There are two things I do first thing in the morning: I check my GTD agenda to get my bearings — and I check icurrent to read the news I’m interested in. News aggregators are not new, of course. I’ve tried a number of them. But nothing matches the new service for breaking information most of interest to me — take a look at icurrent .
Why do I like it so much? Most important is the ease of identifying topics to follow. Just type in your topic in a box at the top left, and click ADD. Your topic can be enriched by adding subtopics. For example, I follow SOCIAL MEDIA, with subtopics Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Nearly as important is the news display: attractive and easy to read. The Front Page picks out several lead stories. But if I really want to drill down into a topic, I just click the topic name in the left sidebar, and I’ll see a bunch of articles gathered over the previous three days.
I’m amazed at the breadth of online publications and blogs icurrent covers. For example, yesterday I was presented an article from the Harvard Business Review about best social media practices for small business.
This morning I awoke to yet another nice discovery: under my topic BECOMING A WRITER was yesterday’s post to my blog. Also there was a post about the recent writers conference in India.
Just yesterday, icurrent opened up its beta version to the general public. I think that means that you can just sign up for the service without having to request an invitation. If an invitation is required, just request one.
This service is a great tool for writers who are gathering research about current topics. As you might guess, I’m also following E-BOOKS — and I’ve learned so much more than I been able to gather via other means. There are, for example, some forth-coming e-book readers in the pipeline that I’ve never read about anywhere else, but which icurrent uncovered in some obscure online publication.
Check out icurrent. It’s free, at least for now — I’ve been unable to uncover information about its long-term business model, but I’m guessing that it may remain free. And when you’re setting up your topics of interest, be sure to include “Becoming A Writer.” That topic probably won’t catch all of my blog posts — unless you click on the “Interested” pop-up button and indicate your interest in following the blog more closely.
A NOTE OF THANKS TO READERS: Frankly,I was surprised to see icurrent pick up a post from my blog. But then, I know that my 3-year-old blog has risen toward the top of Google’s rankings, as I currently get over 3,500 unique visitors a month who come in via Google searches. I owe that ranking to you readers, who not only visit but who usually browse around the site for awhile, giving the blog a very favorable “bounce rate.” And especially I want to thank those of you who mention my writer’s blog on your own sites and who tweet about specific articles I post. Thanks to all of you.
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Comment by
CharlotteRainsDixon
28 Jan 2010
I have tons of blogs and sites aggregated on my yahoo reader, and organized into various pages. However, I'm going to have to check out icurrent, as it sounds like a good way to get introduced to more sites. Sigh. Just what I need.
Comment by
tomcolvin
29 Jan 2010
Charlotte, I also use Google Reader, where I "follow" over 150 blogs. Of course, with that many, I don't follow them that closely — and I get every post within each blog. icurrent delivers only the topics I'm interested in — it's much more efficient for me.
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