I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of our collective mindfulness lately. Every month, millions of more people are increasing their connectivity to the Web. Facebook’s gravity keeps swelling. Twitter continues to flap upwards in users. Mobile devices and operating systems continue to evolve and proliferate. It seems every week a new feature or service or gadget makes a debut.

The Web is not only expanding like a universe but it’s also infiltrating every nook of our daily lives. And it’s expanding and infiltrating at an accelerating pace. What effect is all this happening on our capacity to attentively engage with life? What disciplines and skills and understanding do we need to acquire as the Web continues its unstoppable inflation?

PRESENT MOMENT, WONDERFUL MOMENT

Thousands of years ago certain cultures around the world discovered and cultivated the art of breathing mindfully. In some cases, entire religious traditions grew out of these practices.

Our brains and sense-organs are powerful attention-devices. Our minds are always teaming with thoughts, feelings, hunches and visions. Even asleep, our brains actively stream profuse experiences like dreams. It’s how we survive.

But our very powers of attention and awareness and cognition can distract us from the present-moment happenings of our lives. We’re always breathing, but rarely notice unless we pay attention. And this presents us with a fundamental observation about life: if we’re constantly processing the relentless influx of internal and external sensory data but never focusing our full attention on what happens, how alive are we? For to have a meaningful life, we must feel alive – otherwise we’re just automatons obligated to the patterns made by others and the larger external world.

Being aware of the present moment is the easiest and hardest thing to do. Try it: sit for 5 minutes and pay attention to nothing but your breath. How many times did your mind wander from that simplest of tasks? If you can’t pay attention to your life right now, when do you expect to do it? After you die? In some other world?

TWITTER MIND, MONKEY MIND

Some Buddhists have a phrase for how our minds endlessly flit from one thought to the next: Monkey Mind. One aim of meditation is to “tame” the Monkey Mind. Not so much to control it, as to pay attention to it – and, in the process of paying attention to a fast-moving mind, paradoxically slow it down to a point where the present moment reveals itself most fully.

Of all social networking sites, perhaps Twitter best exemplifies the electronic version of Monkey Mind. The tiny bursts and pulses of text and hyperlinks stream through the world like flashes of thought across a busy mind. Twitter’s a powerful way to connect with others and receive news and important or trivial nuggets of information. And yet, if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to get sucked into Twitter Mind – an energetic state of dopamine excitation, where the sense of time is lost.

As more of us use these tools, how do we maintain our sense of mindfulness? How do we tame Twitter Mind? Few of us practice any sort of traditional meditation to discipline our Monkey Mind. Now we have social media. The Social Web is like an extension of the neocortex. It may sound crazy to think that our brains have a new layer, but it’s not a bad way to think about the kind of world the Web is making.

We will need to understand more about the effects of the Web on our brains, on our attention and our ability to feel fully alive between the sliver of light between birth and death that was entrusted to us.

THE NEVER-ENDING STREAM

When was the last time you felt the beating of your heart? The breath in and out of your chest? The sound of rain falling on leaf-mush?

Do you know why you’re on Twitter? How long you’re on Twitter?

The Art of the Tweet – if there is one – is this: using the medium to learn something about our world and sharing your unique view of it with us mindfully. Life without mindfulness is a life lost. Twitter may increase your awareness of the world around you but only your mind supplies your life with meaning. How are you  maintaining your mind?

Tweets are like raindrops falling into a stream. So are the moments of your life. Are you paying attention, or something more expensive?

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Can’t we just have one place on the web where all of us around the world can congregate to acquire reliable health care content, connect patients with each other, have conversations, trade experiences and otherwise partake in the vastness of health care?

That certainly is a dream – an idea which many patients and families and professionals ponder. After all, Google, Facebook and Twitter respectively demonstrate the power of Search, Social Media and Real-time Connection to accomplish a whole host of objectives. What if we had a health care version of such a triad, unified into one platform? Is it do-able? Or, perhaps more importantly, is it necessary?

A GINORMOUS WEB WITH NO CENTER

As tempting as it may be to have a mega health care social platform, I think such a hope is wrecked by the reality of the Web. The Web is an ever-expanding confluence of machines and people and protocols and media. Like a consciousness, it has no Center, no single brain cell that we can point to and say Here it is, the center of our mind! And yet, like a consciousness, it produces the seamless experiences of awareness and connection and action which we view through our browsers and mobile devices and wherever else the Web infiltrates.

