Theme Parks of Future: The Food Museum

I recently caught up with a winter hibernation guide to imbibing in the stylized aura of shimmering Mad Men cocktails. It reminded me of the lingerings of respectable grown-ups drinking with impunity. They maintain their own obliviousness when the tumbler is shaken by the vaunted fictions of the camera. And what of their children? Are we still smarting from their own pungent tipsiness?

What characters sense and taste in memories and cinema is the ultimate stirring. It is an enterprise bursting to infect the communications pathways of entire marketing planets. Ladies and gents: from our gaping doors to your devouring eyes we bring you the Museum of Food.

That's the taste we smell through our sights -- the entrees and spirits captured in the evocative restaurants of film and the eat-in kitchens of classic sitcoms. The Food Network, the literal version of eye candy, has spawned a foodie offspring on most of its rivaling channels. The contents of those 2D sauce pans and table settings jettison chefs into a select crowd of scientific entertainers. Imagine when you swap out the kitchen help for the celebrated dining scenes, staffed by fully established franchises of fame. Who needs to reheat yesterday's leftovers when you're rolling out the specials on today's menu?

Knowing one's audience is to understand its taste for celebrity appetites. The campaign is zipless in its execution. No introductions are necessary. The script writes itself. The credit goes to that recipe -- the one insisted on by the audience. Which audience? Do you need to ask, dear? We're all on a first name basis here.

The familiar ingredients free us to portion control our connections to food events (formerly known as meals). They situate us in places (formerly known as physical locations). These seasonings could only be conjured up by our shared emotional histories with the actors we park under our cultural limelights.

So what does this have to do with more posts about museums and food?

A food museum would be the showcase for the re-enactment of celebrity meal scenes. From a tourism angle the concept is eminently franchisable. Each licensed property answers to the expectation of aromatic exhibitionism. The gift shop is the cafeteria. The advertising and the photo gallery are one in the same. Each chapter would festoon their cultural watersheds, local flavors, and neighborhoods of community food rituals. In effect, the first food chain set to endless variation. That's the pull of culinary sensuality in the food court of public opinion.

How could this play out theme-by-theme among the planet's food enthusiasts in the great dining halls of any Cosmo city of our vast global village?

• Science wing: Food as medicine, nutritional supplements (friend or faux), organics v. industrial farming ...


• Sports arena: Ticketed bake-offs between master chefs, gaming concessions since the Romans ...


• Spiritual chapel: Biblical scenes and customary rituals ...


• Fashion runway: Dinner jackets, cocktail dresses, bulking up of American XXL ...


• Design pavilion: Interiors of watering holes from neighborhood taverns to western saloons, and Irish pubs ...


• Philanthropy: A percent of the proceeds go to local food pantries ...

Apart from the charitable donations I haven't landed a single loaded insinuation on the inflammatory minefields of food policy. Sure I'm letting obesity suit up as its own fashion statement. But do you hear me leafleting here for animal rights? How about the subsidizing of empty, cheap, diabetic-inducing calories? We're going to have to take that fight outside our 501c3 status, food museum goers!

We're going to have to stock those future flame wars in the freezer section and score brownie points on what we know. That would not be hunger but appetites -- especially the gurgling bellies of stars from stage, screen, tables and bar stools. Hey bub -- I can still see their mugs on the wall while I'm waiting for my own table to clear.

Taskonomy -- Where Resource Meets Resourcefulness

How does an information architect get their IP connoisseurs to feast on delectable helpings of choice information?

This morning we had an interface designer in to look at our search outputs. We showed him lots of buckets brimming with appointed rounds of patterns and hit counts that speak to the taste, smell, and texture formed by tens of thousands of documents and list items simmering in the stew pot called SharePoint.

But as orderly and configurable as each displayable facet, this designer made me realize the ball of confusion that awaits the untrained eye. No matter how complete the documentation, each bucket spills into a claustrophobic interface. Point and consider isn't quite so convincing as point and click. Every patch of white space already claimed by some rankable re-ordering of some expandable (if not expendable) subtext.

I'd like to think that we stock the best content store that any interface chef could conceivably conjure in devising the smartest possible holding tank for knowledge transfer.

