Top Bloggers Essential Research Tools - Mack Collier on How to Keep Ahead of the Information Tsunami

Two years ago, I ran a series of posts about Top Bloggers' Share Their Essential Research Tools. Since then, information overload has become information tsunami and multi-tasking 24/7 had become as natural as breathing for a lot of knowledge junkies like me and my Twitter community. (Follow me at twitter.com/whatsnext )

Yet some top bloggers find ways not only to keep up, but to keep on top of information, trends, sources, and news. I thought it was time to revisit the question, with some of the bloggers who answered previously, and some who've since become prominent on my radar.

Mack Collier, publisher of The Viral Garden, is a social media consultant, and creator of the weekly Top 25 Marketing Blogs List.

Here are Collier's essential research tools.
1 - What are the top four or five information tools or sites you use to keep track of information about your business?

For tracking, I have several Google searches for my name, my blog, links to my blog, etc., saved as RSS feeds, and I collect those in Bloglines. I also use Technorati of course, but for me it's better to gauge which of my blog posts are 'hot right now'. I also have another Google blog search for '@MackCollier' (my Twitter username) saved, so I know if another blogger mentions something I said on Twitter, in one of their posts.

The only ones that I am subscribed to are the few that I got when I opened an account and I am too lazy to unsubscribe to them ;)

I just checked and I currently am subscribed to 111 feeds, and about 90 of those are blogs. I'm finding that now most of the feeds I add are the blogs of my Twitter friends.

The only socnet [besides Twitter] I am currently active on is Facebook, and I probably visit the site a couple of times a week. I use it to keep up with what my friends and contacts are up to, events they are attending, etc. I also scan the groups occasionally. The only other social networking site I use would be LinkedIn, and I check it about 3-5 times a month. Really Twitter is eating into a lot of my non-blogging time these days as virtually everyone I know online is there.

I plan to run about a dozen interviews, and would love to hear about the tools you are using to keep avoid from drowning in information. Posted by B.L. Ochman

Alertle is a new web-based RSS feed reader which helps in managing the 'information overload'. You can browse through 100s of feeds and a lot of articles within a few seconds on it. Its got 3 things going for it:
- Unique 3-panel interface
- Intuitive keyboard shortcuts (up/down arrows..instead of 'j','k'!)
- Autoplay - you can choose a speed to play your headlines, from 2 seconds onwards.

Check it out at http://www.alertle.com.

For a comparison with Google Reader, see http://blog.alertle.com/?p=10

It would be interesting to see how Mack's (or anyone's!) answers change in, say, 6 months or a year. Stuff moves that fast...doesn't it?