So far, I have spent over $150 on misc. apps, no typo.

I am finding new ways every day to make the iPad a irreplaceable tool in my technology arsenal.

I have a business trip coming up this week, with a big presentation – I am leaving the laptop at home.

There is so much information available to consumers being able to digest and discover relevant content is becoming increasingly difficult. One of the common uses for twitter and real-time social networking is pointing to quality “crowd sourced” content. These tools are increasingly clouded by spammers and “social marketers.” We have the unique position of being able to use journalistic integrity to bring the best and most useful content to our readers.

Denver-based MediaNews Group, publisher of such major dailies as the Denver Post and Oakland Tribune, has announced plans to test a “customized news delivery service called ‘I-News’ or ‘Individuated News” this summer with the LA Daily News. This service would allow subscribers to choose from different categories, including news from other parts of the country. Blending the offerings of regional newspapers into a separate platform may help more of them survive.

The Daily Telegram is now curating links of local interest from around the Web on their homepage using Publish2.

One of the most common problems in people’s lives is lack of time. We have the competitive advantage of knowing more about the community than any other organization. Offering premium Subscribers exclusive access to a quick-read snapshot of the most important information that pertains to their lives could be a great value.

This may be in the form of a monthly or weekly newsletter that highlights everything you need to know in a certain area of interest. This may include business, sports and entertainment. Having this access gives readers a way to stay in the know without fishing through the piles of information in each of these areas.

We already make “editorial” decisions on what is most important and do the research in each of these verticals. Taking it one step further and packaging the content into a “finished” product that gives people insight without the effort that would be required to earn that knowledge could be a great value to consumers. Making it intensely local protects our ability to keep it exclusive.

Looking beyond our own content is essential.

Having partnerships with organizations like the OKC Thunder is one of the benefits and competitive advantage we have as a mature business. Creating unique content that others don’t have the ability to easily reproduce is something that we feel is an essential piece of building traffic and brand. Driving this extra traffic during the holiday season was essential to delivering value to our advertisers at a critical time for them.

The result was a spike in traffic

Like many content producers we offer comments on articles as a sign that we are with it and care about what our community has to say. Like most we have ignorant and meaningless interactions that kill real conversation.

I pose the question, can we create value through hosting meaningful community interactions. The vision of the web as a community is often mired by the reality that the most ignorant people seem to have the most time on their hands. This is evident in the comments on our website, in forums and throughout the social web.

Creating walled gardens of conversation about meaningful local topics with intelligent people may be attractive to those who are interested in true debate and community action. Letters to the editor have always been a role of the newspaper. Could our websites redefine how that relationship works by creating a community where there is open dialogue that stays on point and is meaningful.

There are companies right now, attempting to rethink forums and online discussions. “Gravity,” created and backed by the original creators of myspace is about to release a platform helps you discover and participate in conversations about whatever you care about.

” The “Gravity” universe is made up of hundreds (soon thousands) of worlds — each world a hotbed of laser-focused conversations where users can jump into the fray and speak their minds. Users can choose to orbit (aka “follow”) worlds, conversations and people so that they can stay in tune with conversations as they evolve. Gravity gives every user a voice to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences and a new way to learn from others.”

They are branding their core technology as “a conversation engine” — and will be releasing special web software that powers conversation on gravity.com and in their own words (soon) all over the web. This is something to keep an eye on.

As a media company, we could offer local knowledge and authority to enhance these conversations.

Gravity will be in the wild shortly, but the “rules” they have established clearly outline their direction and the job to be done they are trying to fulfill.

Gravity is about quality conversation. The quality of content on Gravity is based on the collective contributions of our users (i.e., you!). You contribute to Gravity by starting conversations and replying to conversations, by orbiting worlds, conversations and people, and by liking, hiding and flagging content. In order to make Gravity’s conversations better and more valuable for everyone, we encourage you to do all of these things!

Gravity has a few simple rules meant to keep our service interesting, fun and useful for everyone:

* Engage in meaningful conversation!
* Be respectful of others. Some conversations are bound to turn into debates and some debates will end in arguments. It’s okay… When this happens, be nice! We’re all entitled to our own opinion, BUT we’re not entitled to be mean to or disrespectful of others, no matter how right we are. Gravity does not tolerate personal attacks, predatory language, and harassment of any type. So don’t do it.
* Stay on topic. Off-topic contributions pollute the conversation for everyone. Posting off-topic will hurt your reputation on Gravity. On the bright side, the Gravity universe is large and there’s almost certainly a world out there where your contributions will be treasured.
* Keep it clean. No pornographic or sexually explicit content allowed. No profane or hateful speech will be tolerated.
* Keep it real. No spamming, no advertising, and no solicitation. No impersonating others. No intentionally misguiding people.
* Use common sense. If your mother would shake her head disappointedly, then you should probably not be doing it.

If job to be done is to make the conversation meaningful and relevant. Our local knowledge and experts in various areas uniquely positions us better to host this conversation. The would require an unpresidented commitment of moderation and participation from our reporters, and “promotion” of meaningful points in a greater community forum like the newspaper.

This is also an area of potential for us to leverage our community relationships – having moderators get answers to questions or engage community leaders in the discussion. People can have various opinions but don’t want to have intelligent conversation result in harassment by ignorant comments.

The walled garden approach is emerging in all aspects of internet life, and the gardens are getting more focused in nature. Facebook is walled garden of sorts, when compared to services like Twitter. However, one of the problems with Facebook is that most of the things you share through it go to everybody you have friended, whether those people are relatives, tennis buddies, coworkers, or your boss. But few people want to share everything with everyone they know.

Google Wave itself has been touted as a solution for “over-sharing” in the social web, choosing what groups of contacts you share conversations with.

No company is better positioned to host a meaningful conversation locally than us.

The real-time collaboration was the most interesting to me. It really worked well for how my mind works and allows to see what other people are thinking at the same moment. I believe there will be many uses for this product. I don’t know about replacing email, but I do think it blows Basecamp, lighthouse, and other tools for collaboration away.

Not sure the whole team is there, but what I am thinking is:

1. We are best in the world at helping people make decisions about things that are or are becoming increasingly relevant to their lives.

2. A imperative to do business with wimgo, drives our economic engine.

3. We are passionate about connecting buyers and sellers. (in this context it is about the entity “wimgo” not the overall organization.

The true value of wimgo.com as a “Decision engine” is what we need to focus on.