Perhaps the very model for any Web platform for health care communities of content and people lies right in the artful sciences beneath health care itself: the evolutionary underpinnings of networks of the tiny cellular gadgets that supply our lives. Yes, our bodies do have central nervous systems, but life owes itself to the vastly distributed cascading of events which aren’t necessarily centrally-controlled. That is, after all, the wonder and power of our universe’s serendipity. The web of life may be metaphor for the web we started spinning years ago.

So I wonder if our primary challenge in weaving a Health Care Web is understanding the nature of evolutionary systems. That perhaps we need to overcome our linear and strict architectural ways of thinking and building, and seek organic views of the Web.

Historically, in our efforts to wage war against dangerous bacteria and viruses, we have taken a decidedly mechanical approach: discover a vulnerability and attack it. It works, for a time. But then subtle mutations succeed and replicate and the vulnerabilities of our tiny enemies become strengths and we start to lose the war again.

So just as we may need radically different approaches to infectious diseases – approaches which advance natural processes versus stemming them – so too may we need a radical re-think in how we work with the Web. Rather than hoping to overlay a single giant complex that dominates the landscape like a Big Mother, we aught to consider the power of local networks and communities, learn to harness de-centralization and discover how to cull order out of chaos.

In many regards, we already are doing these things. Those of us who use media like Twitter have learned to appreciate the value of curation and we’re always seeking out and playing with toys which help us streamline and enhance our consumption and production of information. Patients seeking health-related content or community similarly need ways of finding the right channels.

Perhaps, then, a key feature of health care online is providing media which improve the skills of patients in how to best derive order of out of chaos and separate verifiable fact from dangerous idiocy. How to accomplish such feats? One way is through individual, localized efforts on the part of patients, providers, technologists, librarians, entrepreneurs – charged with large boluses of initiative and courage.

ALL HEALTH CARE IS LOCAL

What we may need at the large scale isn’t a giant Google-Facebook-Twitter mashup for healthcare. Maybe what we need are media and tools which connect social graphs of people and databases and communities; which enable face-to-face communities which can be weaved back into the Web; which give permissions to patients and family members to port their data however they see fit; which enable providers to be bright facets at the critical nodes of key connections; which integrate emerging technologies and re-mash them into usable interfaces for expedient and curated information.

The fact about online health care communities is that they are, well, communities. Which is to say that their success depends on the particular dynamics and values of the communities. A service which offers forums for different health-related topics may house an amazing Diabetes group but fall short on Schizophrenia. Furthermore, patients and family members experience illnesses in their own unique ways: what may be a great community for someone with breast cancer may be ineffective (or even dangerous) for another.

We have many ways to go with the Health Care Web. We can’t necessarily busy ourselves with one silver bullet. So I offer one tip to the general public: advocate for change at the local level, using public social media to inspire passionate tribes of talented change agents. We can do that much now, without having to wait for the FDA or some other governmental agency to figure out how to hit the update button on Twitter, let alone how to piece together a Health Care Web.

If we can’t get our own family physician to connect with us on just one social medium, how can we connect the multitude of patients and providers globally?

What do you think? Is a Google-Facebook-Twitter Platform of Health Care achievable? Is it even necessary? Perhaps most importantly: is it something we should even desire, or fear?

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Twitter Lists! Twitter Lists! Twitter Lists! It’s all we hear about on Twitter and blogs about Twitter and tweets about the blogs about Twitter Lists. It’s nuts. Yes, I’ve been playing around with the new shiny feature too. Why not? I’m nuts myself about Twitter but I have my own reasons for that. So what’s the big fuss? Robert Scoble loves ‘em. Chris Brogan…not so much. (I’m largely with Scoble, but I understand where Brogan’s coming from.)

There are different ways to view Twitter Lists:

1. They’re ego-expanding
2. They’re ego-shriviling
3. They’re exclusionary
4. They’re inclusionary
5. They’re meta-data
6. They’re organizational tools
7. They’re networking media
8. They’re wet dreams for spammers
9. They’re relational databases.

It’s not always easy to see the ramifications of what appear to be minor technological changes. Twitter itself exemplifies this principle: just as the invention of zero or the wheel appeared inconsequential at first, entire new branches of mathematics and economies realed out of them. A wheel is just a round thing – but soon applications built around that shape led to radically fundamental shifts in technological upheaval. Now think of Twitter’s API. The automobile is the result of the wheel’s API. Human imagination is the ultimate API.

