Communication Solutions

So much information, so little time. This is a common problem for anyone who has regular access to the Internet. It’s even led to coinage of the term “information overload” — a situation characterized by being overwhelmed by online information and unable to figure out where to start getting organized. 

 

While “information overload” can be defined in a variety of ways, Joe Lichtenberg, vice president of business development at software company Eluma told TMCnet that Wikipedia has it spot on: Information overload refers to the state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic. It is often referred to in conjunction with various forms of computer-mediated communication such as e-mail and the Web.

 

“There is just so much information on the Web from so many different sources, with new information coming at us every day, that it can be paralyzing,” Litchenberg said. “Web content is really just one part of it.  I read somewhere that the average person sees as much news in one day as the average person 100 years ago saw in an entire year.”

 

“Paralyzing” is a great word to describe the feeling one can experience when faced with so much information, all of it in some way demanding one’s attention now, now now.

 

Certainly, anyone who has experienced this paralyzing feeling is not alone. Research firm Basex recently estimated that negative impacts on worker productivity--characterized as unnecessary work interruptions, and the time needed to recover from them--cost the U.S. economy $650 billion per year. Information overload is part of this loss-in-productivity package. On a related note, LexisNexis (News - Alert) conducted market research that found 68 percent of professionals want to spend less time organizing information and more time using it.

 

So what’s the average information-overwhelmed person to do? One strategy would simply be to give up on the whole endeavor and throw the computer out the window. Since that’s not a viable option for most people, Eluma set out to create a software solution designed to help people organize online information.

 

The company, which is based in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, was founded by two technologists who saw a problem: Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook and similar tools exist to organize e-mail and appointments, and iTunes exists to organize digital music, but no similar tool could be found to organize other online information.

 

So, they set out to create just such a solution.

 

“When we did our initial research, we found that most people were just using bookmarks in their browser, or emailing Web site URLs to themselves to keep track of their stuff,” Litchenberg told TMCnet. “That’s certainly not the most organized way to manage all the content they were finding online. So that's the problem we set out to solve.”

 

The result? Eluma 2.0, a free application for managing information found on the Web. It provides a simplified way to file information when it is first found, and offers a variety of tools to classify the information for quick retrieval later.

 

Eluma 2.0 was released in private Beta this past March. After receiving positive feedback about the product, the developers moved ahead with public Beta, released earlier this month. The product is still being improved based on suggestions from users.

 

“We are busy working on many new features,” Litchenberg told TMCnet. “You’ll see improvements rolled out to our Web portal on an ongoing basis.”

 

He added that the Eluma 2.0 developers seek to bridge the gap between the Web experience and the desktop client experience, each of which has its advantages.

 

“There are always things that will be simpler or more efficient to do from a desktop client, because that’s just the nature of what can be done with a desktop app vs. a Web app (which is exactly the reason we build a desktop client in the first place),” Litchenberg explained. “But people will be able to collect, organize, search, share, and interact with the content from any machine, anywhere, via our Web portal.”

 

Eluma 2.0 encompasses several elements. One is the plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox Web browsers. Another is the desktop client, which works in much the same way as iTunes and Outlook, but organizes online information rather than music or e-mail. A third element is a Web portal that approximates the desktop experience but uses the “cloud computing” concept so people can access their content collections from any computer.

 

 

So far, all of the Eluma 2.0 components are free and advertising free, and most of them will stay that way.

 

“At some time in the future, we will likely serve contextual advertising, but only in the Web portal,” Litchenberg said. “The desktop client and the toolbars will never serve ads.  Most people expect advertising on a Web site, so that’s how we’ll monetize the service.”

 

Eluma’s developers anticipate that the application they have created will prove very useful to anyone who is information-overloaded. Litchenberg acknowledged that, to some extent, it is how people use technology that determines the extent to which they’re overwhelmed or in control.

 

“The rate of technology change has been so rapid, that it’s a conscious struggle for humans to adapt,” he said. “We need to make time for human interaction, or for heads-down time to work on a project, and stick to it unless the building catches on fire.”

 

Some experts suggest that throwing the computer out the window, in a manner of speaking, might be useful at times. But turning off information streams to cope with overload isn’t very practical, and Eluma’s developers don’t think that tuning out is the solution.

 

“We think the right answer is to be able to subscribe to everything that might be of interest,” Litchenberg told TMCnet. “Then the tools should be able to filter out the noise, and present the relevant signals for each individual, in the right format, regardless of how small the signal to noise ratio. That’s exactly what we’re working on.”