Automated Tech News Site Goes Live

A nifty new web service went live tonight -- Gabe Rivera's tech.memeorandum.com. I've been testing Gabe's handiwork since late June when he sent me a note suggesting "you might be interested in monitoring my still-in-development Tech news site.  By "interested", I mean it actually might assist you in your work!"

He was right. I quickly became addicted to checking the site, often multiple times a day, to see what kind of buzz it was picking up in the tech world. The pages are built automatically, pulling from mentions across the tech blogosphere and news universe. Just posting may not be enough to make the page, as I quickly found out, but posts bubble up as links multiply. One link from a site weighted heavily in Gabe's equation can push a post into view.

Gabe explains his goals here so I won't go into detail. The highlights: Recognize the web as an editor;  rapidly uncover new sources; relate the conversation. I like watching the conversation evolve as a story moves around the web, often in ways I would not have imagined.

He started the process with a politics/current events page that crosses political boundaries and cuts through some of the partisan kludge. I've given him a couple of ideas for future memeorandums -- personally, I'd like one on journalism ethics -- but these aren't easy to build. I'm looking forward to whatever he puts his energy to next. Thanks for the head start on this one, Gabe.

Update: Just saw Robert Scoble's rave review. He goes into enough detail for both of us.

Coda: That's Gabe on the left -- a picture he thought he wound up in by accident but I took very deliberately at the end of BlogNashville.

Comments

[Gabe]

Hi Staci,

Well, Robert didn't mention that YOU found it interesting and addictive, so I was pleased to read that here. Thanks for the recommendation and I hope it continues to offer something for people as plugged in and busy as yourself...

[Staci K.]

Thanks, Gabe. That's my primary concern about the site -- not that this post didn't make it -- but that if the system requires certain-level links to be included I'm not sure it can meet your goal of rapidly uncovering new sources. I wonder if there's a way to bring realy new sources into play.

[Gabe]

Can bring in new sources: I confidently feel the short answer is yes. It does and I've seen it. But we've both also seen what can happen at the margins, whether good stuff doesn't quite make the cut.

What I've built in some ways resembles a super-blogger who can scan thousands of posts of information an hour to find patterns (albeit superficial patterns) that signal important news. Now scanning thousands of posts is still only maybe 10-20x the capabilities of a human, which still falls a bit short of what I feel is ideal for surfacing the best stuff. But there's room for improvement, and I expect things to improve somewhat.