I own that with equal parts frustration and pride. Pride speaks to the hard-won realization that we are not stockpiling content for the sake of collecting it. It's calibrated, populated, and ready for serving. Each artifact passes more than a knowing glance that it's intended for re-assemblages to support some new revenue-bearing endeavor.

The frustration is that our basis for action stumbles in a poorly designed interface. In fact our design is about as kludgy as our metadata is immaculate. Why are we so late to this table? Perhaps there is no rapid translation on intranets from look-and-feel to shop-and-spend? Then again we've squandered resources straying off the SharePoint reservation because of our unwelcoming and cluttered interface.

What we've executed on is metadata and the assertion that an action-based taxonomy is foundational. But the front door that swings open to users can dignify the underlying structure by exposing the proper detail at the moment of instigation -- that user becomes a producer by synthesizing those not-so-raw materials into a refined and unique deliverable.

Whether the end game is simple (the completed form is in my out-box) or glorified (IP creation), it takes the marriage of taxonomy and design to deliver a taskonomy -- that stretchable dimension between what's been conceived and what will become conceivable.

Taskonomy -- Where Resource Meets Resourcefulness

How does an information architect get their IP connoisseurs to feast on delectable helpings of choice information?

This morning we had an interface designer in to look at our search outputs. We showed him lots of buckets brimming with appointed rounds of patterns and hit counts that speak to the taste, smell, and texture formed by tens of thousands of documents and list items simmering in the stew pot called SharePoint.

But as orderly and configurable as each displayable facet, this designer made me realize the ball of confusion that awaits the untrained eye. No matter how complete the documentation, each bucket spills into a claustrophobic interface. Point and consider isn't quite so convincing as point and click. Every patch of white space already claimed by some rankable re-ordering of some expandable (if not expendable) subtext.

I'd like to think that we stock the best content store that any interface chef could conceivably conjure in devising the smartest possible holding tank for knowledge transfer.

I own that with equal parts frustration and pride. Pride speaks to the hard-won realization that we are not stockpiling content for the sake of collecting it. It's calibrated, populated, and ready for serving. Each artifact passes more than a knowing glance that it's intended for re-assemblages to support some new revenue-bearing endeavor.

The frustration is that our basis for action stumbles in a poorly designed interface. In fact our design is about as kludgy as our metadata is immaculate. Why are we so late to this table? Perhaps there is no rapid translation on intranets from look-and-feel to shop-and-spend? Then again we've squandered resources straying off the SharePoint reservation because of our unwelcoming and cluttered interface.

What we've executed on is metadata and the assertion that an action-based taxonomy is foundational. But the front door that swings open to users can dignify the underlying structure by exposing the proper detail at the moment of instigation -- that user becomes a producer by synthesizing those not-so-raw materials into a refined and unique deliverable.

Whether the end game is simple (the completed form is in my out-box) or glorified (IP creation), it takes the marriage of taxonomy and design to deliver a taskonomy -- that stretchable dimension between what's been conceived and what will become conceivable.

Newssift: Take No Surprises

In my professional estimation the leading cause of long walks off short search piers is a direct but elusive info-quest:

I speak not of panning for gold but dishing for dirt.

After all, the impulse being served here sits at the table of avoidance. And that dining guest we're trying to scratch off the guest list goes by the name of "surprise." We do not wish for surprise to be seated at our tables. If they arrive despite our best efforts we need to be sure we can respond to the dining conversation that surprise may throw our way.

Enter -- Newssift.

Newssift is a media coverage engine delivered on Nstein data mining technology and fueled and branded by the Financial Times. The sentiment analysis capabilities aren't new. It's been around now for about a decade and I date my own exposure back to extraction tools like Xerox Parc-bred Inxight and SRA's NetOwl.

Full disclosure: I consulted to Cymfony back in 2001 when the sentiment teams to beat were Biz360 and Intelliseek. All were search solutions seeking a business problem they could partner into a growth segment. All came with hefty price tags and too much tinkering to package them as standard fare business intelligence applications. Also, customers don't buy growth segments unless they're pre-IPO shareholders. The fact my contract came up for renewal on 9/11 closes that loop.

