Tools for digesting lots of information

Just a short post on very nice tools (Feedly, Read it Later (Digest) and Gist) that can help users (e.g. me) to cope with the additional information sources available in the “new” and faster, social online information society.

Feedly

Feedly is a tool (plug-in for Chrome, Firefox and hack for Safari/Fluid) that “organizes your favorite sites into a fun, magazine-like start page based on Google Reader and Twitter“. Feedly connects to Google Reader and Twitter and displays your feeds and twitter timeline in using a magazine layout which in my opinion is a better user interface than lists with respect to skimming and information filtering. The layout engine uses your folders and to me unknown algorithms to select articles/posts that are displayed like  a magazine. It syncs with Google Reader, so read items are read in Google Reader as well. You can also share items with notes.

Read it Later + Read it Later Digest

I use Read it Later to keep a list of stuff that I find interesting for reading later when I have more time available. It’s mostly stuff from feed and twitter. Read it Later Digest solves the same problem that Feedly solves — instead of displaying items in an ungrouped list, Read it Later Digest uses document classification techniques to group stuff into categories and lays them out in a magazine like layout for easier access compared to a list ordered by add-date.
As a side note, I use Read it Later over Instapaper because I like the iPhone app more + Read it Later has a richer API for third-party developers.

Gist

While Read it Later (Digest) and Feedly manage articles, Gist manages contacts. It plugs into e.g. linked in, Gmail and Twitter and aggregates information from your contacts. It also helps you monitor communication sent explicitly (mail, direct twitter messages etc) and implicitly (public posts) to you from your contacts. Contacts in this case is not only friends, but also businesses and work related people.

The future is now.