So too with Twitter Lists, the consequences at first are hard to envision. Lists expand the reach of Twitter’s extensive Web. Twitter is a Web on to itself: a metaphorical protocol of people-to-people connectivity, as fundamental as TCP/IP. Soon machines will be tweeting each other. Let your imagination streach on that one. No less with Lists: we will see them used in ways Twitter, Inc. never considred.

Now you can follow Lists – entire ecosystems – just as you could follow individual accounts. In addition to following the Individual, you can now follow the Collective. With Twitter’s API, we can now add context and curation to Lists – just as services like Twazzup contextualize individual tweets, new services could do the same for Lists. In addition to What does the public think of Twitter Lists, for example, we could ask What do tech bloggers or venture capitalists or journalists think of Twitter Lists.

Depending on the events of our childhood, Twitter Lists will appeal and wound our egos. That’s OK – if you’re hurt a little by being exluded from the cool kids table, you’re human. But look past what Twitter Lists can do for the social web and figure out your own way to keep the Web as human and useful as possible.

For as much as we welcome or curse Twitter Lists, they are here to stay – one way or another. They will help and enable people to connect in new ways. They’ll hurt people too. We can hope that Twitter, Inc. will appreciate the powers of this tiny addition to their service such as permissions, but I wouldn’t count on it. Whatever Twitter does or doesn’t  and however Lists evolve, we’re all just going to have to deal with whatever comes our way.

May the Goddesses help us.

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Getting beyond the hype and anti-hype over Google Wave, I’ve been exploring and experimenting with the collaboration platform since my invitation. While learning the new features and interacting with others on the service, I’m gaining some appreciation for the underlying technology Google claims will revolutionize how we communicate and collaborate.

I plan on a few more detailed posts and screencasts demonstrating Wave’s features, but here are some general ideas (at this point I’m running on science fiction) about how Wave (or its future analogues) could be used in a clinical setting. For a general overview, Mashable offers a comprehensive guide. I’ll offer a simple overview, but the main point of this post is to help answer the question: Does the underlying technology of Wave offer us any glimpse into improving clinical collaboration? It’s something ER physician Tim Sturgill asked recently (see his Person, Story, Data mock-up).

First the basics:

• A Wave is the main component of the service – think of it is the main whiteboard containing all of the content and media to be generated, edited, communicated and collaborated around.
• A Blip is the most basic unit of a Wave – similar to an IM message or a tweet.
• A Wavelet is a thread of blips within a wave. You can have multiple wavelets within a wave.
• Extensions: these invoke and provide additional functionalities beyond the basic communication basics of the service. There are two types: Robots and Gadgets.

Advanced Features: Robots & Gadgets:

It’s hard to visualize what a Wave Robot does, but in essence it “infuses” a wave with one or more functions. (I’m leaving out discussion of Gadgets in this post.) This is where Wave can get confusing but it’s also where Wave’s powers potentially shine. Here’s a list of Google Wave Extensions and Google’s samples gallery.

For example, there’s a robot called Cartoony which converts blips into cartoon bubbles. Surely this is frivolous, but when you see it in action, you realize what I mean by robots “infusing a wave with functionality”.

Another, more utilitarian bot is BingyBot, which answers participants questions. If you type a query, BingyBot acts like a regular participant offering you answers. Here’s short video of it in action:

It’s these abilities of robots to infuse a wave with rich features which could prove useful in a clinical setting. Let me explain with a sci-fi hypothetical.

For purposes of this example we will set aside HIPAA & other privacy matters. Tall order, I understand – but I want us to envision what’s possible. Imagine a wave created by a physician in which she assembles key data about a patient’s admission, including media such as videos or images of diagnostic or surgical procedures.

Around those data elements, our physician could invite colleagues into the wave for clinical collaboration, opinion, etc. Similar processes are already being used in some facilities, but the next part is where Wave’s protocol gets interesting.

Remember the BingyBot? Now imagine introducing a clinical bot which is powerful enough to provide pertinent information to enhance the entire collaborative effort. Let’s call it ClinyBot. Say the bot can access research data or even link to relevant clinical trials for which the patient/case relates.

In essence, the bot would act as another participant to say something like Given the set of data I’m seeing, you may find this article on an experimental anti-neoplastic agent of interest. Or It seems like this patient may be a possible candidate for this clinical trial. Or Dr. Smith had these thoughts about this patient’s condition last week. You get the idea.

