Information Explosion - Are you ready? to win IT or be ITs victim!!!

There is huge information available on internet and otherwise, but how do we use this effectively and not become a victim of information overload.

Over next few weeks I would like to share views and exchange notes with like minded people on managing the information in an easy and usable yet innovative manner.

As primer I just would like to share a relevant article with you which highlights the extent of information being created by us, just click here.

Another interesting issue related with information management is authenticity and genuineness of information or even the source. I know, we all are having enough common sense to say that we won't get fooled by a fishy source as we do know what makes things genuine. But then have a look at following excercise ! (pardon me for being sounding professorial here):

Go to www.google.com and then type “weapons of mass destruction” for “Search” and then click “I am feeling lucky” and then watch the result.

What appears as a browser error message, actually happens to be an interesting creative work by sellers of T-shirts, Mugs etc to get prospects interested in their merchandise...

This example does illustrate how easy it is to get "phised" (term used to describe a situation where an "innocent" internet user ends up giving personal details on a site appearing as a geunine bank or government site seeking those details). Such techniques are used by "hackers" to gain access to crucial personal details and then use them subsequently for commercial gains.

Thus to begin our journey into world of information management, lets list the key issues to be tackled -

1. How do we locate which sources of information do we use?
2. How do we verify the correctness of information available on a source and also that of source being authentic,safe?
3. How do we search effectively amongst huge information available at diverse sources and keep updated on developments of matter of interest?
4. How do we maintain a repository of information coming during searches and what mechanism do we employ to store and qualify our findings?
5. How do we share information with peers in secure and yet prompt manner?
.............................(& so on for you and me to keep listing...)

By far we have not even considered the management of information from non-digital sources (lets assume that soon every thing would be digitised)....

Together, lets make information management, simpler and relaxing!