How often do you get the phrase, "Did you hear about.....?" I'll admit that I haven't kept an official count, but I'm willing to wager that it is quite a bit. Between reading articles and reports, talking to people in conversation, watching television, listening to the radio, podcasts, YouTube, RSS feeds, reading emails, sending emails, (stop for breath) updating Facebook, Twittering, instant messaging, texting, video conferencing (must...stop...going...to...pass...out...) - there's a ton of stuff to hear about. Thankfully, our brains were designed to help us filter out a lot of the extraneous garbage coming in and help us focus on what's important, but even the things that get tossed by the wayside consume a little bit of our processing power.
Google just announced that it has indexed 1 trillion unique web pages. That's about 153 web pages for every person on the planet. Granted the math on calculating that 1 trillion number is a bit iffy, but still, that's a lot of information. In addition, a company called Verve Wireless is working to make sure that even your local newspaper is available to your mobile phone. Now even your hometown is mobile.
So how can we keep from getting overwhelmed and how do we sort through the junk and get at the information we actually need? In our June newsletter I talked about how to use RSS feeds to keep up-to-date on important information (you can download that issue here). If you get a large volume of emails, set up filters in your email client to unclutter your inbox and help you organize your information. As you surf the Internet, there are probably web pages that you would like to save for reference. Firefox has an extension called Scrapbook that lets you save web pages. In Internet Explorer, you add a page to your Favorites and check the box that says "Make available for offline viewing." On Mac OS X, a program called Deep Vacuum lets you save single pages or whole websites. The program HTTrack lets you save individual pages or whole sites for users of Windows and Linux.
Google just announced that it has indexed 1 trillion unique web pages. That's about 153 web pages for every person on the planet. Granted the math on calculating that 1 trillion number is a bit iffy, but still, that's a lot of information. In addition, a company called Verve Wireless is working to make sure that even your local newspaper is available to your mobile phone. Now even your hometown is mobile.
So how can we keep from getting overwhelmed and how do we sort through the junk and get at the information we actually need? In our June newsletter I talked about how to use RSS feeds to keep up-to-date on important information (you can download that issue here). If you get a large volume of emails, set up filters in your email client to unclutter your inbox and help you organize your information. As you surf the Internet, there are probably web pages that you would like to save for reference. Firefox has an extension called Scrapbook that lets you save web pages. In Internet Explorer, you add a page to your Favorites and check the box that says "Make available for offline viewing." On Mac OS X, a program called Deep Vacuum lets you save single pages or whole websites. The program HTTrack lets you save individual pages or whole sites for users of Windows and Linux.
- information overload
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