Now this is just what i've been looking for - thanks Marc for the link ! 

Inside the firewall

Intranet aggregators. I spent most of the week visiting small and large companies. The more I talk with "real people working in real companies" (meaning: not nerds spending their whole days hacking), the more convinced I am that a news aggregator is the ideal center for any Intranet.

The basic idea is merge to the same server contents coming from:

• internal sources (accounting, trouble ticketing, exiting document management applications, other data bases: we should be able to get a feed from any internal app)
• k-logs (every member of the group has one)
• external news sources (general news, weblogs, specialized sources, scraped pages)

The output of the aggregator should be both html that people can browser with their browser and more feeds which could end up in personal aggregators or funneled in other applications.

Centralized aggregators should not necessarily mean that every user has to read all feeds. There should be both the kind of personalization allowed by personal aggregators (deciding which feeds to subscribe to) but also added vaue services that would allow users to discover additional sources of information and anyway give different relevance to different kind of information snippets that are displayed on the page.

[Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog] [Audioblog/Mobileblogging News] [Marc's Voice]

A combination of tech with potential for application and usability.  In earlier posts on the subject i've said strongly that RSS feeds and News Aggregators will have a huge role to play in getting companies to blog - both at the intranet level and for external communication with stakeholders.  

"So what's required today?  Small steps, teasers ..... here are some suggestions - no detail provided - just basic concepts.  Also, these may be more specific to India, as no such service exists here yet.     

• encourage KM systems managers to embed RSS feeds from blogs into the system
• get the daily newsletters (like AgencyFAQs or Exchange4Media which have wide reach among executives across industry and sector) to include blogs and RSS feeds as a part of their reporting
• set up a newsreader service that has the 'Best of Web' links (including blogs) as part of the service - this can turn into a 'Best of Blog' product eventually, with specialised feeds by industry and a rating system in place that is not based on A-lists or popularity alone, but on relevance to the industry of concern.

The interesting part here is that the subscriber has control over the feeds he wishes to read, from an available menu of options offered by the service provider.  This cuts down the effort of searching for this information.  Its a bit like subscribing to the journal or magazine or newspaper of your choice, and not being deluged by information compiled by the provider, where you have no control. "

The real joy is in the almost paradoxical combination of flow with control. 

Really interesting stuff ... will be following developments closely !

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