It’s only a matter of time before I actually start blogging regularly again. No, really. The problem is that I’ve been working on a book, albeit with two co-authors, and we’ve been in crunch mode for a while. It’ll be over soon. And the book will kick ass…if we ever finish it.
Between the book, a new job (now almost 15 months old) and a new son (now almost 14 months old), being overwhelmed has been a theme in my life for a while now.
The Internet overwhelms me too, and it annoys me. There’s too much content, and too little editing (and I realize that this blog is complicit in that phenomenon). One day people are going to remember why the hell they used to read trade and technical magazines. They’ll remember that editors culled through stuff for them, and packaged it up in relatively small publications, that came out at a reasonable frequency. You could read them from cover to cover and even wait in anticipation for the next issue.
Call me a Luddite, but that was a useful format. It was respectful of my time. And it was respectful of the authors’ work too. Blogs and RSS aggregators and all the articles posted daily to the Web by the major trade pubs don’t offer that respect. And that is a drag on productivity in the industry which impacts negatively on the economy.
So my quest has been to find outlets in the new medium that help me approximate the discriminating taste and editorial efficiency of the old magazine format.
I’ve only just begun, but I have found one very useful resource: Slashdot Review. It’s a ten minute daily evening audio podcast (it comes out once each weekday evening as well as most Sundays) that summarizes the day’s most interesting posts on Slashdot. It’s an extremely time-efficient way to keep abreast of tech industry current events, and the audio format will give your monitor-sore eyes a rest.
Slashdot Review’s host, Andrew McCaskey, is unaffiliated with Slashdot, though he’s an avid reader. He adds his own articulate opinions at times, and educates his listeners in podcasting trends and technologies. He also puts out a show with high production value, and that makes it fun to listen to. I listen on my PC, my Creative Zen Micro audio player, and in my living room on my Media Center PC. By the way, the show’s content does exist in blog form, and the podcast RSS feed I supplied in the last paragraph contains text that accompanies each mp3 "enclosure."
I’m going to keep looking for resources like this. I’m now more hopeful that the Internet’s content pollution can be tamed.