Recently coworker Noel and I were invited over to the lower Manhattan digs of PubSub. They’ve built a pretty sweet system for following topics of interest as they are mentioned on the web. Rather than trying to be Google or Technorati (indexing and storing the entire web/blogosphere), they’re taking a differnet approach to “finding” information. PubSub subscribes to pretty much any non-spam RSS feed they can find (blogs, newspapers, etc.). Users define “watch lists” for topics they are interested in. PubSub runs the feeds through a “matching engine” that quickly searches the content against every watchlist, marking any matches.

So, for example, let’s say you’re a little self obsessed. You could create a PubSub watch list for your name. From that point on, whenever your name appears on a feed that PubSub follows, it will show up on your notification list. There is even a browser extension that will notify you of new matches in almost real time.

Given that a huge part of politics and governing is managing information, and that I am currently working in the MIS department of the Senate Minority Conference, this kind of tool is something we’re interested in. Our coordinators follow closely media mentions of senators and important issues. We’re hoping soon to integrate PubSub into a web-based system for helping track mentions. In the long run, I also hope using PubSub-like services we can also get candidates/senators and their staffs to begin to engage in more of the online conversation.

The PubSub folks also introduced us to Topix, which scrapes local newspapers that don’t otherwise publishes feeds; unfortunately, PubSub won’t scrape their feeds since they’re considered “3rd party.”

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Geekery, Politics, Nonprofits, Media, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.