What's new here is that pricey is now free and this baby hums along without much help. In fact you could be out in some elliptical trance orbiting an obtuse subject and still hit pay dirt -- lots to dish and even a score quantifying the negativity that sparks that take-no-surprises impulse. For example I key in one choice four letter word:

corn

I find out that corn is not a place -- imagine that, no Corn, IA zip code to be had. I also scoop up a 'Cornelius' and a 'Cornwall' in the first and last name mappings and there are no business topics. But then I eye the themes tab and pause to slurp on the corn syrup oozing from the media pile-on for HFCS ("high fructose corn syrup"). Now my contextual moorings are chomping down on the correlated clusters of people, organizations, places, and related themes that wash out in the buzz (Cousin Michael leads the HFCS people hit parade with 7 mentions).

The most gluttonous outcome for a big corn hunter though is a click-through on the 21% of the media pie carved out to be negative coverage. A quick inventory of the body counts show slackening demand for the product, lawsuits on the horizon, and bent out-of-shape nutritionists planting doubtful stories like "Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?" In the movie version this is where the camera pans to the left and right of newspapers falling on doorsteps. Calendar pages become unhinged like the crumbling fortunes of corn empires near and far.

Newssift summation: I'm impressed with the narrative one can tell with little forethought or background knowledge on moving and complex search targets -- especially the ones we don't want to be dining on or with anytime soon.

Newssift: Take No Surprises

In my professional estimation the leading cause of long walks off short search piers is a direct but elusive info-quest:

I speak not of panning for gold but dishing for dirt.

After all, the impulse being served here sits at the table of avoidance. And that dining guest we're trying to scratch off the guest list goes by the name of "surprise." We do not wish for surprise to be seated at our tables. If they arrive despite our best efforts we need to be sure we can respond to the dining conversation that surprise may throw our way.

Enter -- Newssift.

Newssift is a media coverage engine delivered on Nstein data mining technology and fueled and branded by the Financial Times. The sentiment analysis capabilities aren't new. It's been around now for about a decade and I date my own exposure back to extraction tools like Xerox Parc-bred Inxight and SRA's NetOwl.

Full disclosure: I consulted to Cymfony back in 2001 when the sentiment teams to beat were Biz360 and Intelliseek. All were search solutions seeking a business problem they could partner into a growth segment. All came with hefty price tags and too much tinkering to package them as standard fare business intelligence applications. Also, customers don't buy growth segments unless they're pre-IPO shareholders. The fact my contract came up for renewal on 9/11 closes that loop.

What's new here is that pricey is now free and this baby hums along without much help. In fact you could be out in some elliptical trance orbiting an obtuse subject and still hit pay dirt -- lots to dish and even a score quantifying the negativity that sparks that take-no-surprises impulse. For example I key in one choice four letter word:

corn

I find out that corn is not a place -- imagine that, no Corn, IA zip code to be had. I also scoop up a 'Cornelius' and a 'Cornwall' in the first and last name mappings and there are no business topics. But then I eye the themes tab and pause to slurp on the corn syrup oozing from the media pile-on for HFCS ("high fructose corn syrup"). Now my contextual moorings are chomping down on the correlated clusters of people, organizations, places, and related themes that wash out in the buzz (Cousin Michael leads the HFCS people hit parade with 7 mentions).

The most gluttonous outcome for a big corn hunter though is a click-through on the 21% of the media pie carved out to be negative coverage. A quick inventory of the body counts show slackening demand for the product, lawsuits on the horizon, and bent out-of-shape nutritionists planting doubtful stories like "Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?" In the movie version this is where the camera pans to the left and right of newspapers falling on doorsteps. Calendar pages become unhinged like the crumbling fortunes of corn empires near and far.

Newssift summation: I'm impressed with the narrative one can tell with little forethought or background knowledge on moving and complex search targets -- especially the ones we don't want to be dining on or with anytime soon.

Measuring the Impact of Thought Pieces

A new acquaintance recently published a provocative piece addressing the subject of social enterprise in an influential business media outlet. He was curious what kind of post-publication life his article was commanding in terms of press pickup, social bookmarking, reader feedback, and the resulting footprint of organizations and peer-experts linking to it on their own sites.

