I am not in the tech industry and while the new technologies and applications are very interesting and useful for my website, blog, etc… I often wonder what level of threshold to apply in regards to trying to adopt a new application.

For example, filtrbox appears to be something useful that I could use to keep track of news in exercise physiology, marathon training, etc.. but is it a significant advantage to use in that manner. Does it pass the "threshold" of need to use?

For the readers that are in the tech biz it probably makes sense to keep a lower threshold when taking on learning new apps… do you have any advice for those of us not in the group and that don't necessarily need to be early adoptors?

Personal examples: still haven't found a good use for ligit or mybloglog apps, still trying to decide if twitter is worth it, but have found feedburner way beyond useful. All apps I've looked at after a post by you. Thanks.

PS – Intense Debate is one I've looked at but shied away from out of fear of time consumption.

Now looking forward to the full release.

Filtrbox sounds interesting and I will certainly try it out as soon as it's live.

At the moment my team and myself are working on a web application with the same goal, i.e. to reduce the "noise" and only deliver the relevant information to the user. It will implement a couple of really new ideas and go live at http://nextfeeds.com soon (you can pre-register to get informed upon launch).

More information about it can be found on our blog on information overload at http://www.managingio.com. We are always happy for comments!

Cheers, Nicolas