2005-09-06 #1

Katrina Attention Stream

Manuel Kiessling and I set up an experimental Attention Stream for Katrina over the weekend. The feed of tagged posts is being supplied by Technorati.

Hurricane Katrina is getting massive coverage from other sources and I haven't cleaned up the interface much. This makes hesitate to say, "Hey, an Attention Stream is up for Katrina." Only the history produced by the stream is viewable right now and I'm not really sure in this crisis if Manuel and mine's experiment adds anything unique to a situation where lives are being lost. Technorati, with their re-designed website, has a nice page for Katrina that automagically aggregates web coverage.

Still, Manuel took time from a family wedding and Jorge Barrios and Kevin Marks at Technorati gave some hours to get it going. I think the least I could do is blog that. Tom Munnecke deserves props for asking. It is good experiment to try. The Attention Stream differs mostly in it approach to presentation creating a historical record as items are posted. I think that chronological record is interesting, especially if you can watch in real-time. (Soon, soon...).

The Attention Stream was originally cooked up for Etech 2005 conference coverage. It's cool to see the meme spread (though sad it is often tragic experiences in which we think about and explore new solutions, but maybe that is what means to be human, to respond to tragedy).

I wrote an early post explaining the concept, which put simply is to automagically create a record of where people are directing their attention at events. The current incarnations gather chronologically what people are posting to their blogs, etc. A full development would also do revealing stats that revealed what was catching a group's interest and incorporate that into the stream. And example of an interesting statistic to capture would be a critical number of people all visiting a particular URL within a very short time span. That sudden rush of people to a particular URL is an event related to people's attention, not coverage.

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/katrina" rel="tag">katrina</a>