Seeking Attention

Sam Williams writes:  "... For users, meanwhile, attention means intelligent time management, knowing when to close the laptop and talk to your family, and when to tackle the 200 e-mails in your inbox.  ¶  'It's all about optimizing the limited amount of time we all have,' says Steven Gillmor, a technology blogger and recent [Seth] Goldstein collaborator. Gillmor traces his personal concern about attention to the advent of the RSS automated newsfeed, a tool that radically restructured his own Web-surfing priorities and prompted the creation of attention.xml, an add-on developed with the help of Technorati founder Dave Sifry that lets RSS users monitor their news-reading activities.  ¶  At the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, CA, Gillmor and Goldstein met and shared their disparate thoughts. Out of the resulting conversation emerged Attention Recorder, a Firefox browser extension that lets users statistically monitor their Web-surfing activity down to the individual click-and-search query, and Attention Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to rallying users and marketers alike around four main principles: 1) attention data should be considered the personal property of the user at all times, 2) users should be able to rent or grant access to attention data at will, 3) users should be able to pay for services with attention data alone, and 4) users should be able to see how marketers use that data. ..."  Link:  Technology Review.  Gillmor and Attention Trust links added to quote. --Dennis