I've written about this issue before...but the problem (aka opportunity) still exists.

One of the consequences of technology becoming cheaper, easier to use and more widely adopted is information overload. Trying to keep up with my RSS reader, Facebook newsfeed, twitter stream and email inbox is overwhelming and painful. Add in eating three meals a day, working out, holding a day job, spending time with family and watching Charlie Rose...there are not enough hours in the day.

The New York Times recently wrote a piece titled: Serendipity, Lost in the Digital Deluge which discusses Facebook and twitter "spewing a stream of suggestions about what to read, hear, see and do."

The good news, it looks like engineers are starting to attack this problem.
Recently, Hilary Mason (led scientist at Bitly) built her own application called Email Classifier- that creates a layer on top of her Gmail that sorts by importance. And Gmail just released a similar feature called "Priority Inbox" that uses machine-learing  technologies to surface your most important messages at the top of your inbox.

But I think we have a long way to go. Email is just the first "stream" to fix.
My hunch is the people who figure out ways to reduce noise and effectively sort data will win big.

Could this be the year where Interactive Television takes off? Its only a matter of time until our current cable system is obsolete. Using a "clicker" to page up & down 400 channels is terrible... With search, time-shifting, streaming and other mainstream technologies the current experience is way behind the curve. But you have massive companies profiting from the current scenario and stifling innovation.

Kevin Rose recently blogged about his support for Apple to break the mold.

Google also recently demo'ed their system.

Be it one of these two companies or some upstart like Boxee, I am excited to see whats around the corner.

You must have flash to see this embedded document.

First email ever sent = 1971
First phone-to-phone SMS = 1993

URL: http://bit.ly/cgxXWg

In its detailed report, comScore also revealed both interesting and promising insight into the social consumer and their spending habits. We are officially entering an era of social shopping, where individuals influence and are influenced by their peers within traditional social networks and a new genre of group buying or social commerce networks. Services such as Groupon, This Next, LivingSocial, ViewPoints and Milo represent what comScore dubs as Social Retail 2.0. At the very least, these networks, in addition to social powerhouses Twitter and Facebook as well as location-based content and connectivity networks such as Yelp and FourSquare represent the need for brands to think beyond their domains in order to connect their products and services to consumers where their attention and interest is focused.

URL: http://bit.ly/93NMfs