Infotention
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Infotention
Managing attention & information
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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
April 6, 2016 2:34 PM
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OU Digital Tools: Inoreader: Remix Your Own RSS Feed ... with social network content

"The ability to remix RSS is very cool (remember YahooPipes?), but Inoreader takes that even farther because it also harvests non-RSS content from social network feeds at Twitter, Google+, and Facebook, rendering them as RSS. It's magic: you can recombine any of the content in Inoreader to send back out as an RSS stream, including social network content that is normally not available as RSS. Want an RSS feed of your Twitter? Facebook? Google+? Easy-peasy: you just subscribe to your feed with Inoreader, and then send it back out again as RSS."

Howard Rheingold's insight:

RSS has become esoteric and we lost a lot of capability to mix and filter RSS feeds when Yahoo Pipes went down, but now people are showing how to regain those capabilities with inoreader

Stephen Dale's curator insight, April 7, 2016 7:01 AM
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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
July 26, 2015 2:01 PM
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Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity

Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity | Infotention | Scoop.it
How we choose to pay attention, and relate to information and each other shapes who we become, shapes our creative destiny and, in turn, shapes our experience of the world. And, in my mind, there’s nothing more important than that.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

This beautiful meditation on the networked nature of knowledge and collaboration turns on the fulcrum of attention to information.

Stephen Dale's curator insight, July 27, 2015 9:51 AM

Maria Popova talks about the networked nature  of knowledge and collaboration. Excellent piece. #curation

Anne-Marie Armstrong's curator insight, July 31, 2015 10:41 AM

This beautiful meditation on the networked nature of knowledge and collaboration turns on the fulcrum of attention to information.

ANA PAULA SENA DE ALMEIDA's curator insight, March 22, 2016 2:08 PM

no way Brazil! ;-)

 

.......................

via scoop.it 

This beautiful meditation on the networked nature of knowledge and collaboration turns on the fulcrum of attention to information.

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
July 9, 2015 3:18 PM
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A little known hack from Japan to get your notebook organized

A little known hack from Japan to get your notebook organized | Infotention | Scoop.it

The back of your notebook will act like a tag list or index. Every time you create a new entry at the front of the book you’re going to “tag” it.

For example let’s imagine you’re keeping a notebook for recipes and you just wrote down a Chinese recipe on the first page.

Next you’d go to the last page and create the tag ‘Chinese’ by writing it on the first line right next to the papers left edge.

Now you’d go back to the first page where the recipe is and on the exact same line as the ‘Chinese’ label you just wrote you’d make a little mark on the right edge.

You’d make this mark so that even when the notepad was closed the mark would be visible. After repeating this for various recipes you’d now have various tags visible on the notebooks edge.

Howard Rheingold's insight:

Tagging is a great infotention tool. Why confine it to digital media? h/t @Bopuc

Stephen Dale's curator insight, July 10, 2015 5:38 AM

I love the simplicity and elegance of this. "Analogue tagging"

Chad Gorski's curator insight, July 10, 2015 9:55 AM

Self-explanatory but simple way to organize an old-school notebook using index markings on the edge of each page.

Dave Wee's curator insight, August 3, 2015 7:12 PM

Tagging is a great infotention tool. Why confine it to digital media? h/t @Bopuc

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
June 2, 2015 1:02 PM
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Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize "Collect It All" Surveillance - The Intercept

Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize "Collect It All" Surveillance - The Intercept | Infotention | Scoop.it
“We in the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices every single day,” the analyst wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a situation that you ultimately stymie any outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to endless possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.”
Howard Rheingold's insight:

This article details the NSA's infotention problem. More information and sophisticated tools for slicing and dicing it don't mean that analysts will notice what is important. 

Stephen Dale's curator insight, June 3, 2015 4:45 AM

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.


Reading time 10mins

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
April 22, 2015 10:36 PM
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Save One File to Remember the Contents of Another

Save One File to Remember the Contents of Another | Infotention | Scoop.it
Digital storage of data has become an integral part of our lives, whether in the form of contacts and calendars on smartphones or constant access to the vast stores of knowledge in the cloud. Previous research has suggested that saving information makes us less likely to remember it, presumably because we assume we do not really need to memorize something that is saved. But doing so should also free up mental resources, reasoned cognitive scientists Benjamin Storm and Sean Stone, both at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They found in a new study that saving some information enhances memory for new material.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

This is good evidence to back infotention theory -- knowing how to use the cloud as an extension of memory frees mental space for other activities.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
April 20, 2015 10:17 PM
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EPI Search

EPI-Search helps you find documents that are highly relevant to your topic of interest. You simply enter the full text of a source that is representative of your topic of interest.

