I enjoy the high tech press (used to be called blogosphere). Sometimes I get news. Sometimes entertainment–abeit unintentional, I’m sure. There’s a heck of a flap going on about whether Craig’s List should censor certain kinds of content. Should prostitutes be allowed to advertise–even if it’s illegal? Should your buddy down the street solicit for sickening acts of inhumanity? The “Wild West” of the Internet culture still wants anonymity and the “freedom of speech” (wish these dunderheads could/would read the acutal words and meanings of the Constitituion) which they interpret as the right to say anything I please about anyone on any subject and you have to listen to me. Check this post for example.What about responsible speech? There comes a time in the progress to maturity in a human’s life when it’s not “all about me” but we discover there are other people. Most of society seems to be functioning at the level of 2-year-olds rather than 12s or something.

Now the report that Google Reader is down 27%, so RSS is dead and everyone gets all their news on Twitter. These people have taken the newspaper reporter’s skill of extrapolating a single data point into a huge distruptive trend. The best I can tell from statistics on this blog–which are a poor as about all Web statistics–is that about 20% of readers read from feeds. The rest visit the Web site from once to several times per week. I have been getting news (not just blogs, but The New York Times, Infoworld, CNET and others) on a feed reader since 2003. On the other hand, I sometimes go to an aggregator such as Google News or Yahoo News, to get a summary of general news. I’ve tried going to automation company Web sites for news, but that’s too hard to do. Mostly I rely on calls and press releases for industry news, that I can then filter and report back to you.

Some writers talk about getting their news on Twitter or Facebook. I get almost no value from Twitter “news” feeds. A few people whom I trust send me news links on Twitter. Sometimes when there is breaking news, you can follow developments on Twitter. I’ll be both reading and posting later this fall at the four conferences I’ll be attending–Emerson Exchange, IOM OpsManage, Rockwell Automation Process Systems Users Group and Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair. You can watch for my updates at www.twitter.com/garymintchell.

I’m still having some problems understanding automation companies on twitter. I’d love to use my lists and searches to get news. Too many, though either send way too much stuff so that I can’t filter the new from the mundane, or they re-send old news or simple promotional items. Perhaps we all need to work on upgrading our use and expectations of twitter?

Facebook is for news from friends–or at least all the people whom you have friended. I have received only a little value from that one. Mostly learning things about nieces and nephews that I’d rather not know 😉

What do you do for news? How do you consume FeedForward, Automation World, general news, industry news? What can I do better to link up? Let me know.