ClinyBot would “infuse” the clinical collaboration wave without being intrusive. And the bot could even be modified by the clinical collaborators during the wave according to their needs. Rather than clinicians pulling away from their patient data screen to perform research via another interface, the research can be done within the wave in real-time: either by manually invoking a particular function or letting robots do some of the work.

This is a new kind of collaboration because not only are human beings collaborating real-time around the same problem, a sophisticated piece of technology becomes a collaborator as well. We already have a robotic collaborator we use everyday: Google Search.

Yes, It’s Sci-Fi-y But So Was The Web

Does Google Wave represent a significant step forward in collaboration? I’m reserving judgment until I see development of its API – the current interface does not support proper filtering, notifying or other ways to curate and manage the copious flow of information.

Nevertheless, Wave tests users’ willingness to adapt communication skills to new media. It would be nice to see at least a mock case illustration of clinicians playing in a sandbox.

Of course ClinyBot itself is a figment of sci-fi imagination currently, but the thought-experiment demonstrates why clinicians may want to invest a little time understanding what the underlying technology of Google Wave may do for enhancing collaboration – and ultimately improving patient care.

If this is your field then do this: take a snapshot of where we are today in clinical collaboration and look out through the lens I’m offering; then find some realistic place in between and start building tomorrow today.

PS: This post started out of this wave (which, for now, you only see if you have a Wave account).

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Google Wave is one of the latest products to be rolling out of the never-ending stream of real-time social media technologies. I’ve been experimenting with Wave for a little over a week and still have much to learn.

Wave may be an impressive collaboration platform for small groups but it is not a terribly great public social medium – at least not just in its present form. If developers can build filtering and other utilities on top of Wave’s API, then the protocol may eventually empower new kinds of social media.

Here’s a little test I’m conducting. Below is list of several healthcare people on Google Wave initiated by @ahier. If you have a Google Wave account, you will be able to see the embed. If you don’t have one, you’re out of luck. Sorry! But bookmark this page and come back when you do and you’ll see what this wave embed looks like and get a sneak peak of what can be done with Wave.

If you don’t have an account, here’s a screenshot of part of what the embed looks like:

Google Wave Embed

Currently, you need an invitation to Google Wave. Stay tuned for more about Google Wave by subscribing to this blog. Hopefully by then you’ll have a Wave account and won’t feel so teased.

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CAUTION: The video below is not safe for work or children or for those easily offended by George Carlin’s Seven.

I don’t like the phrase Social Media. Do you? Maybe you do, but I’m sick of it. Why? Because it’s a term that’s hyped and overused and oversold and largely vague. And yet those of us who are interested in online social technologies and their relevance to enterprises, health care and our lives in general almost have no choice but to use it. So it’s with much amusement to see the video below circulating on Twitter.

I suppose because of my blogging about the technology and marketing, organizations find me in Google and approach me to help them with their online business needs. Much of what I do is free because I enjoy helping others who haven’t been paying attention to what happens on the web and can’t imagine taking pay for setting up a Twitter account. What I find, however, is businesses need orientation and problem-solving: it’s not social media that’s their problem – it’s their, well, problems. You can learn these tools and your own (and in my opinion, you have no excuse not to). When the right kind of client decides I’m the right kind of person to help them out, the value is recognized. Don’t pay for free.

Anyway, here’s the video. It’s hilarious. More importantly, there’s truth here about the monetization of common sense. Enjoy.

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If you’re new to the strange world of social media, you’re probably not tired about discussion of ROI of intangibles like new media. For some of us who live in the echo chamber, it can be a rather tiring nuisance; yet it’s a matter which merits the attention of enterprises exploring their relationship with the Web.

For me, it’s a mostly humorous exercise. Not that I”m opposed to metrics – not by any means: once an accountant, always an accountant. From my perspective, however, quantity and quality are like trough an wave. You might say that in Business, I’m a Taoist.

Earlier today, my friend @NickDawson shared a template he uses as a dashboard to demonstrate ROI. In accordance with my reply to Nick, here’s one of mine (view in fullscreen):

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Google is always working on new products. Many go nowhere, while others become darlings of web technologies like Gmail. Google’s latest entrance onto the Social Web its SideWiki. It’s not so much a wiki as it is an imposed commenting system. Whether you want it or not, SideWiki effectively enables anyone in the world to comment on your website.