Most of the territory covered is aimed at the vain anxiety our names and effects will go public but escape our notice. There's more than a few utilities designed to consolidate our social media profiles: "our interfaces don't miss a single interaction, blah, blah, blah."

What I liked about this exercise was that it wasn't email or password-based. The only detail was the article itself. This is actually plenty if we're pursuing the power of an idea (as opposed to the browser used by our site visitors).

As far as recipes go the easiest and most literal way to trace an article on the web is to perform a link analysis. To do this you save the URL and then see who's linked to it.

A second more effective way is to allow for your keywords to appear in the "anchor." Anchor means the words that the linking party uses to describe the page it's linking to. As you'll see this gives a more thorough result -- including some cheeky tweets.

Capturing the social media piece is a little more fleeting than garnering page links. As we saw in the Yahoo example we're limited to the exact URL. URLs are becoming less static over time -- especially as they age and publishers pull them offline. This largely limits the amount of conjecture you'll get. It's not that Dashboard to end all buzz factors.

Again it helps to be less specific but there is no definitive source. Here's another example of a selective media universe where first and last name are the only terms in play.

When the promise of comprehensive profiling turns into the scattershot footprints of puny indexes I do what any rationale researcher does. I retreat back to Google. This is a Google query that focuses only on a news aggregation tool called Digg.

... and on Facebook.

Finally, here are two novel visuals for depicting links. The first from Google captures all links into ft.com that mention the author's name.

The second is not a search interface but a multi-dimensional view of recent media generation on the topic called Silo Breaker -- not specific to the original article but a big picture view to rival the most panoramic thought piece.

Happy fishing.

Measuring the Impact of Thought Pieces

A new acquaintance recently published a provocative piece addressing the subject of social enterprise in an influential business media outlet. He was curious what kind of post-publication life his article was commanding in terms of press pickup, social bookmarking, reader feedback, and the resulting footprint of organizations and peer-experts linking to it on their own sites.

Most of the territory covered is aimed at the vain anxiety our names and effects will go public but escape our notice. There's more than a few utilities designed to consolidate our social media profiles: "our interfaces don't miss a single interaction, blah, blah, blah."

What I liked about this exercise was that it wasn't email or password-based. The only detail was the article itself. This is actually plenty if we're pursuing the power of an idea (as opposed to the browser used by our site visitors).

As far as recipes go the easiest and most literal way to trace an article on the web is to perform a link analysis. To do this you save the URL and then see who's linked to it.

A second more effective way is to allow for your keywords to appear in the "anchor." Anchor means the words that the linking party uses to describe the page it's linking to. As you'll see this gives a more thorough result -- including some cheeky tweets.

Capturing the social media piece is a little more fleeting than garnering page links. As we saw in the Yahoo example we're limited to the exact URL. URLs are becoming less static over time -- especially as they age and publishers pull them offline. This largely limits the amount of conjecture you'll get. It's not that Dashboard to end all buzz factors.

Again it helps to be less specific but there is no definitive source. Here's another example of a selective media universe where first and last name are the only terms in play.

When the promise of comprehensive profiling turns into the scattershot footprints of puny indexes I do what any rationale researcher does. I retreat back to Google. This is a Google query that focuses only on a news aggregation tool called Digg.

... and on Facebook.

Finally, here are two novel visuals for depicting links. The first from Google captures all links into ft.com that mention the author's name.

The second is not a search interface but a multi-dimensional view of recent media generation on the topic called Silo Breaker -- not specific to the original article but a big picture view to rival the most panoramic thought piece.

Happy fishing.

Where There's a Wil There's a .Wav

This just in from the prolific Fab Four archivist Wil Montgomery* of Bobolink Lane in leafy suburban Milwaukee -- a recipe for transferring videos to MP3s. In lay geek terms what kind of transformation are we talking about? Wil is addressing how to make an *.mp3 from a Youtube *.flv file ("flash video) or *.swf file (shockwave file).

