Attensa: RSS meets knowledge management

Start-up Attensa has developed a Microsoft Outlook RSS reader with a twist: it analyzes patterns in RSS feeds to see how information inside companies is being consumed.

The company next Tuesday will launch Attensa for Outlook 2.0, an upgrade to its reader designed to run in large-scale deployments, said Scott Niesen, Attensa's director of marketing, speaking at the New New Internet conference.

The reader puts individual RSS feeds into Outlook folders and allows people to get different views on incoming feeds. It plays podcasts from within Outlook. Attensa also sells a Linux server for administering feeds and generating reports.

The software has "attention analytics" which prioritize feeds for individuals based on previous patterns. Business managers are interested in usage patterns as well, Niesen said.

Corporate customers eager to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies are using Attensa's software to analyze RSS-generated information, which could be anything from news feeds to updates on internal wikis, he said.

For example, reports analyzing tags and forwarded information could indicate that a handful of people are experts in a specific topic and serve as conduits of information to others.

In addition, the software can show the feeds which people or groups are reading.

"Companies are very interested in specific information channels," said Niesen. "The attention analytics can pinpoint what information is being consumed by whom."