Gavin

Media Consumption/Production Tools

2006-04-15 Posted at 12:26:30 PM

Before I begin, keep it in mind to let me know if you like this crazy giant keywords thing. Does it make it easier or harder to read?

Nowadays the line between media consumption and media production is becoming more and more blurred. Doc Searls of Linux Journal put it this way:

What [we are seeing] is the evolution of consumers to producers and the obsolescence of "media" as a one-way construct.

(The Rise of Media Independace, 2006)

When someone reads a news article or blog or listens to a podcast or watches a videocast or just finds something of note in wikipedia, and they find it interesting, they are going to

Develop an opinion about it
Want to remember the story and the opinion
Want to tell others about it
Want to find more information and/or put together their own article

At least that's what I do, or want to do.

Also, they want to be able to do this anywhere, not just at their desk at home.

I use del.icio.us to store my bookmarks so I can access them from anywhere. Most of my bookmarks are shared, meaning anyone can see them. A few are not shared, meaning only I can access them when I am logged in. Bookmarks are organized by a tagging system. You can search the site to see what other people bookmark on a subject. It's a nice alternative to a Google search.

I set my browser's homepage to my del.icio.us page. I created a "startup" tag to keep my most used bookmarks so they are immediately visible when I go online.

The other tool that I find invaluable is Bloglines. Keep track of your RSS feeds for any type of media. Organize them into folders. New items will show up bold just like new email.

The best feature of Bloglines is the ability to "Clip" articles and save them for later. Bloglines integrates reading articles with writing them. You can use your clippings to create blog posts of your own, making referencing your sources very easy.

The blog that you get is pretty plain, and hopefully Bloglines will come up with a theme chooser soon. However this downfall is made up for by the ease of posting and referencing. I overcome this by using Bloglines to compose my blog posts, and then copying and pasting them to the much better-looking BlogEstates.

It's these two tools, del.icio.us and Bloglines, that make my media consumption and production easy and fun.

peace,
gav

Post Comment | Read Comments (1)

Comment posted by zoe at 2006-04-24 11:44:23

interesting article - - but the random word sizes make it harder to read, bub ;)

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Media Consumption/Production Tools

2006-04-15 Posted at 12:26:30 PM