Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Wow. I have been part of the alpha trial of socialmedian for a while. Today they moved to Beta.

Today Robert Scoble followed me on socialmedian. Cool!

Here is my spyjournal socialmedian news site, and here is Roberts.

So what is socialmedian?

socialmedian is social news network that connects people with personalized news and information. socialmedian enables you to easily keep up-to-date on the news that matters to you and to people who share your interests. (from the FAQ)

Basically you can create news streams of relevant information to a news topic or category of information. So in my case I have created numerous channels including Drupal, Excel, Microsoft Office and Windows Home Server. As I and other people find news articles or websites relevant to these topics we can add their RSS feeds or the individual page or article to the stream. This can be done as simply as clicking a link on a tool bar. In addition, socialmedian will also recommend sources for you to add based on the topics you have entered for your News Network.

Beth may not be as Internet-geeky as some of us, but she certainly is a geek, she is actively involved in plenty of social networks, and she does blog. So she made the cut for our series!

Name: Beth Snow
Screen Names: drbethsnow - or - Beth77
Personal Blog: drbethsnow.wordpress.com
Social Networks: Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, Flickr, Friend Feed, identi.ca, Last.fm, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Twitter. I'm also a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists: http://improbable.com/2007/07/13/beth-snow-joins-lfhcfs/  and the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.
Current Employment:  I run a research training program in gender & addictions and I teach nutritional sciences courses at the University of British Columbia; I also teach science to elementary school kids as a "Scientist in Residence".
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

What is your reason/motivation for blogging?

I mainly write things that I find entertaining and, somewhat surprisingly to me, others seem to find what I write entertaining as well.  So now my motivation is writing to entertain & build community, as well as because I just like to write.  Oh yes, and to win friends and influence people.

Geek Girl Profile -

Name: Bronwen Zande
Screen Name: BronwenZ
Personal Blogs: http://www.soulsolutions.com.au/Blog.aspx | http://girlgeekdinnersbrisbane.blogspot.com/ | http://www.geekgirlblogs.com/.
Social Networks: Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, friendfeed.
Current Employment: Am a director of Brisbane based, Soul Solutions Pty Ltd, a Microsoft Certified Partner.  We work with innovative web technologies such as Silverlight, Virtual Earth and Live Services.
Location: Australia

What is your motivation for blogging?

Originally I started blogging to document problems I’d solved so when I came across it again I’d know how to fix it. As time went on we found our clients, friends, family etc, were reading our blog to see what we were up to. I also use it to document things I’ve done so I can look back and see what we’ve achieved.

This weeks GGB is Kate Carruthers, her profile is below…

Geek Girl Profile -

Name: Kate Carruthers
Screen Name’s: kcarruthers or carruthk 
Personal Blog: http://carruthk.blogspot.com
Social Networks: Twitter, Plurk, Linkedin, Facebook, Friendfeed, Profilactic, flickr, digg, brightkite, social|median.
Current Employment: Digital Business Group Pty Ltd, Creation Nation Pty Ltd, Macquarie University
Location: Sydney, Australia.

What is your motivation for blogging?

Just started as a way for me to remember stuff that caught my attention & keep track of ideas. Then it helped me to get in touch with the little girl who used to write stories everyday and I realised that I like writing, the process of communication.  Blogging is great fun because it is not just one way communication like a book, people can write back and you can have conversations.