Not only can people comment on your site without your permission but they can also share their comments via email, Twitter or FaceBook (as of today). In other words comments in SideWiki can be dispersed and distributed and Re-Tweeted and Liked across the web at the speed of light. If your organization has a website, you probably want to brace yourself for a bitch slap: whatever “control” you thought you had about your message is clearly gone. Controlling your response (and being ahead of the game by being the best at what you do) is about all you have.

WHAT IS GOOGLE SIDEWIKI?

I’ll let Google explain to you it’s claim about SideWiki.

In order for SideWiki to be used, it has to be downloaded and used as a toolbar. Right now, it seems to work with FireFox but as Google refines and evolves the product, we could expect to see the tool proliferate in use.

I tested out SideWiki on a post by Seth Godin regarding his Brands in Public project. I chose his post for two reasons: Seth has comments on his blog turned off (he’s remarkable with email exchanges with his readers though) and SideWiki demonstrates how little control brands have anymore in “controlling messages”. If you downloaded the tool bar, you can see my SideWiki comment on his post. Alternatively you can see my comment on my Google Profile (it just appeared there under a Sidewiki tab – Google didn’t offer this as an option, nor did it inform me it posted my Sidewiki comments on my Google Profile – but I’m sure I consented somehow in Google’s TOS).

An important feature to note is that comments on SideWiki aren’t necessarily in order of appearance – i.e. reverse chronological, as in traditional blog commenting. Rather, Google’s mystery algorithm sorts out the order of comments. I also suppose Google will somehow address spam. For more on this, see Danny Sullivan’s post.

So we not only have an imposed commenting system, we have – in some sense – Google’s algorithmic logic being applied to your website in the way comments appear. Which is to say: Google influences the volume of influencers‘ voices. You’re not just dealing with comments streaming down a straight temporal line: community voting on comments and Google’s ranking system of those comments work together to determine the pitch and tone and loudness of comments.

Finally, questions remain about SideWiki’s ramifications on search results. Clearly, there’s a lot to absorb here, which is one more reason to establish best online practices and keep focused on principled online communications.

SO WHAT?

I don’t know if SideWiki has a future or not. SideWiki isn’t the first attempt at web annotation. But now that social networking and services are growing in their adoption, we can expect to see the proliferation of distributed messaging. Whether SideWiki fails or succeeds, the technology it represents is here to stay in some form.

Organizations which already have a web presence or those who are just now planning to enter the social web, now have an even tougher task ahead of them. And yet, for every challenge or danger lies opportunity. Those organizations which not only can face the challenges that mass distributed messaging create but also leverage the opportunities will fare well in the coming years. Organizations won’t die just because they ignore social media – but ignoring these technologies and communities is now a matter of Risk Management at the least.

What I find especially interesting here is this: how many organizations will even know about this? How many hospitals or Pharma companies or widget-makers will have hundreds of comments (positive or negative) right on their website (for all intents and purposes) and not even know about them? How embarrassing could that become?

HOW TO BRACE FOR A COMMUNICATIONS BITCH SLAP

In a nutshell, individuals and organizations are going to have to endure a process of radical acceptance: the days of mechanically generating attention via advertisements are giving way to a century of organically captivating fandom.

I would categorize two approaches to dealing with commenting systems like SideWiki: the Philosophical and the Practical.

Philosophical recommendations:

1. Meditate. Seriously. Go out into a field or sit under a shady tree and focus on your breathing, reflecting on all of the marketing principles and assumptions you’ve made since college and over the course of your career. It’s not too late for a re-view and re-think. (And never too early for a layoff.)
2. Radically Accept. We all want control. (I was an ICU nurse – ergo I’m a control freak, so I understand how hard this one is.) The fact is, about the only thing we can control is our mind: how we view things, what we decide, what we say and how we say it. Once you forgo the controlling-mentality, it frees you up for the important stuff, such as: clarity, creativity, fearlessness, discipline and focus.

Practical recommendations:

1. Download the SideWiki toolbar and monitor for activity on your site – even if you don’t have a blog or are philosophically opposed to it.
2. Set a policy (a simple one) on how your organization responds to comments.
3. Whoever does your responding should know how to communicate, display grace under pressure and criticism and who understands the various modes of communications.
4. Keep up-to-date with Google’s project by following it on Twitter.
5. Currently, SideWiki doesn’t appear to offer a notification system, so be prepared to comb through comments (or monitor Twitter for your brand mentions).
6. Keep honing your online communications skills: if you don’t already blog, consider doing so if only for the discipline and skills that come along with blogging.

