Lazyfeed's July 2009 debut was arguably one of the most interesting new services to hit the information consumption market in the last few years. Built upon the belief the people wanted to follow topics, rather than feeds, and get updates in real time, the product offers a unique, and lazy, way to see streams of info on topics you like flow into your field of view, while prompting you to find more related sources and topics. Today, after months of incubation, Lazyfeed launched a new interface that brings the product out of the world of solitary RSS feed reading, and into the world of social.

True to the product's origins, Lazyfeed still lets you discover new articles, in real time, based on keywords you select. But you can now group those keywords into something called a "Channel", and you can make those channel mixes public. Connect with other friends using the service, and now you have a community building around those terms which you follow - sharing you interests with other connections in your social graph.


For example, I created new channels on Google, Apple and techno music. In time, I could build out my Lazyfeed to include updates for traditional media, sports, blogging and social media, or practically any topic. If it gets blogged, Lazyfeed will find it.


With the added social elements of Lazyfeed, I can now see what topics my friends are following, and what specific posts have caught their eye - and now, every user has a public profile page. For example, mine is http://www.lazyfeed.com/user/louisgray. Is this yet another place to follow the same people? Maybe. But it's a new category of content sharing that hasn't been made possible before - with the possible exception of Google Reader sharing.


From within any Channel, I can now make new "posts" in response to articles that I have found particularly interesting. These posts, with my comments, will be shared with my new Lazyfeed network. This way, we can discuss topics we both find of note, and can make the once passive approach of real-time feed consumption one that you are now doing with your peers. Additionally, you can send these posts to Twitter or Facebook to alert others to your activity on Lazyfeed.

Lazyfeed has come a long way since its initial debut nearly a year ago. Now that you don't feel you're doing this in a solo environment, it's likely the community elements will spur major interaction and traffic. Find me here: http://www.lazyfeed.com/user/louisgray

Although it was almost a decade ago, the slow and painful migration from Apple's "Classic" Mac OS 9 to the sleeker Mac OS X sure feels more recent. To take the plunge and buy Mac OS X in its earliest days (and yes, I was running its Public Beta for $29) was to take a leap of faith - one embedded in promise more than immediate benefits. You couldn't play DVDs or Print in practically all cases. Most applications were missing - and to get to your old environment, you had to boot up your now antiquated desktop in emulation mode, or "Classic".

The feeling of running these old apps, and holdovers like PhotoShop and Quark Express, was gritty, slow, and subject to the occasional bomb error. Over time, one booted into Mac OS 9's Classic mode less and less and then one day, never again, as it faded to black. If you're an iPad user, and you've booted up some of your old iPhone apps that haven't been remastered for the larger screen and swifter graphics and processor, you're likely feeling some of the same emotions as we did a decade ago.

While the iPad's support of previously-compiled iPhone apps made amazing sense, to populate the device with hundreds of thousands of applications on day one of its launch, I am finding myself avoiding or deleting as many iPhone apps from the iPad as I can, if they are not necessary - and no, we ca't print on the iPad now any more than we could run DVD's in the first runs of Mac OS X. In comparison to applications built with the iPad in mind, the "supersized" iPhone apps, for the most part, suffer in look and feel and bring back that same understanding that emulation is never as good as the real thing.

It may seem ever more complicated as a developer to rebuild and rewrite code for the newest of Apple's devices, in addition to the myriad of alternatives, including Google's Android platform, the various flavors of Windows, and Mac OS X itself, but with a swelling population of iPad users who appear willing to pay standard to premium prices for dedicated applications, one can safely assume that if one developer doesn't meet customer's needs, they will seek out and install an alternative. And those who are slow to the iPad, resting on the laurels of their iPhone apps' prowess, will no doubt be the losers.

This isn't to say that all iPad-targeted applications are amazing. Some of the earliest are just repackaging of content from Web sites (see eTrade and ESPN), but the best (like MLB's At Bat application and Apple's iBooks) are comparable to full desktop environments and fit perfectly in the iPad's hardware frame. But that's no doubt because we are in the early days of iPad development. While some are saying you have to wait and see what the breakout application will be for this new platform, the opportunity awaits those who get the environment right.

