Inspired by Alltop

I've just taken a look at Guy Kawasaki's new project, called Alltop, which is an elegantly designed pre-formatted RSS Reader.

While anyone can accomplish the same for themselves with any free RSS Reader, the fact is that many people either don't have the time or the inclination to do it for themselves.

The benefit to the blogs that he's selected for inclusion in the Alltop framework is simple - more eyeballs. By aggregating the best blogs around selected topics, each will benefit from proximity to excellence within it's category.

The idea was inspired by PopURLs, and it's very clean design was executed by Electric Pulp.

I expect that this site, like Guy's previous project Trumors, will be a success. He's removing the barriers to readership, by building the reading lists for the readers. You don't need to understand RSS or how to use a Reader. No need to organize blogs within topic. No need to spend the time to discover the most popular blogs. Users just need to know how to click on an article.

Chances are, as people discover Alltop, they'll become addicted to the various blogs featured within.

This is an idea worth adapting for Corporate use.

In my experience, the value of RSS is not being leveraged effectively within most businesses. We still rely on printed reports, or emailed presentations and time consuming update/status meetings and conference calls. Getting information is still a challenge, requiring time and effort.

Imagine a world where your company intranet was a simple interface like Alltop. Imagine headings like;

Strategy - featuring internal blog feeds on market development, sales and marketing efforts, geographic expansion or acquisitions

Talent - fed by Job opening blog (or application) and your Corporate YouTube training channel

Execution - fed by your Lean Processes Blog, 5S efforts, Process Improvement project blogs or RSS capable Project Management applications etc

Ideas & Innovation - an assembly of thought leaders blogs (hint: check out Alltop's EGOs section).

Competition - fed by pre-defined Google Alerts for your industry and direct competition as well as RSS feeds from industry related publications.

Our Priorities - internal blogs which detail progress on the most important tasks your company is undertaking.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Create several blogs within your organization's network. Find a couple of early adopters. Get them started publishing and show them how their efforts are seamlessly published to the company via your new Alltop style intranet.

Guy - if you could donate an open source version of Alltop for internal Corporate use, you'd likely make America a far more efficient place to work. Until that happens, I.T. people, get started on your own version!

Attensa to the Rescue?

Thanks to my friend Dave, who alerted me to Attensa. This small technology company may be onto something. Attensa was recently featured in a PC World story. They have developed a "behind the firewall" RSS feed server that aims to solve some of the problems we all have with email.

Basically, their server can be setup so that groups of people, project teams, departments or whatever, can subscribe to wikis, blogs, etc and be provided with just in time information as it's published. The feeds integrate to Outlook and mobile devices, so whether your team is local or is comprised of road warriors, everyone has access to the feeds as they happen.

The huge advantage of course, is that the audience who wants to hear the information, subscribes to it - rather than the highly inefficient process currently used by emailers, who "guess" who needs to see the information. If they're wrong (and we usually are), each of our inboxes fill up with loads of unprioritized information, mixed in with the critical communications we really need to do our jobs.

This RSS feed technology has two advantages from my perspective. First, it has the potential of "clearing the email channel" of the "noise" of project updates, news etc that may be important to some, but not relevant to you. That leaves your email box relatively free for the communications that really matter - customer requests, critical internal communications etc.

Secondly, the news flows to you. While I'm a huge fan of Corporate intranets, posting the information in one spot and expecting everyone to go there on a frequent basis has always been a challenge. With RSS feeds, you can not only publish directly to interested groups of people, but you also have the opportunity of posting to your intranet as well. It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.

If I were running a big company, this is a product that I'd definitely look into.

RSS Explained

I just saw a very unique video from Common Craft which explains RSS Feeds in a non-technical way. How great would it be if your I.T. department explained new technology this effectively?

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Show this to some of the managers at your workplace and let me know their reaction.