It remains to be seen how popular this little feature will become: as is often the case in the Sillicon Valley hyper-echo-chamber, the uber-geeks tend to overstate the appeal of shiny new toys. Regardless, if you haven’t learned the lesson about how to prevail in a chaotic world, this is your chance. At least you’ll be able to endure and overcome the inevitable bitch slaps that you’ll sustain now and again.

HOW SIDEWIKI COULD EVOLVE

A last point to make is the future of SideWiki (or similar tools): the integration of other social features which enhance its powers.

For instance, I realized while writing this post that you could comment on a Twitter Status page using SideWiki. If Google added a FriendFeed-like commenting system, one could easily start a chat around a particular tweet – currently Twitter chats take place using hashtags and clients like TweetChat. Imagine configuring SideWiki not only as a Twitter client but also as a web-wide social device for curating, sharing and conversing. Click on the screenshot below:

SideWiki on a Twitter status page

It’s integrations like these that usually lead to the next big thing. All the more reason for organizations to keep current with the social web – and for hiring and cultivating the people who excel in the useful and innovative applications of these sorts of technologies.

Google, so far, hasn’t done well in the social front – at least not thus far. If FaceBook were to exploit their recent FriendFeed acquisition and make a play for a similar real-time web-wide commenting and sharing system, we could see the emergence of a new kind of war: Google has the edge in search and advertising, Facebook in social media and Twitter in real-time messaging.

At any rate, the future is open for your organization to consider. Two posts I’d recommend you read right now on Google’s SideWiki are Andrew Keen’s SideWiki: Google Colonial Sideswipe and Jeremiah Owyang’s Google SideWiki Shifts Power to Consumers – Away From Corporate Websites. Both men have wholly different opinions about the fundamental nature of the web – and both are probably right about Google SideWiki.

Oh, and you can comment on this post using SideWiki and then tweet it to the rest of the world. Let’s see if I can keep up with the graffiti.

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I gave two presentations for the National Association of Healthcare Communicators in Chicago, Priming Healthcare for Twitter and Google Is Watching You: Building Your Reputation on Google.

Healthcare communicators, and the industry in general, are increasingly learning the importance of having an effective presence on the web. Over the last several months, after getting out and meeting people in organizations who are working hard to raise internal awareness of online media, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that those organizations who have champions who can communicate the value of social technologies are the ones who are going to thrive in the 21st Century. This week’s conference reinforced the belief that such people are out their who are sincerely interested in leveraging those values.

Here are the two presentations I gave yesterday and this morning.

PRIMING HEALTHCARE FOR TWITTER (UPDATED)

GOOGLE IS WATCHING YOU: BUILDING YOUR REPUTATION ON GOOGLE

How successful have your efforts to convey the value of social networking to the leaders of your organization been so far? What are your challenges? Where are the resistance points? Are they related to awareness of how these tools work? Are they related to culture and organizational philosophy? When discussing how social media fits into the ecosystem of your organization, what’s your message? Are you being heard?

Let me know here in the comments. You can follow the tweets at the conference on #MSW as well as find some very bright people in the industry to connect with.

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Google Reader is becoming more than just a reader. With it’s addition of social features like comments and Likes, it’s taking on more of a social-aggregation service. It’s not perfect, nor do its social elements make a great social networking service. Still, its search options continue to expand and third-party applications make sharing easier.

So far, Google Reader offers two features which allow you to follow the lifestreams of other users and burn feeds for searches in other services. Currently, the options are limited, but since they both include Twitter, you may consider using Reader to house your monitoring activities (not to mention you can backup your own Twitter statuses, since Twitter at this time isn’t very reliable for that).

Here’s a quick screencast demonstrating more of Google Reader’s search features (open in full-screen for better viewing):

By the way, I set up a Twitter account – @PhilFeed – as a place to port my shared items and other findings around the web. Rather than blasting my followers on @PhilBaumann, you can opt in to follow @PhilFeed and you’ll get those items in your tweet stream (jut know that it’s not a very social account).

I’m curious to see if Google Reader will add more services, like FriendFeed or Posterous.

Are these features useful to you?

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