Via Earl Mardle I’ve found a new tool to add to my personal knowledge management toolkit: Awasu
Although the core of the product is an aggregator, it’s a lot more than that as it offers a number of ways of inter-acting with the flow of information through the tool, both manually and in various automated ways. It also offers the facility to add “channel hooks” – plugins which carry out specific actions on selected channels.
Having installed the product, I must admit the first learning hurdle was to get used to a thick-client aggregator rather than my normal approach with Bloglines.
The next challenge was finding an easy way to blog using the tool. Although Earl recommends a workflow using Qumana, I’m not sure that’s the right one for me. I think that reticence is a little about Qumana: I’ve tried the tool before, in its earlier days and didn’t stick with it, so maybe I am transferring that to the latest version. Also, Earl’s proposed method involves using the Workpads and Reports in Awasu – functionality that I have played with, but not yet got to grips with fully. There have been a couple of funnies which might be bugs or might be configuration problems.
I shall keep experimenting with different methods of using the tool and integrating it into my work, and may well come back to the approach earl suggests. In the interim I have taken advantage of the easily-configurable User Tools menu in Awasu to call up the normal WordPress posting page for this blog within the Awasu main window, pre-populated with key content from the source page.