In addition to deleting iPhone-optimized apps I probably wasn't using much anyway, I find myself cruising the Apple iTunes Store, waiting for amazing iPad Apps to debut which I can download in their place. For the most part, I'm not yet finding them. I've been amused by the Doodle Buddy application, which lets my kids finger paint on the device. I have enjoyed using the iPad as a racing car, and think Apple's native apps are pretty solid. But we are clearly in a transition time where the current offerings are light, as we wait for the library of apps for iPad to grow, and possibly, those that only are compiled for iPhone may decrease.

Given my array of choices in terms of how I can get my data and my apps, from the laptop to the iPad and the iPhone, I am not planning to suffer emulation and go-betweens and longer than I have to. In the same vein as Apple refusing ported Flash apps on their platform, I too want to enjoy applications designed for the device I am taking in, and not somebody's quick and dirty recompile. We went through the strain of Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and I hope Apple has proven themselves enough by this time that the call to arms for more native apps will occur much more quickly.

Rejoining the InfoSmack podcast on Friday after my January debut, I had the opportunity to talk about a serious issue that many independent bloggers are finding, as their content occasionally may run afoul of their corporate management. Alongside Greg Knieriemen of Chi Corporation, behind the popular StorageMonkeys blog, he and I spoke with Greg Ferro of Ethereal Mind and Stevie Chambers, a Cisco employee who had recently seen his blogging future threatened after one controversial post caught the eye of analyst firm Gartner.

The discussion, which is a lot better in terms of content than sound quality, reviewed whether disclaimers on a personal blog are enough to cover an employee's back in times of conflict, or whether they should assume they are always speaking on behalf of a company, even if they are not an approved spokesperson.

At the end of the podcast, Greg also challenges me in a new segment he called "10 Big Questions", where he asks, among other things, whether Apple will ever accept Flash, and to name something I don't like about Robert Scoble. You'll have to listen to the end to find out just what I said. The full content is below, and in its original form here: Infosmack Podcast Episode 50 - Cisco, Gartner and Bloggers.

The world of news personalization powered by RSS has been very interesting over the last year or so, with innovation coming from companies such as Lazyfeed, my6sense, Feedly and tweaks to Google Reader, including its "Magic" feature. One personalized aggregator, called Guzzle (which I first covered in July of 2009) has gotten less visibility, but the company is hoping to change that with two major updates - including the refresh of its news aggregator, and the introduction of an iPhone app - to let you get news on topics you have selected while on the go.


How you get news in today's world of streams varies by site. RSS readers primarily ask you to bring your own feeds. Social networks let you follow people. Some sites, like Regator, show you news from select sources by topic. Lazyfeed and Guzzle show you updates by topics you have picked, and the pages are regularly updated. But Lazyfeed doesn't yet have a mobile application, and Guzzle does. True to form, it quickly captured top stories on the topics I'm most interested in, and lets me view them one by one in the browser.

Guzzle's back-end has been completely rewritten from its 2009 launch, and is now powered by PubSubHubbub, thanks to support from Superfeedr. Every time a monitored feed publishes a new article, it is parsed by topic and assigned to the categories you may be viewing. This is similar to the work the late Socialmedian pioneered in 2008, but Guzzle has a portal-like interface to see the updates, reminiscent of My Alltop.


Guzzle's iPhone App Sorts By Topic
Interesting features of the new Guzzle? The product keeps track of every article published, and you can search its archives. You can also display news in an expanded mode, like Feedly, with large images (on the desktop version anyway).


Viewing Stories On Guzzle's iPhone App
While the desktop version of Guzzle is free, the iPhone application is $1.99. (get it here) If you don't mind parting with two bucks, Guzzle on the iPhone is a quick way to get caught up on the topics you're monitoring while mobile - and is an alternative to the personal prioritization of my6sense or the editorial sifting performed by Regator.

Guzzle also is transparent in terms of the sources that power its database. You can see them all here or can suggest new ones that haven't made the list.

Disclosure: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. My comments on the company's product are always independent, and do not pass their way in advance.