Enter notes or a draft document in the search box. The results display related sources from our library and the Web.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Enter up to 10,000 words and this knowledge engine recommends other works from their library and elsewhere. I don't know this outfit personally but what they are doing with "second-order science" looks intriguing.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
April 10, 2015 1:43 PM
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Can Matthew Crawford Deliver Us From Distraction?

Can Matthew Crawford Deliver Us From Distraction? | Infotention | Scoop.it
Crawford first shows how highly skilled people learn to develop an intelligent use of space, filtering out what they can afford to ignore. Part of developing one’s skill is to know where to look, to "jig" the space to pay attention to what’s most important. And you learn what’s most important by paying attention to people whose skills are much more developed than your own.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

I have not yet read Matthew Crawford's new book "The World Beyond Your Head," but I have it on my queue. First I am planning to read his previous book "Shop Class as Soul Craft." It appears from this extensive review that Crawford has a chapter on attention, distractibility, and what to do about it.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
March 27, 2015 1:36 PM
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Using Communication Technologies Mindfully

Using Communication Technologies Mindfully | Infotention | Scoop.it
A burgeoning collection of communication technologies is often blamed for decreased empathy and attention spans. What if the problem lies not with the technology, but with the attitude of the user?
Howard Rheingold's insight:

I highly recommend the book this is excerpted from, In Real Life by Jon Mitchell. I read it in galleys. It was like drinking pure cool water after a long hot day. A very practical and unmystical approach to the spirituality and cognitive discipline necessary to use modern media mindfully.

Peter Skillen's curator insight, March 28, 2015 7:39 AM

Methinks I'll need to get this book. It fits with current thinking—the same thinking that got me called a luddite and digital immigrant—by my colleagues!—several years ago when I first mentioned the issue.

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
March 13, 2015 1:51 PM
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Apple Watch Set To Revolutionise The Way People Ignore Each Other

Apple Watch Set To Revolutionise The Way People Ignore Each Other | Infotention | Scoop.it
INDUSTRY experts are predicting that the brand new smartwatch unveiled by Apple yesterday will totally change the way people ignore each other when it launches in April.
The device, known simply as the Apple Watch, will host a range of exciting features which will enable users to cocoon themselves in their own little world, avoiding interaction with fellow human beings.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

On the other hand...or should I say "on the other wrist?"

Stephen Dale's curator insight, March 14, 2015 12:03 PM

Waiting for that first case of RSI of the wrist!

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
February 15, 2015 3:52 PM
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Content Curation Tools Supermap by Robin Good

Content Curation Tools Supermap by Robin Good | Infotention | Scoop.it
Pearltrees lets you organize all your interests
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Robin Good has taught me a great deal about RSS, news radars, filters, and curation, and is a master curator himself. I have not used Pearltrees recently, but it continues to evolve as a curation platform. Curation is an act of both personal and public infotention -- putting context and one's imprimatur on resources found to be useful, for one's own use and for the use of the commons.

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Rescooped by Howard Rheingold from Content Curation World
February 9, 2015 1:47 PM
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Create Custom News Streams Based on Your Specific Sources and Filters

Create Custom News Streams Based on Your Specific Sources and Filters | Infotention | Scoop.it
News defined by you.

Via Robin Good
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Robin Good is my mentor in using tools like RSS and filter apps to tune incoming information streams about specific subjects. He calls these combinations of streams and filters "news radars," and knowing how to put them together is important for journalists, researchers of all kinds, and any consumer of online information who wants to find relevant information without being overwhelmed.

Stephen Dale's curator insight, February 10, 2015 11:55 AM

Another excellent personal information management tool, HT to Robin Good for spotting.

Marta Torán's curator insight, February 11, 2015 8:27 AM

Para leer las noticias que te interesan

Len Ferrara's curator insight, February 14, 2015 12:31 AM

This looks great!

