In what Google's Brett Slatkin termed a "small foray into productivity software", the developer best known for his work on the PubSubHubbub protocol released a note-taking application for journalists and researchers, featuring rich text, tagging and built-in privacy controls that keep notes available only to the creator. The product, titled LedeLog, runs on Google's cloud infrastructure, and auto-saves progress every ten seconds, so vital notes don't get lost. As simple as it sounds, it is robust enough to serve not just for its intended audience, but it looks like the beginning of new word processing or blog authoring tools. In fact, just for testing purposes, I authored this post on LedeLog.

The product's name derives from journalist's use of the term "Lede", which refers to the lead paragraph in any story, and says it is built for the workflow of modern journalists - but could work for anyone who wants to take down notes and save drafts with tags that are searchable.


When I am interviewing somebody for a story, or dictating notes in a meeting or event, I tend to simply open Apple Mail and tap out my data there - a byproduct of my getting used to older blog platforms from yesteryear that lost my data if the Web browser froze (although Blogger autosaves now). This results in an undesirable list of untitled drafts in my draft messages folder, sorted only by date - certainly without any tags. Going back a full decade to my time at the Daily Californian at UC Berkeley when I was a reporter in college, I similar wrote out my notes in Nisus Writer, an archaic word processing system for the Mac. It's highly likely that many journalists today, provided they aren't using a pen and paper, are typing out their notes in Microsoft Word - so you can forget about tagging or searching those documents. LedeLog, though new and raw, could be an interesting alternative.

For any journalist who wants to keep their sources secure and their notes safe, LedeLog is a step above saving any of that content on a local disk. LedeLog "ledes" are saved in the Google cloud (I assume powered by AppEngine, where Brett spends most of his time), and are accessible only through one's Google Account or OpenID.


Unlike many startup projects, which release in beta with no users, it sounds like LedeLog has already proven itself in the field. Its description in the Google Apps Marketplace says "LedeLog has been in constant use by professional journalists since January 2009." The Marketplace description also says the product is free for the next three months and may have further pricing information after that point. Including the product in the Google Apps Marketplace, in the document management category, enables companies who have set up Google Apps for their domain to deploy LedeLog for their users.

The media hasn't been given too many helping hands of late, and LedeLog isn't designed to make unprofitable businesses profitable again. But it is a very handy tool for note-taking, search and security. It's another peek into a world without Microsoft Office, where documents can be created in the cloud and shared outward. Every LedeLog can be e-mailed to an external address, such as an editor. Brett's initial notes on the product suggest in can handle the management of hundreds of Ledes easily. You can give it a shot at LedeLog.com.

In the social Web, we talk a lot about being transparent and open. But many of us are limiting what we say online to a specific topic. We’re sharing links and associating with people who share our viewpoints, and possibly avoiding hot-buttons like politics, in favor of talking about technology and tools. Is this the right thing to do, or have we gone too far in terms of being willing to share who we really are?

After a rare political post for him this week, titled "I am pro life", Chris Saad noticed a hesitancy for people to share his content. I said this was because the topic was out of line for what people expected from him, and each of us plays a specific role in each of the networks where we participate. This fell in line with my post Saturday on disaggregation and focusing content for each network. We would absolutely appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

This and all other EdgeTheory conversations can be found on the dedicated ET Conversations site.

Listen in below:

Since November, I've been talking to you about TheCadmus, a new tool that taps into your social streams to remove duplicates, find relevant topics and group discussions - one of many different services that is looking to improve the ability to find signal in today's noisy networks. TheCadmus is looking to make a name for itself in reducing clutter, and personalizing trending topics, including drill-down by lists. Now, the company is looking to take its personalization engine even further with a trip to Silicon Valley to talk with Y Combinator, the much-respected angel investment group, and a presentation later this week at Twitter headquarters to showcase what they have accomplished with the service's API.

The very acts of meeting with Y Combinator and Twitter are of course no direct correlation with success. TheCadmus is but one of 80 companies looking to impress the YC team with their story this week. A poor showing could send the two-person team back to Toronto empty-handed, with nothing but the experience to show for it.

I had the opportunity to meet with the company's two founders, Jay Air and Frank Wang, this evening, as we discussed the product's direction and its place in an online world where most of us are encountering too much noise. They told me the product's first direction, simply to group similar social updates and remove duplicates, led directly to more and more efforts around personalization. They told me that yes, it is a problem that many services are targeting now, but they believe they are approaching the problems in a new way.

