There are two sides to the public relations process - public relations professionals that are constantly watching for opportunities to get press, and journalists that constantly watching for things to write about. Both professions require continuous awareness of content that changes and a place to unify that knowledge to be effective and productive.

Onfolio (specifically their upcoming 2.0 release) provides an interesting convergence of features to enable link tracking, Web page capture, an information taxonomy, Outlook integration, shared collections, and most important - support for RSS consumption and production. None of these capabilities are unique or innovative, but the UI and the alchemy of fetures makes it innovative none-the-less.

If you're a journalist or a publicist, this is worth a download - you'll get hooked.

There's a lot of data in Blogs and RSS content.

"Personally, any company who hasn't assigned someone to follow what the blogosphere is saying about them is blowing it. Bigtime. Just wait until the PR crisis is real. Then it'll be too late to figure out Pubsub, Feedster, and Technorati." -- Robert Scoble

Sally Falkow is experimenting with a tool set that provides a way for PR Professionals to watch Blogs and RSS feeds for important business and competitive data. Give her a shout - she'll be happy to tell you about it.

It has been said that information is the new capital, the key asset of most organizations. It has long been said that time is money. Right now, forward-thinking organizations are finding ways to create greater value by leveraging RSS and other syndication formats to move highly-relevant information more quickly, more economically, and with greater agility.

"Newspapers, TV broadcasts and even fancy Web pages will have less meaning as people use Web-surfing programs and recording devices to pick and choose items from various providers, said Tom Curley, president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press. In the new media age, people will be able to dictate exactly what news they want, when they want it and on which electronic devices they want to receive it, he said." -- eWeek

Today’s forward-thinking organizations are proving grounds for RSS and content syndication technologies. Just as a decade ago forward-thinking organizations proved the mainstream value of the HTML Web, today’s forward-thinkers are proving the mainstream value of the XML Internet.

Mr. Curley is right - In the new media age, people will be able to dictate exactly what news they want, when they want it and on which electronic devices they want to receive it. This is no longer about the "Web"; it's about the Internet - specifically Internet 3.0, a systematic evolution towards semantic content that can be used by machines and humans.

"You have to let the content flow where the users want to go, and attach your brand — and maybe advertising and e-commerce — to those free-flowing 'atoms'" of information."

SmartStream Alliance was formed to do exactly this.

Glad to see the IAOC putting a stake in the ground for Blogs, PR, and media relations management. This looks like it will emerge as a great resource.

"The IAOC grew out of an informal group of professors of Internet PR. It became real after a public relations technology symposium at Rowan University in March of 2003. And it hit radar screens a month ago when the PRSA declined our request for a meeting room to teach a session on blogging at the PRSA Conference in New York -- then asked us to fill a cancellation in the conference schedule after B.L. Ochman shamed them in the blogosphere." -- Steve O'Keefe