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
January 24, 2015 12:47 PM
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Attention: A Muscle to Strengthen

Attention: A Muscle to Strengthen | Infotention | Scoop.it

"We have multiple set exercises throughout the day where you basically bring intentionality to your attention," he told me over the phone. They involve no newfangled brain-training software, or really anything at all new to neuroscience or philosophy—which may be why it's easy to dismiss them. For example, he might tell a patient to take on little tasks like, when they wake up in the morning—instead of ruminating on the day ahead or idling on their phone—thinking about five people in their lives for whom they're grateful. Maybe even send those people a little note. That strengthens relationships and makes those people feel appreciated, sure, but the real point of it, Sood explained, is that "by choosing where to deploy your attention and what you're processing, you're basically strengthening your attention."

Theoretically a person could accomplish that same attention-building with other exercises—say, staring at a fish tank for a while, counting and naming the fish, and then introducing them aloud whenever one swims near another—but Sood likes to recommend practices that are more productive. 

Howard Rheingold's insight:

Mindfulness and attention training have become fashionable, which in my opinion is not a bad thing. The author is an MD and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. His approach does not specifically focus on training attention in the context of multiple screens and information input streams, but the basic exercises probably generalize -- particularly his emphasis on intention. He also has a popular video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZZ0zpUQhBQ

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
January 21, 2015 12:41 PM
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The need for a sociology of thinking

The need for a sociology of thinking | Infotention | Scoop.it
How much time do you spend talking to yourself? If you put the question this way, it often makes people uncomfortable. An alternative phrasing: how much time do you spend engaged in “directed conscious thought”? This is what Tim Wilson et al investigated in a new paper published in Science. It’s exactly the sort of work I’m looking forward to engaging with when I start my sociology of thinking project later in the year:
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Can we train our attentional habits in the context of social media and enormous inflows of information? To what end? How? Is it efficacious? In what ways? These questions illustrate the relationship of infotention (attention to how we use attention online, and tools for managing information flows and attention) to studies of thinking. A "sociology of thinking" project sounds promising.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
August 31, 2015 1:19 PM
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PKM in 40 Days

PKM in 40 Days | Infotention | Scoop.it
How do you make sense of all the data, information, and knowledge that passes by you each day? How do you connect with other professionals?

The discipline of PKM helps to develop four core work skills, identified by the Institute for the Future: sense-making; social intelligence; new media literacy; and cognitive load management.
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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
July 13, 2015 2:20 PM
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Meta-Collaboration: Thinking With Another

Meta-Collaboration: Thinking With Another | Infotention | Scoop.it
The two aspects of being human that set us apart from other mammals are metacognition and the deep desire to belong or feel felt. Our sense of needing to belong to a group is an inherited part of our neurobiology, and collaboration with others is the desired outcome. Metacognition is our brains' miraculous innate ability to self-assess, think about our thinking, and reshape our perspectives.

Feeling the emotions of others, social acceptance, and cooperation are critical to our early development of the identity and industry stages. Author and motivational speaker Daniel Pink states that the future belongs to conceptual cooperative thinkers.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Wonderfully, this post addresses three subjects I track because I know they are important: metacognition and its role in infotention, augmented collective intelligence, and the relationship of human cooperation to social media.

Vivianne Amaral's curator insight, July 14, 2015 10:00 PM

Colaboração e cooperação  são condutas de interação humana, atualmente com visibilidade  e potência ampliada  pelas estruturas tecnologicas de interação, mas são naturais, orgânicas e exigem o desenvolvimento de habilidades sociais e de empatia.  Talvez seja um das áreas da vida onde sejamos mais ciborgues hoje em dia: nos relacionamentos, na comunicação.

Scooped by Howard Rheingold
June 26, 2015 4:47 PM
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Media LIT: Overcoming Information Overload

Media LIT: Overcoming Information Overload | Infotention | Scoop.it
Media literacy helps us understand, analyze and create media. While we rely on good journalism to provide accurate information, we also have responsibilities of our own in this media-saturated environment. We can no longer be passive consumers of media. We need to be active users of media, as readers, listeners, viewers and creators, so we are all better informed. Our goal is to help you do just that.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

I contributed three short videos to this and very strongly endorse the instructor, Dan Gillmor, author of We The Media and Mediactive

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
May 14, 2015 6:10 PM
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The Startling Effect Technology Is Having on Humans’ Attention Spans

The Startling Effect Technology Is Having on Humans’ Attention Spans | Infotention | Scoop.it
Just because we may be allocating our attention differently as a function of the technologies we may be using, it doesn’t mean that the way our attention actually can function has changed,” Morton told the Ottawa Citizen. “Digital technologies dovetail seamlessly into the information processing abilities of our brain.”

