Rapid Travel Chai

The Rapid Traveler stopped in his hometown Minneapolis for a family matter, and has the honor tomorrow morning to meet students at his secondary school alma mater, giving guest lectures to Economics II, Middle East from the 20th Century to the Present, and Chinese V.

In preparing resources for these future travelers and world-changers he was reminded of the usefulness of Alltop, which provides “aggregation without aggravation” on popular topics.

Their Q&A says:

Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?

A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.

The strength of Alltop is collecting a wide variety of news sources and blogs beyond what typical web searches uncover. These provide a window for further exploration as well as quality control for unfamiliar subjects. The China category, for instance, a subject which The Rapid Traveler has some familiarity, includes excellent blogs such as China Smack, China Law Blog, and China Briefing News. This gives him confidence in the selections for topics for which he is less familiar. The choices are eclectic and at times flawed, certainly the inclusion of only two Boarding Area blogs (the inestimable View from the Wing and Pearls of Travel Wisdom)  in the travel category is inexcusable, but the value is as an entrepot to commence research.

When seeking to know what is happening in a destination or to explore past the media sound bites (or silence), give Alltop a try.