So what does that actually mean? The site presents a montage of images, video, animations and other visual resources culled from search results, and overlays it with real-time narration, using text-to-speech technology. The result is information as a watchable experience.

For me, the actual experience of watching the content is eerie and unsettling. I’ve never liked the way text-to-speech technology sounds; it’s strange and unnerving to my ears and brain, sounding almost, but not quite, human in a way that could mean trouble, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

My first search was for “Tok,” the rural Alaskan community where I live and work. The text-to-speech voice sounded nearly human, but with mispronunciations and odd inflections that are inherent in the technology. Qwiki pronounced my community as “Tawk” rather than the correct pronunciation, “Toke.” Right away, this interfered with my ability to appreciate the visual montage.

The audio was accompanied by a flowing stream of imagery that seemed at first to correspond with the narration. But on closer examination, many images had nothing to do with what was being said, other than being from Tok. For example, when the narration mentioned Tok School, the images that appeared were of a gift shop and an RV park. Another image of a burned-out old gas station showed up, and I immediately wondered how I could remove such a photo, and replace it with something more representative of the community. Ditto for an image of a coffee shack that isn’t even in Tok, but is over 200 miles away, near the community of Glennallen.

My second search was for “karaoke.” I found the experience of this information less off-putting. However, the images in the presentation, while colorful and interesting, seemed less familiar. Many turned out to be of displays and equipment common in Japan.

My third search was for “social media.” The narration was a bit convoluted and the visual presentation consisted of a single static screenshot of Flickr.

My final test search was for…me. Here’s what I found (login required). And here’s what it looked like–apparently I have one of the dirtiest minds in business–or at least that’s what was displayed during the entire presentation!

Qwiki may give us a new phrase to replace “Googling ourselves.” We can now “get a Qwiki” and “give a Qwiki.”

Currently, Qwiki covers over two million reference terms, which feels sufficient for pretty good results when searching for a not-too-uncommon term. You can also search for people and places.

For me, the visual and audio dissonance of Qwiki was initially disturbing, but I tried to look past that and appreciate that I was “experiencing information.” Presentations are short–about 30 seconds–which is just enough time for narrative content from a paragraph or two from a Wikipedia entry.

Conceptually, Qwiki is a fascinating step forward in the presentation and consumption of search results. Since the site is in its alpha phase, it’s available only by invitation, although you can request one at Qwiki’s website. You’ll probably start itching to fix what isn’t working, but Qwiki doesn’t yet have a Wikipedia-like system for collaborating on editing information. However, the company is very open to input on ways to improve the experience.

Give Qwiki a try, and let me know what you think of it. What implications do you think it will have for the future of search?

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No matter what you do, there are probably a certain number of sources that you follow on a regular basis, and managing that information as seamlessly as possible is very important for your productivity, and to hold onto your sanity and not feel overwhelmed.

For me, the easiest way to streamline my information processing is to organize it by context so that I know immediately how to treat the information and, more importantly, how to act on it.

I currently have five tags (or folders) for separating my subscriptions. They are:

• Alerts
• News
• Scan
• Twitter Folks
• Twitter Replies

My “Alerts” folder contains all my Google Alert subscriptions. I’m notified anytime my name, company or web sites are mentioned anywhere online. I used to subscribe to these notifications through a daily email, but eventually figured out that it was easier for me to subscribe in my feed reader so that I could tackle the information at set times, rather than when it became available.

My “News” folder obviously contains all my news feeds. By keeping these subscriptions in their own folder, I can quickly “mark all as read” anytime I get behind or feel information overload setting in, because in reality, if it’s really all that important, it will continue to be reported on in the coming days, or I’ll hear about it through another source, like family and friends or when I watch the morning news (yes, I still do that).

My “Scan” folder contains all of my blog subscriptions. There are probably about 50 blogs in there, but by keeping them separate from my news feeds, it’s much more manageable. Usually, at any given point, there are no more than 20 or so new posts in this folder (since I check my feeds at least once per day, except on the weekends), so it’s pretty easy to scan them for interesting topics. Another advantage of keeping them separate from my news feeds is that I immediately switch gears when I hit this folder. I know that the folder contains potential blog fodder, as well as highlights of what’s going on around the web, so I start paying better attention.

“Twitter Folks” contains the feeds of my few favorite Twitter folks. I still haven’t wrapped my mind around Twitter completely, so this is a way for me to dabble in it without feeling overwhelmed or confused by it. I subscribe to a small group of people (in my Google Reader, at least) and follow their updates, just as I do my regular feeds. Up to now, I haven’t been compelled to reply to anything I’ve read in this folder, but sometimes I do get a good laugh.