The study further reveals that the rate at which humans now process information is faster than before handheld technology took hold of everyday life. Among the top four factors that impact attentions spans the most are media consumption, social media usage, technology adoption rates and multi-screening behaviors.

With regard to these factors, the study found that attention spans vary according to how one consumes media and at which rate they adopt to using it.

For example, those who adopt to social media the quickest are able to process information from interactive environments (TV) better than people who adopt to social media at a slower pace. Reversely, the so-called “late adopters” of social media tend to process information faster in non-interactive environments (not TV).
Howard Rheingold's insight:

This new study by Microsoft seems to indicate that the average attention span has diminished from 12 seconds in 2000, to around 8 seconds today. The infotention angle is that those who use social media and multiple screens process information faster. Still a very crude measure, but the hypothesis I'd like to see pursued is that some people have taught themselves to coordinate their attentional mechanisms and their media more effectively. Classic Nass study on media multitasking indicates that it does not improve productivity; however, the Nass study was about more general media-related activities using unrelated information streams., not (as he told me) on how people consciously coordinate attentional activities and multiple related information streams.

Stephen Dale's curator insight, May 15, 2015 7:32 AM

Perhaps not that surprising to some, but it would appear that we now have evidence that the human species have an attention span of less than your average goldfish - 8 seconds vs. 9 seconds for a goldfish. You might just have time to read this before moving on to your next interruption! 

 

nukem777's curator insight, May 15, 2015 5:34 PM

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nukem777's curator insight, May 15, 2015 5:34 PM

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April 22, 2015 5:46 PM
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TAGSExplorer: Interactively visualising Twitter conversations archived from a Google Spreadsheet | MASHe

TAGSExplorer: Interactively visualising Twitter conversations archived from a Google Spreadsheet | MASHe | Infotention | Scoop.it
As I start my exploration of tools like NodeXL it's very clear that being able to filter, probe and wander through the data provides far more insights to what’s going on.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

What this has to do with infotention: become skilled at the use of NodeXl and TAGSExplorer and you'll have a powerful tool or knowing where in Twitter (and to whom) to put your attention.

Stephen Dale's curator insight, April 23, 2015 6:12 AM

Know more about your relationship with your Twitter network.

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April 20, 2015 1:58 PM
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Information Overload: Why daydreaming not multitasking is the way to process the unprecedented amount of information we now face | The Big Picture

In this talk at the Royal Society of Arts in London, Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology and behavioural neuroscience at McGill University in Canada, reveals the surprising effects that ‘information overload’ is having on our brains, and how we can best combat the data deluge. Some of the proven strategies, like taking short naps to recharge, could go beyond simply preventing brain drain and helping us maintain focus, but might actually make us better, more creative problem-solvers too. In fact, Levitin makes the case for regular daydreaming – 15 minutes every two hours – so that our brains benefit from a restorative mind-wandering mode, which he describes as their natural state.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Some good advice from someone who knows his stuff -- I've read his books (I recommend "This Is Your Brain on Music") -- about the cognitive side of infotention. The good news -- naps and daydreaming are also good tools for dealing with overload, distraction, and focus. Part of infotention is learning to assume more agency about where you direct your attention online. According to Levitin, letting go of your focus for naps and daydreaming can be useful, too

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
March 30, 2015 4:37 PM
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Conscious 2 - Mindfulness Minimizes Thought Overload by Ora Nadrich

Conscious 2 - Mindfulness Minimizes Thought Overload by Ora Nadrich | Infotention | Scoop.it
It is estimated that we can think up to seventy thousand thoughts per day. It’s no wonder therefore, that our minds can go into “thought overload.” But a great way to avoid that is by practicing Mindfulness, and making an effort to stay in the present moment.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Good infotention advice -- it applies, I believe, to the parts of the day when the flow of info online is akin to the flow of thoughts. Info overload is actually attention overload.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
March 24, 2015 5:25 PM
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Registration

Registration | Infotention | Scoop.it
This webinar is all about leveraging the power of visual thinking and organization for design and project planning.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