Today, TheCadmus lets you consume updates from your social graph, but not communicate from them. For example, they're not a Twitter client. It's not outside the realms of thought that TheCadmus' API could be part of other Twitter clients looking to add new forms of personalization. I got the chance to take a few minutes with Jay Air to record a CinchCast explaining the company's plans for their short trip in Silicon Valley and what they would do with any potential funds gained from a Y Combinator investment. The discussion is embedded below:

For years, I've been sharing and distributing my content in such a way that if you followed me on just one network, you could essentially see all my updates in one place. While the most obvious example of that has been FriendFeed, for the last three years, I also mirrored my activity to other places, including Facebook - and Google Buzz has set up that opportunity to do so again. But what I am finding is that people in each network are more than likely following me in multiple places, and many are getting frustrated by non-native updates. The truth is that people don't always want to follow everything a person does online. They want to follow pieces of what they do in specialized places, and even where filters exist, I am seeing many people reduce inbound streams or focus them for the individual community. This specialization has even led to my running multiple Twitter accounts to give people that option, but not force it, and I know I am not the only one.

In the two plus years I have used Twitter, I have been quite careful not to overuse the product. I've kept my volume on my account to a comparatively low level, when contrasted with its more aggressive users. My main feed is primarily my blog posts, links to interesting stories around the Web, and real-time responses to people on tech. I don't use it so much for real-time status updates, but do so on occasion. At the same time, I have been more aggressive in my use of tools like Google Reader. To broadcast all the items I share in Google Reader to this main feed would be overkill. But for those people who want to consume this feed on Twitter, I created the separate @lgstream account. Separate, but equal.


As one man's noise is another man's signal, I've also recently turned on a third parallel Twitter account (@lgloco), which is a mirror for my mundane Foursquare updates. Thus far, I've resisted Foursquare as I once resisted Twitter, but am at least experimenting with the app - all without muddying my main feed. Those who want to opt in to my comings and goings can do so there, as an opt-in process, rather than opt-out. (More on Foursquare's use for a married guy with kids who doesn't venture out much later...)

But this is just one service. Where the most visible issues with noise arise are when people like me try to use services as aggregators, when they're probably best suited not to be.


For example, take Facebook. Thus far, I've assumed Facebook to be full of the same tech-sipping geeks I've associated with in FriendFeed and other places - so I gave them the full firehose. But as I could shrug off people like my mom hiding my own feed as it was dominating their stream, I received additional feedback that my "Facebook experience" was less than optimal. The FriendFeed shares lacked imagery and became a series of undistinguishable headlines and links. So, I've turned that off, and will be working to make that experience better - through a small number of shares via my6sense on the iPhone, as well as using Facebook better where its strengths lie - with photos and engagement. This decision also comes as many people complain about Facebook's news feed being dominated by repurposed Twitter updates (most of which they have already seen).

Similarly, the world of Google Buzz presents again the opportunity to aggregate content all in one place. But I have seen a similar backlash against people who pass their Twitter updates through the service. This is partially due to a lag between Twitter and Buzz, which sends updates through in clumps well after they were posted, and also due to the same problem as from Facebook - disjointed conversations that began somewhere else and don't belong.

(See Also: Kurt Starnes' great post: Going Native In The Age Of Aggregation)


I chose not to pull in updates to Buzz from Twitter and FriendFeed when I started using the service, and anecdotally, I have seen the most activity in Buzz on items started there.

Just because a tool can aggregate doesn't mean that it should. In a world where practically all of us are using multiple social services, many of us are following the same people two, three, five or even ten times, across different networks. Seeing the same updates in every place is off-topic and tiring. I like the idea of participating wherever comments erupt, but also of giving people the option to find pieces of my updates in the right places.

I separated out my different streams on Twitter to give people who want the content the option to do so, at their choice. I'm thinning out my Facebook to optimize there, and, while I will continue to pull Reader and blog posts to Buzz, I do not think I'm going to cram every service I can find down Google's newest tool.

We live in a world with a very easy potential to be overcome with noise, and I don't want to be responsible for more than my share. So go ahead and follow my @louisgray account on Twitter. Or my @lgstream or @lgloco. You can connect with me on Facebook, FriendFeed or Buzz as well, just know that each place should be giving you a different experience - aimed for that audience.

Disclosure: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media.