• Where am I going?  Sometimes I get off track from what I started looking for.  There is just so much information – I start looking for one thing and I see something interesting and end up 30 minutes later trying to remember what I originally started looking for.
• Where am I at?  Within a web site or down a track of information, I have no idea where I am at.  I mean most of the time I can tell what site I am, and even a breadcrumb to tell me where I am at in the site.  However, I never know where I am at in the context of my search and the path that I used to get there?  Most of the time I find information through a track of information.  I start with a search on one group of terms, and as I learn more I am able to refine my terms including seclusions to help me find the true information I am looking for.   But the information I am looking for is normally not a single page or a single concept – it is the actual track that I used to get there.
• What have I found?  When I actually find information that is useful, what do I do with it?  Rarely is it one page – most of the time it is a group of related concepts on one page or a group of pages that I would like to use later, but I have no good way of storing these concepts as a whole.  Bookmarks do okay for storing information on a single page, but nothing stores the whole tree or whole navigation path.
• Information and people – it’s hard to separate information and people and I don’t think you should.  With blogs and twitter, information is tied to thought leadership which is normally lead by individuals.  However, bookmarking tools typically don’t relate information to people or vice versa.
• Bad representation of information and hyperlink – the beauty of the hyperlink is that information was no longer hierarchical – no longer top to bottom, left to right.  The problem along with getting lost is that my brain works a little more visual then the internet is.  Text doesn’t really work for my brain – I like pictures and visualizations.

I have been thinking and postulating about these problems a lot lately.  In my own fight to stay relevant, I know that people need to be able to use the information I am publishing in some relevant way.  I don’t mean just here on this blog, I mean whether in presentations, conversations, webinars, whatever relationship we might have and all of the related content out there that helps frame a position or complete the research that is being done online.

I need a GPS to be able to navigate my way through the internet – a way to know where I am going and where I came from, and most importantly when I am off track how to get back on track.

Related posts:

1. Internet GPS: A new navigation system