I've used The Brain for projects and for teaching. It's an infotention tool in terms of advancing the way one transforms information into knowledge in a personally and visually organized form. If you haven't seen The Brain, check out Jerry's Brain.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
March 13, 2015 1:50 PM
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Apple doesn't want to talk about the real use for the Apple Watch

The thing is, the watch does have a use case, it's just one that’s hard for Apple to talk about. Last week Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch wrote that the best thing about the watch, according to the Apple employees who’ve been demoing it, was that it let them basically stop using their phone. Instead of fishing their phones out of their pockets every couple minutes, they could check incoming notifications on the watch and choose to ignore or respond to them. Panzarino
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Could this be true? The next year will be a mass experiment in the intersection of technology and attention. Let's check back on this.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
February 11, 2015 4:07 PM
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A Dashboard That Lets You Easily Connect Web Services, From Email to Twitter | WIRED

A Dashboard That Lets You Easily Connect Web Services, From Email to Twitter | WIRED | Infotention | Scoop.it

Netvibes is known for a website that lets you pull all your favorite internet services onto a single page, from news sites to email to weather. But now it’s taking a different turn.

The Paris-based company will soon offer a new service dubbed Dashboard of Things, which aims to provide a single place you can not only consume all sorts of internet content, but also automate your digital life. With this new tool—which is being previewed now and will be widely available later this year—you could program Instagram to automatically backup your photos to Dropbox, or tell Twitter to send out a tweet every time you update your website.

For Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini, Dashboard of Things aims to help the average consumer do things they typically couldn’t pull off without some serious computer coding skills. “We need to make everyone a programmer,” he says. “We want you to be a wizard of the Internet of Things and to do magical things.”

Howard Rheingold's insight:

I've used Netvibes as an RSS reader for years. I particularly how easy it is to sync my attentional priorities to my on-screen info-flow by dragging higher priority tabs to the left and positioning the most important feeds at the top of their tab pages. If I am more pressed for time, I can just skim the headlines in the leftmost tab and/or topmost row of feeds (of course the actual way one positions feeds and tabs is arbitrary -- the point is to pay attention to your priorities and go through the actions of rearranging your information flows to match. It's a tool for taking control of both the screen-side and mind-side aspects of infotention. This new service appears to be an expansion of the dashboard capabilities to include something similar to (and Netvibes claims more powerful than) IFTTT -- which I confess I have not done more than dabbled in.

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Scooped by Howard Rheingold
February 8, 2015 2:58 PM
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Paperless Productivity With Evernote & Pocket

Paperless Productivity With Evernote & Pocket | Infotention | Scoop.it
I needed a better way of getting what I wanted to keep in Evernote, but at the same time, keep Evernote clutter-free. Eventually, I came up with a process that has been working very well for me. It involves using Pocket, a “save for later” service like Instapaper. With Pocket, you can grab links, images, and videos and save them for later. Pocket also removes the clutter from the articles and presents them in an easy-to read format. Lots of applications integrate with Pocket, making it easy to send articles and other items. Best of all, you can send items from Pocket to Evernote.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

Yes, I Scoop more than a few tips from Evernote -- because Evernote is a great infotention-tool, a smart, personalized, short-to-long-term memory augmenter. And because they are smart enough to show people how to use Evernote to streamline their finding, filtering, storing, and retrieving key bits from the info-flow.

Crystal Renfro's curator insight, February 9, 2015 10:27 AM

I liked this workflow using Pocket and Evernote.  Nice thing about Pocket is that it is both iPhone, iPad, Android and web browser compatible.

Linda Weeks's curator insight, May 1, 2015 8:20 AM

Research tool

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January 21, 2015 12:44 PM
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Smartphones Don’t Make Us Dumb

Smartphones Don’t Make Us Dumb | Infotention | Scoop.it
AS much as we love our digital devices, many of us have an uneasy sense that they are destroying our attention spans. We skitter from app to app, seldom alighting for long. Our ability to concentrate is shot, right?

Research shows that our intuition is wrong. We can focus. But our sense that we can’t may not be a phantom. Paying attention requires not just ability but desire. Technology may snuff out our desire to focus.
Howard Rheingold's insight:

A big part of infotention is simply recognizing the need to think about where your attention is going while you are online, and why, and how you can exert more control over it.

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