The process has all the vicarious thrills of flying the good housekeeping seal over a pirated ship in choppy commercial waters.

Simple:

1. Right click Internet Explorer Icon


2. Choose: Internet properties


3. Select Settings


4. Select View Files


5. Click on column to sort by last accessed


6. There is the last file viewed on Youtube (usually 3-20 MB)


7. Drag that file to your music folder (if it is not *.flv file type, add that to the end of file name)

Last but not least:

1. Get a free "FLV file converter" from download.com
2. Use it on the file to convert to *.avi or *.mpeg
3. Get a music editor
4. Strip out the audio ** This happens automatically when file is loaded into to the music editor. Wil endorses Magix Music Editor
5. Save as *mp3
6. Transfer to your player

Pictured: Free flv converter

------------------------------------

* Not Wil M. of the Alabama Beekeeepers Association

Where There's a Wil There's a .Wav

This just in from the prolific Fab Four archivist Wil Montgomery* of Bobolink Lane in leafy suburban Milwaukee -- a recipe for transferring videos to MP3s. In lay geek terms what kind of transformation are we talking about? Wil is addressing how to make an *.mp3 from a Youtube *.flv file ("flash video) or *.swf file (shockwave file).

The process has all the vicarious thrills of flying the good housekeeping seal over a pirated ship in choppy commercial waters.

Simple:

1. Right click Internet Explorer Icon


2. Choose: Internet properties


3. Select Settings


4. Select View Files


5. Click on column to sort by last accessed


6. There is the last file viewed on Youtube (usually 3-20 MB)


7. Drag that file to your music folder (if it is not *.flv file type, add that to the end of file name)

Last but not least:

1. Get a free "FLV file converter" from download.com
2. Use it on the file to convert to *.avi or *.mpeg
3. Get a music editor
4. Strip out the audio ** This happens automatically when file is loaded into to the music editor. Wil endorses Magix Music Editor
5. Save as *mp3
6. Transfer to your player

Pictured: Free flv converter

------------------------------------

* Not Wil M. of the Alabama Beekeeepers Association

Wordle Play in Pictures

One option for visual knowledge representation is an oft-tagged utility we've been using in a cloud-enabled intranet that we're now piloting called Wordle.

Wordle is not a substitute for plot-pointing social neurons like the one referenced by Valdis Krebs on a recent SIKM discussion. But it does create visual maps that could be applied to a community of practice wiki, job postings, or any other transactional undertaking worthy of tracking. The tool will generate a tag cloud for any RSS feed you throw at it. You can then re-stage the representation as a widget in your social media of choice.

For example our business pipeline contains a list of prospects. Each company's recent maneuvers generates a newsfeed which is then captured as a word picture.

Here's a work-in-progress posted today called "Budget Trouble."

This sequence is not automated. The cloud does not update -- lest fees, terms, conditions and enterprise edition headaches would surely ensue.

Bravo to the developer, Jonathan Feinberg.

Wordle Play in Pictures

One option for visual knowledge representation is an oft-tagged utility we've been using in a cloud-enabled intranet that we're now piloting called Wordle.

Wordle is not a substitute for plot-pointing social neurons like the one referenced by Valdis Krebs on a recent SIKM discussion. But it does create visual maps that could be applied to a community of practice wiki, job postings, or any other transactional undertaking worthy of tracking. The tool will generate a tag cloud for any RSS feed you throw at it. You can then re-stage the representation as a widget in your social media of choice.

For example our business pipeline contains a list of prospects. Each company's recent maneuvers generates a newsfeed which is then captured as a word picture.

Here's a work-in-progress posted today called "Budget Trouble."

This sequence is not automated. The cloud does not update -- lest fees, terms, conditions and enterprise edition headaches would surely ensue.

Bravo to the developer, Jonathan Feinberg.

Twitter: Thought Bubbles Bursting into Messy Spaghetti

I've been on Twitter now for the past two weeks and here are my initial, unvarnished, naive impressions:

* I did not "get" that Twitter Search is deliberately bad and the whole point is to slog through the profiles of virtual passer-bys
* The effect of the speech bubble ambience is directly from the film Wings of Desire
* I am still hopeful that IM communion can happen but refuse to tether a Blackberry

On point 3 I tried the following statement:

Boston MA "days ago"

The parenthetical was designed to filter out casual or dormant twits and attract the more Type A participants. It doesn't work. So I qualified the location with...

consulting
jobs
investigations

Verdict: stemming is turned on.

