Jul 28, 2009 0
Content consumption changes
Like a lot of people I find that I spend time reading articles online. My favourite websites to read articles online are Times Online and Al Jazeera’s English language site. I enjoy reading an article online but do suffer from eye strain if I read too much off of the screen, so sometimes I will (eek!) print out articles and read them from the page. A Luddite in some respects? Absolutely!
Increasingly, due to the ease of fitting content into my daily routine I am finding that listening to both magazine format audio programs and watching video content presentations quite rewarding. Ones that I have subscribed to via iTunes include:
- BBC World Service Documentaries – Audio
- CBS 60 Minutes in Audio – Audio
- TED.com Selected Talks – Video
These audio and video programs provide me with ‘colour’ and background to the story that is being disseminated through their use of subtle cues. If I were to read these stories then my imagination would need to fill in most of this ancillary information.
I used to rely on Google Reader alone to manage my subscriptions to RSS feeds but I have discovered an application called EventBox that lets me consolidate most of my online media sources into a single manageable stream.
Whereas before I would duck into and out of all the varied data sources that I used: Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Digg and Flickr I now have the EventBox software running on my Mac and find that it helps me to keep pace with the volume of information that I want to keep a track of without really reducing my productivity.
My own personal experience is that I am now chosing to aggregate data and content. I am more inclined to listen or watch content as opposed to reading it, that is unless the Headline and Excerpt really grab my attention span.