I see over on the Webreakstuff blog that Fred says that Demo is only for VC’s cause they charge companies to get on stage.

I used to feel that way too, but now I’m not sure anymore. Here’s my new view:

Money is a filter.

“Huh?”

Well, look at my blogthis folder. It contains emails from companies that want my attention (and, hence, yours). If all I did every day all day long was blog I still wouldn’t be able to write about all the cool companies and their cool products.

It’s even worse than that, actually. Head over to Digg and click on the “Upcoming” tab. More than 1,000 items. Or, head over to Google News. Or to TechMeme. Or to Slashdot.

All these products, companies, bloggers, and other people yelling to try to get your attention.

I can’t pay attention anymore. It’s too overwhelming. I look at TechMeme and get depressed by all the stuff I’m supposed to keep up to date on.

So, now I’m looking at filters. Human ones, for instance. I asked Buzz Bruggeman and John Furrier what really was cool at Demo (more on that later). They cut the list of 67 companies down to five. Now we’re getting somewhere!

But, Demo itself is a filter. I heard it costs up to $30,000 to get on stage. So, for people who are overloaded it makes it easier to deal with. It’s a filter.

Which gets me to my point. I hate filters. When I worked at Winnov I hated that the big-name journalists wouldn’t pay attention to me. Now I understand why. There’s simply too many voices in the marketplaces yelling and screaming for their attention and they had filters that I wasn’t getting through.

What are your favorite filters for figuring out what’s important?

How are sites like TechMeme and Digg changing how you find out things?

This is media week. Kicked off by Kevin Rose at a party last night.

I’m hearing that PodShow will have a funding announcement at the Podcasting and Mobile Media Expo (I’ll be there starting tomorrow evening through Sunday morning).

I was gonna go to Kevin’s shindig (which was in honor of his new Internet video company, Revision 3) but I was just worn out after attending the Intel Developer Forum where I met up with Paul Mooney who has some coverage of the big Intel news: four cores are coming to a processor near you. More on Intel over on Google News.

But, anyway, sorry I haven’t been blogging much. In just the past 24 hours I’ve gotten 156 emails. More to come shortly.

Anyway, Jeremiah has the details from last night’s party and Revision 3 announcements. I LOVE the cool names they are coming up with for their shows.

UPDATE: Podtech has an audio report from the party.

Yes, Billy, I know my content is being stolen and used on splogs. I’ve given up. Why? Because when we shut down one of these guys a few weeks ago three more splogs sprung up. I don’t have time to fight war with the sploggers. I wish you luck. Translation: I realize when someone has more resources to use against me than I have to use against them. Sigh.