I spoke with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington last night. TechCrunch is "dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business product and service." It's a great resource with a clean design.

Michael wrote an upbeat profile of Attensa that starts off...

"Attensa is a world class RSS reader that is attacking the multi-platform synchronization problem (I'll explain that) and is also looking very seriously at the attention issue from a unique perspective (a good thing)."

Gives me goosebumps just reading it.

During the interview I gave Michael a sneak peek at our pricing strategy. What can I say? It was a great conversation and I was on a roll. To get the pricing plan you'll just have to read the article.

Thanks Michael.

Eric Hayes has a thoughtful post that helps to frame the work being done around Attention Streams and how they can be used to deliver on the promise that less is more when it comes to RSS. It also addresses the need for a "secure, permission based, privacy protected environment where Attention Streams can be captured, recovered and shared." Sounds like just the kind of realm the AttentionTrust community is working on.

Here's a taste...

"The real advantage of connecting Attention Streams in an online community is driven by the mysterious "Wisdom of Crowds". By providing a secure, permission based, privacy protected environment where Attention Streams can be captured, recovered and shared, it's possible to discover feeds and, more importantly, specific articles that friends, collogues and affinity groups are paying attention to. With the right processing techniques this can be done in near real-time to provide up-to-the-minute flow of highly relevant information that delivers on the promise that less is more.

Marc Orchant describes his use model for reading RSS as a "palette cleansing sorbet - finish a task, sample some feeds and then move on to the next task." Intelligently using Attention Streams can enliven the menu with "appetizers" of recommended new content from people who share an affinity with the subjects that interest you. These appetizers can lead to those wonderful accidental learning experiences that give us the all too rare ah ha moment."

You can read Eric's post here.

Submitted for your consideration...Attensa for Outlook .98. Download it here.

What have we been doing since we launched .97?

• Knocking down 105 bugs in a prioritized list starting with the "Criticals and crashers" and working our way down to the rarely annoying. We're not done yet. That's what .99 is for.

• Improving performance in Outlook.  Faster launch and smoother integration when you use Word as your email editor.

• Improving the publishing feature so it works consistently. Now publishing actually works with Blogger.

• Fixing date and time issues.  Now international date formats make sense in Attensa for Outlook.

• Adding new features like:

• Categories: Attensa for Outlook now supports categories or hierarchical folders that keep your feeds organized. You can easily create folders and sub-folders, name them, and move feeds between folders. You can import and export OPML files and keep the folder structure intact. You can import OPML files from Newsgator and Intravnews and keep the same organization structure.

• Image support: Images included with articles will show up and you won't have to right click to see them.

• Web Page View: Now you can see the article source Web page without leaving Outlook. This is a great feature for feeds that just give you a snippet and don't support full text. With .98 you have a choice of three views: plain text, Attensa default (html, images) and Web Page Source View.

What's next, you ask?

• Tag support: We are talking with Joshua Schachter, the author of del.icio.us, to integrate del.icio.us tagging in Attensa for Outlook. Tags are a great tool for creating a personal collection of links to Websites and blogs that you really like. You can categorize the links with keywords and share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. It's an essential tool for increasing the value of your attention stream.
   

• Invitation beta of Attensa for Web: the free online RSS reader providing a personal and privacy protected Web page for reading and managing RSS articles and subscriptions. Attensa for Web and Attensa for Outlook will use a uniquely scalable bi-directional synchronization system to keep subscriptions and articles up to date whether they are accessed from the Web or from Outlook.

We're less than two weeks away from letting you get your hands on Attensa for Outlook .98. The bug list is getting shorter as the development team works their way through it. First and foremost they're focusing on the Outlook issues.

Here's a glimpse of the Categories feature for creating hierarchical folders that help keep your subscriptions organized.

With .98 you'll be able import and export OPML files and keep your folder structure intact. We want to run this feature through our QA drill so send your OPML files to Michael Beale.

Today we spoke with Seth Goldstein, the chair of AttentionTrust.org, to learn more about the fast moving, nascent organization.

AttentionTrust.org is out to create a common ground for technology providers and marketers to help consumers understand and protect the value of their attention data.

Here are the essential tenets of the AttentionTrust creed.

Property:  I own my attention and I can store it securely in private.
Mobility:  I can move my attention wherever I want whenever I want to.
Economy:  I can pay attention to whomever I wish and be paid for it.
Transparency:  I can see how my attention is being used

In talking with Eric Hayes, our VP of R&D, our goal is to support these tenets by providing a central place for members of the Attensa RSS Network to review and manage their attention data.

We are also commited to protecting attention data and providing full disclosure and transparency of how attention data is collected. Attensa Network Attention owners will have control over what is included in their attention data, who sees their attention data and how the attention data is used.

In return for permission to anonymously analyze attention streams we will help you realize the "Less is More" goal of providing you with fewer more relevant feeds and articles. You'll be given options to help prioritize your feeds and articles based on your usage patterns or by taking advantage of the priorities and recommendations based on the collective wisdom of the Attensa RSS community.

Before we get feeling too self important...Andrew Teman has an alternative (and hilarious) viewpoint on AttentionTrust.org and podcasting for that matter.

A few days ago I linked to Craig Barnes call to action to start "attention.org" an industry coalition dedicated to helping consumers and businesses understand the concept of attention. Apparently Craig isn't the only one thinking along these lines.

Introducing AttentionTrust.org -- mysterious isn't it? While there's not a lot of there there, it's a start. Especially when you find out Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein are behind it. Dan Farber has more of the story here.