One of my BU students is looking for a local handwriting analyst. I'm too focused on the 50 Boston area strangers I'm now "following" to even attempt a Googling of her request.

Even if the bubbles don't expand to include an actual dialog I can see the value around the patterns:

* Over-representations of non-Geek networkers (especially PR)
* Ability to store strings-of-consciousness for reuse in some future recipe
* Shear gestalt of surveilling the mental maelstroms of the twittering mobs on a "want" to know basis

Need-to-know-basis need not apply.

Twitter: Thought Bubbles Bursting into Messy Spaghetti

I've been on Twitter now for the past two weeks and here are my initial, unvarnished, naive impressions:

* I did not "get" that Twitter Search is deliberately bad and the whole point is to slog through the profiles of virtual passer-bys
* The effect of the speech bubble ambience is directly from the film Wings of Desire
* I am still hopeful that IM communion can happen but refuse to tether a Blackberry

On point 3 I tried the following statement:

Boston MA "days ago"

The parenthetical was designed to filter out casual or dormant twits and attract the more Type A participants. It doesn't work. So I qualified the location with...

consulting
jobs
investigations

Verdict: stemming is turned on.

One of my BU students is looking for a local handwriting analyst. I'm too focused on the 50 Boston area strangers I'm now "following" to even attempt a Googling of her request.

Even if the bubbles don't expand to include an actual dialog I can see the value around the patterns:

* Over-representations of non-Geek networkers (especially PR)
* Ability to store strings-of-consciousness for reuse in some future recipe
* Shear gestalt of surveilling the mental maelstroms of the twittering mobs on a "want" to know basis

Need-to-know-basis need not apply.

Use Case: RSS Readers as News Radars

Here's a current use case to track "events on the ground" through Feed Demon. There have been reported instances in the media recently of attempts to confuse or intimidate potential voters, particularly new or youth voters. College age voters are traditionally the most under-represented part of the electorate.

Whether it's due to cynicism or naivete a third more concrete factor (inexperience) makes this group prone to believing falsehoods and misleading statements aimed at creating doubt about their residential status. Ahem. So participation in their democracy will jeopardize their financial aid or even come back to haunt their parents during next year's tax season. What could be more American than not voting?

One way to monitor attempts at voter suppression around college campuses is to use a broadly descriptive search statement on Google News:

location:nh college students registration election

You'll find a piece of syntax snuck in here. It helps us focus exclusively on content sources on Google News originating from the Granite State. New Hampshire is my location of choice as the nearest swing state to me with area colleges signifying the swingiest of voting blocs.

You'll also note that the semantics of this search statement are not in anyway prejudicial or skewed towards a certain outcome. Any attempt to tune this search at the outset would overly constrain the result set (n=109) as of yesterday's test run. In other words a more effective content analysis occurs by introducing results-based logic once the feed appears in Feed Demon.

That's where you can construct "Watches" to pull instances of terms like:

* suppression
* fraud
* misleading
* confusion, etc.

...from the New Hampshire tracking folder where these hits reside.

Don't forget to sample several of the more questionable hits. They will acquaint you with terms you hadn't considered or steer you away from outcomes that are clearly off-the-mark from your search objectives.

The second stage of tweaking your RSS reader as news radar is to harvest the feeds sprouting from the sources included in your search results. Gathering up the list is easier than confirming each source's deployment or policy regarding RSS. The range is huge! Some papers package their outputs by sections of the paper. Some don't. Some dispense with RSS altogether, figuring that it will only cannibalize their beleaguered media empires.

There are a couple of alternatives to site hopping in search of the bright, orange RSS icon. One work-around is to include the inurl: syntax in the regular Google web search:

inurl:rss OR inurl:xml [insert semantics from Google News search] intitle:new intitle:hampshire

This workaround should get you a pre-confirmed list of feeds although it doesn't guarantee that they originate from ground zero live-free-or-eat-granite country.