“Twitter Replies” contains any replies to me on Twitter. Since I don’t really go over to Twitter that often, I was having trouble keeping up with replies to me, so I fixed this by searching Twitter for @AmberSR (my handle) and then subscribing to the search query by RSS. Now, when anyone retweets something I’ve posted, I can thank them right away (rather than finding out about it well after the fact).

I’m a minimalist at heart. Five folders are all I need to keep my information in order and relevant to me. I can go through my feeds quickly, and I know exactly how to act on something, making the whole process enjoyable rather than overwhelming.

How do you organize your information so that you make the most of it and so that you stay productive and efficient?

Image from Wordle

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I don’t read every post or update on all of my social web sites. The secret to participating without losing your sanity is that you don’t need to read everything. Think about it like a river of information. When you have a few minutes, you can dip your toes into the water for a little break, but you don’t need to spend the entire day swimming in it. Participating in social web sites is like a huge chat room. You participate when you can, but you don’t need to catch up on the conversations that you missed during the times when you weren’t in the chat.

Each of us have slightly different ways to keep up with social web sites. For the rest of this post, I’ll focus on Twitter, since it seems to be one that can be the most difficult to keep up with for many people.

My strategy for improving Twitter efficiency has three components: smarter use of applications, ignoring Twitter and following fewer people. I use TweetDeck to manage the flow of information by filtering my stream to focus on the updates that I care about the most, and I ignore a lot of what happens on Twitter. I keep up with what I can while letting the rest stream past me.

Chris Brogan talks about how to use Twitter at high volume (he follows almost 90,000 people). He also thinks of it like a river of information. Chris uses applications to pick out what he can and lets the rest stream past. He also uses search extensively, and considers it to be the most important part of the Twitter experience.

Augie Ray has a twenty minutes per day strategy for managing Twitter. The idea is that you dip into Twitter five times per day, spending three minutes each time to read a few posts, check @replies and direct messages, and post your update or respond to someone else. This leaves you with five minutes per day to search for interesting information and find other people that you might want to follow.

How do you manage your flow of information on social websites?

Photo by Flickr user keepitsurreal, used under Creative Commons licencse.

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Twitter Search

Twitter’s built-in search engine is probably my favorite way to find information in Twitter. It is great for quick searches to find specific pieces of information, watching trending topics, and persistent vanity searches for your name or company. While I do use the search engine to type in queries, the real power is in using RSS feeds for searches and running them through Yahoo Pipes for additional filtering. In many cases, I use Yahoo Pipes to loop through a series of keywords from a CSV file to search Twitter for each of those keywords and monitor the results as an RSS feed in my reader. I recently did a 2 minute video explaining exactly how to search twitter using Yahoo Pipes and a CSV file of keywords, so I won’t cover it in any more detail here.

Twitter Stream Graphs

I’m a big fan of getting data via RSS, but sometimes you just need a picture. Twitter Stream Graphs are a great way to show your boss how much buzz you generated on Twitter with a particular tweet or a keyword. In this example, I searched for legionoftech, an organization here in Portland than organizes our local BarCampPortland event, and you can see that we did a call for volunteers over Twitter on April 21 and had some conversation leading up to the event on May 1 and 2.

TweetVolume

TweetVolume is a great tool for comparing the number of mentions across several keywords. With the recent Mother’s Day holiday, I’m happy to report that mothers are more important than vacations, the beach and Star Trek. However, sadly, bacon seems to be a more popular topic on Twitter than mothers (shame on you!)

What are your favorite tools for mining Twitter for information?

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I love learning new things and sharing them with others, and you can see this trend by looking back across my posts here on WebWorkerDaily and elsewhere. You’ll see many posts focused on finding and consuming information. As I write this blog post, I’m sitting in a coffee shop getting ready for a meeting with someone who has agreed to spend some time demoing Yahoo Query Language (YQL) to help me learn even more techniques to feed my information habit.

I’m also an avid Twitter user, primarily because it is a quick way to consume a variety of information, from keeping up with personal friends to discovering new tools to little nuggets of useful information.

It seems that I am not alone in using Twitter primarily to consume information. A recent acticle on Media Post noted:

Rather than ego fulfillment or networking, what appears to truly motivate Twitter users is learning new things and getting information in a timely manner, according to new data from research firm MarketingProfs.

The study of some 425 Twitter users, conducted in early and mid-April, found that nearly 100 percent respondents agreed with the statements “I value getting information in a timely manner,” and “I find it exciting to learn new things from people,” while about 80 percent “like to be connected to lots of people.”

This is certainly true in my case. As I’m writing this post at 8:30 a.m., Twitter has helped me discover an article about social media statistics, which is where I found the above article and came up with the idea for this blog post; find an embarrassing picture of me from last weekend’s BarCampPortland that I helped to organize; and learn about Google’s standalone contact manager. Not bad for a few hours of posts consumed in just a few minutes.

Are you an information junkie? How do you feed your information habit?

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