showing the location of the iUpload corporate office.

Perspectives has been included in iUpload’s corporate blogging suite for the past few months. But now, Perspectives are available for everyone to use.

To start using iUpload Perspectives today, you have two options:

• If you do not have a blog at all, you can sign up for a free Personal Publisher account here.
• If you already have one of more blogs or communities that you would like to use with Perspectives, you do not need to use an iUpload Personal Publisher blog. You can simply use our new QuickPost tool with your existing blogs!

When you sign up for iUpload Perspectives, a link will be generated allowing you to use our new QuickPost tool as a toolbar button. The QuickPost tool allows you easy access to many of the features in Perspectives, without any hassle.

Why I blog this? I have been working at iUpload for about a month and a half now, and much of that time has been spent working on Perspectives. It feels great to be working on the cutting edge of blog software, especially since I get to work with such a solid team of people. Expect even more innovation from iUpload in the coming weeks and months.

And, I look forward to hearing any comments, suggestions, criticisms, enhancement ideas, possible Perspectives, and so on, from my wonderful readers.

The boys (and girl) at iUpload are up to something…

As you may or may not have noticed, I have not made many posts lately. But, there is a reason for the lack of content - and a damn good one at that.

I have been working on a world-class blogging application with the amazing team of entrepreneurial software developers at iUpload.

Please buckle your seat belt and remain in a seated position, while I write up some of the juicy details.

In the meantime, take a look at where my mind has been in the last little while. I just happened to have started a del.icio.us account a few weeks ago, so the links it contains are a pretty good idea what I have been up to. Or, to put it visually, here is my extisp.icio.us over the last few weeks.

Seth Godin is worried about a different digital divide that has opened up, one that is based far more on choice than on circumstance. Several million people (and the number is growing, daily) have chosen to become the haves of the Internet, and at the same time that their number is growing, so are their skills. He calls the group that is choosing to participate the ‘Digerati’.

A few years ago, pundits were quite worried about the Digital divide.The short definition is that the haves would have reliable, fast access to the Net, which would give them employment and learning opportunities that others wouldn’t be able to get. This would further divide those with a head start from everyone else.

…

Five years ago, geeks pretty much kept to themselves. They’d be sitting in IRC chat, or arguing about Unix vs. Linux, but it didn’t spread very fast and it didn’t influence the rest of the world outside the tech community.

Today, though, the Net is far more robust and far more ubiquitous than it used to be. And it’s bloggers who are setting the agenda on everything from politics to culture. It’s bloggers that journalists and politicians look to as the first and the loudest.

As a result, your most-connected, most influential customers are part of the digerati. They can make or break your product, your service or even your religion’s new policies. Because the Net is now a broadcast (and a narrowcast) medium, the digerati can spread ideas.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the digerati are using the learning tools built into the Net to get smarter, faster. A new Net tool can propagate to millions in just a week or two. Unlike the old digital divide, this means that the divide between the digerati and the rest of the world is accelerating.

Why I blog this? Because for those of us like myself who are in the digerati, we already know this is happening. I have access to more information than ever before. It is not just piles of information - it is valuable, directed content that I choose to learn about, based on my interests, not the interests of others. I am learning faster than I ever have before, and learning how to learn even faster every day.

I am more informed about almost every topic than I was before blogging. I am currently subscribed to over 335 feeds and that number increases daily. Old media is dead. TV, newspapers, and magazines are all obsolete. Every individual is a printing press. Everyone can choose to be a voice.

My thanks go out to Seth for saying what all us of in the digerati have been thinking and living. Choice is the fundamental difference. Choosing to ignore rather than choosing to participate is the new digital divide.

As many of my readers may know, I am a 4th year computer science student at the University of Waterloo. My sixth co-op work term began on Monday. I am filling a software development role with corporate blogging software leaders, iUpload.

It feels great to be working with a team of dedicated, knowledgeable and entrepreneurial peers who each understand the true value of blogs. The CEO blogs, as does the company. And, all of the team m e m b e r s blog.

My bias towards iUpload in future posts should be pretty obvious.

Echo Generation will continue to grow and evolve, but I have also launched a second blog using iUpload’s Personal Publisher software. The new blog will primarily cover blogging topics.

Stay tuned :)