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Me.dium's collaborative browsing vision When we wrote about Me.dium over four months ago, we described it as 'social browsing'. Perhaps a refinement of this would be collaborative browsing, and that would be a more precise definition of what the company is trying to do. At the heart of Me.dium is the idea that by enabling real-time discovery and communication during browsing, this will enable people to get things done faster and in ways not possible before. During my interview with the company founders, we discussed the typical scenarios for using Me.dium: You and your friend are trying to accomplish a common task; You are trying to do something on your own and meet others who are trying to do the same thing; You are observing the patterns of crowds nearby and so you are able to discover new things.

So the $15M dollar question is what is Me.dium planning to do next? In a nutshell, the company is planning to spend the money on refining and scaling its sophisticated matching technology. The secret sauce here is in connecting people based on their browsing patterns.

Let's face it. Most of us out here in the open source community are getting a very good deal. We are fortunate to have bright people building software for us at little to no charge. If we begin to depend on these freely given gifts, we should never make the mistake of then assuming the one giving the gift is somehow accountable to us. Gifts given should be received with gratitude and an expectation of nothing further. Nothing. And, if we aren't able or willing to help, the least we can do is try not to ruin the fun!!! Thanks, Bèr! I appreciate your article very much.

The result is an egregious lack of productivity that may cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year, according to a report by Basex, which has tabbed information overload as the "Problem of the Year" for 2008.

With e-mail as the biggest offender, Basex said users can save time by not e-mailing someone, and then following up with a phone call or an instant message two seconds later

Basex also said users must not combine multiple topics or requests in a single e-mail; make sure the subject clearly reflects the topic and urgency of the message; read their e-mails before sending to make sure they make sense; and will not hit reply-all unless necessary or reply with one-word e-mails such as "thanks.