Beware of online "filters" that hide the information you need

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles", TEDtalksDirector, May 2, 2011: As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

Similarly, you don't want Twitter to replace your RSS reader - always get to the original source. When you see a medical news item on Reuters or WebMD, don't stop there - always go to the original journal article. More often that not you will find that the results reported in the original article are a quite a bit more nuanced and less certain than the layman language, SEO-optimized headline that you first encountered. Always go to the source. If you write a blog, always link to the source.


The circle of online information (full version) (click to enlarge).

Related:

For doctors: How to be a Twitter star in two easy steps

How to Subscribe to "What's New" Specialty Page of UpToDate? No Feed, No Problem for Google Reader

35% of UpToDate topics are updated every four months. The editors select a small number of the most important updates and share them via "What's new" page. These selections are changed with each major release of UpToDate, in March, July and November. See these updates by clicking on the specialty you are interested in.

The page does not provide RSS feed for the different specialties. One solution is to copy/paste the URL address of each subspecialty page you are interested in the Google Reader "Add a subscription" field (top left corner). Google Reader will automatically create a RSS feed from this "feedless" page.



References:
UTD Contents: What's New

Are You Dependent on UpToDate for Your Clinical Practice?
5 Tips to Stay Up-to-Date with Medical Literature
Image source: UpToDate.

How to follow Twitter users in Google Reader

In summary, @dreamingspires asked how you can follow more Twitter users without feeling overwhelmed with updates.

I only follow around 60 people on Twitter who in general do not post very frequently.

However, I follow more Twitter accounts in Google Reader which is actually nicer because I see the tweets grouped by user and I can use tags/folders. TweetDeck has groups but Google Reader is more efficient, it also has better search and saves all tweets. In addition, Google Reader is available from any Internet-connected computer while the current version of TweetDeck is only desktop-based. Seesmic has a web version but Google Reader is more efficient.



A screenshot of some of the medical Twitter feeds I subscribe to in Google Reader.

In short, you can expand the number of people you follow on Twitter by subscribing to their RSS feeds in Google Reader.

Currently, there is no tool that works better with large inflows of information than Google Reader in "condensed" view. Try switching the view modes in Google Reader by pressing the "1" and "2" keys.

@dreamingspires was concerned that interacting was not possible with the RSS feed but in fact it takes only 2 clicks - click on the tweet in Google Reader, which opens the Twitter page, and then click "reply".


The circle of online information (full version) (click to enlarge).

Related:
How to deal with the information overload from blogs, RSS and Twitter