Another way is to work from the colleges themselves as news sources. The very first hit I pulled yesterday yielded this list of Students for McCain backers by their academic institutions:

State Co-Chairs

Greg Boguslavsky -- Dartmouth College
Shaun Doherty -- Rivier College

University Chairs

Lianna French -- New England College
Joe Doiron -- New England College
Brendan Bickford -- New Hampshire Technical Institute
Trevor Chandler -- Plymouth State University
Brittany Puleo -- Rivier College

Julie Kraus -- Southern New Hampshire University
Regina Federico -- St. Anselm College
Allison Krause -- University of New Hampshire
Brandon Mancuso -- Franklin Pierce College
Dasha Bushmakin -- Keene State College
Ryan Dorris -- Daniel Webster College

In closing the follow-up would be to Google each college with the inurl syntax, filtering the pages that can be used to build your tracking folder in Feed Demon.

Use Case: RSS Readers as News Radars

Here's a current use case to track "events on the ground" through Feed Demon. There have been reported instances in the media recently of attempts to confuse or intimidate potential voters, particularly new or youth voters. College age voters are traditionally the most under-represented part of the electorate.

Whether it's due to cynicism or naivete a third more concrete factor (inexperience) makes this group prone to believing falsehoods and misleading statements aimed at creating doubt about their residential status. Ahem. So participation in their democracy will jeopardize their financial aid or even come back to haunt their parents during next year's tax season. What could be more American than not voting?

One way to monitor attempts at voter suppression around college campuses is to use a broadly descriptive search statement on Google News:

location:nh college students registration election

You'll find a piece of syntax snuck in here. It helps us focus exclusively on content sources on Google News originating from the Granite State. New Hampshire is my location of choice as the nearest swing state to me with area colleges signifying the swingiest of voting blocs.

You'll also note that the semantics of this search statement are not in anyway prejudicial or skewed towards a certain outcome. Any attempt to tune this search at the outset would overly constrain the result set (n=109) as of yesterday's test run. In other words a more effective content analysis occurs by introducing results-based logic once the feed appears in Feed Demon.

That's where you can construct "Watches" to pull instances of terms like:

* suppression
* fraud
* misleading
* confusion, etc.

...from the New Hampshire tracking folder where these hits reside.

Don't forget to sample several of the more questionable hits. They will acquaint you with terms you hadn't considered or steer you away from outcomes that are clearly off-the-mark from your search objectives.

The second stage of tweaking your RSS reader as news radar is to harvest the feeds sprouting from the sources included in your search results. Gathering up the list is easier than confirming each source's deployment or policy regarding RSS. The range is huge! Some papers package their outputs by sections of the paper. Some don't. Some dispense with RSS altogether, figuring that it will only cannibalize their beleaguered media empires.

There are a couple of alternatives to site hopping in search of the bright, orange RSS icon. One work-around is to include the inurl: syntax in the regular Google web search:

inurl:rss OR inurl:xml [insert semantics from Google News search] intitle:new intitle:hampshire

This workaround should get you a pre-confirmed list of feeds although it doesn't guarantee that they originate from ground zero live-free-or-eat-granite country.

Another way is to work from the colleges themselves as news sources. The very first hit I pulled yesterday yielded this list of Students for McCain backers by their academic institutions:

State Co-Chairs

Greg Boguslavsky -- Dartmouth College
Shaun Doherty -- Rivier College

University Chairs

Lianna French -- New England College
Joe Doiron -- New England College
Brendan Bickford -- New Hampshire Technical Institute
Trevor Chandler -- Plymouth State University
Brittany Puleo -- Rivier College

Julie Kraus -- Southern New Hampshire University
Regina Federico -- St. Anselm College
Allison Krause -- University of New Hampshire
Brandon Mancuso -- Franklin Pierce College
Dasha Bushmakin -- Keene State College
Ryan Dorris -- Daniel Webster College

In closing the follow-up would be to Google each college with the inurl syntax, filtering the pages that can be used to build your tracking folder in Feed Demon.