Thing 4 Keeping Up

Zite: This reminds me of the RSS feeds that we explored for 23 Things on a Stick, only that it's a kind of flexible graphic aggregator that is far more visually appealing and intuitively easy to use compared to the old versions that were slightly clunky in nature. I also liked the Quicklist, which focuses in on a person's particular interests on a whim.

Note: There is a similar app called Side by Side that aggregates information sources and allows the user to self-select content as well. On the whole, however, Zite is a slightly more appealing app, but Side by Side may be more efficient for the serious searcher of related news and information from a variety of sources.

What I'm not so sure about is whether there's any value added by this app. By that I mean lots of homepages allow viewers to customize them in such a way that the homepages will cater to their interests in a way that allows a broader visual sweep of information. So would I take the trouble to create yet another source for finding information that appeals to my interests and then visit it in addition to or to the exclusion of other sources, such as Yahoo or Google? Probably not. It's nice, but not unique. And that leads me to another issue I've been thinking about concerning online resources: There's increasing competition and overlap among online tools (apps), so much so that one motivation for using one app over another is simply because it is newer or more novel. That to me may lead to a lot of technology churning--learning and relearning for the sake of the next new device when a critical attitude may need to be applied instead: Is the new tool better than an older tool? What are the unintended consequences? These questions really become relevant when sharing and online collaboration are involved.