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I wrote a quick post to Google Buzz recently that dealt with a concept and issue that’s been rattling in the back of my mind lately. We consume so much information from so many sources that we’re bound to run into the same stories. The news that becomes popular does so because of it being shared, telling friends, sending it to others, and spreading the word.

Virality is the term that’s been associated with this for some time. Getting things to “go viral” is a key to success, but the value of any story is its exclusivity, or who publishes it first. The above concept image is a visualization of my thoughts on how this issue might be dealt with.

I call it – Flume.

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Since FriendFeed’s launch of a new still-in-beta redesign, there’s been much debate over some of the features and style changes – both on blogs, and within the service itself. While any change is sometimes met with reluctance and skepticism, as Facebook has realized with their latest changes, there’s a number of reasons why the aesthetic and functional revamps of FriendFeed are helpful for both its users, and for the proliferation of real-time data on the web. Here’s a breakdown of why I believe FriendFeed has made a lot of correct choices in their transition from data aggregation, to a broad conversational hub for the web.

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My wife and I welcomed our new son, Cameron Alan Chase, into the world on Tuesday, July 29th at 8:24pm. Thanks to the aid of several web-based applications, we were able to quickly announce to the world our exciting news in a lot of really effective ways. For other parents-to-be, here’s a quick guide to the fantastic services we used to share our excitement:

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