26 Nov 08 How Do You Like To Get It?
Ok, you can take your mind out of the gutter.
I’m talking information here. I really don’t know what you might have been thinking.
You’ve probably heard the term information overload. It’s not new, it’s been bandied around for some time. I feel it’s a two-sided sword. Before the Internet (yes, I am old enough to remember that), we got our most of our information about the world around us from a one-way stream. The media then was the press, and the broadcast networks for the most part. There was little opportunity to interact. We got a dose or two of TV news each day, a newspaper each morning, and perhaps a news summary from the radio during the day too, depending where we worked.
Now there is so much information being barrelled at us from many directions, that we have to set up filters, to decide what we want to watch. 24 hour TV news, Internet news whenever we want it from multiple sources.
It’s probably true that back then, more of us were more inclined to trust what we read, heard, and saw. That’s not saying we we more stupid, it’s just that previous generations by and large, simply had more trust in those organizations. We didn’t question their authority.
Along comes the Internet and other online networks (well there used to be others!), and we’re given the ability to both write our own news, and publish our own information, and also question what we’re told.
There is no doubt in my mind, that this has reduced the power of the old school media, much as the power of the medieval church was reduced after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, and the peasantry gradually got access to books and learned to read for themselves.
It’s the 21st century equivalent of what is happening now, as more and more people get online and get access to the wonderful new two-way media stream we have now.
However the point of this article is really to ask a question.
Most people can read, most folks can hear, and most folks can see.
Online video is in the verge of a major revolution. The bandwidth bottlenecks need to be truly unblocked, not by restricting use, but by making a bigger pipe (or bigger series of tubes as former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens analogously referred to the Internet as, back in June 2006).
Podcasting is already commonplace to a sizable few.
Most of us online still read the printed word on a computer monitor, such as this article you’re reading right now.
My question is this: Which way do you prefer to get information? Video? Audio, or typed word?
I know one answer will be that it depends on the information type. This is true of course. It’s not nearly so much fun to read about or listen to a commentary about a ball game as it is to watch it.
On the other hand do we really need to watch most of the evening news? Most of us like to see the disaster stuff – plane crashes, fires, big auto wrecks etc (although we only want to see it from a ‘safe’ distance – we don’t want to see the real blood and gore). However, much of the TV news could just as easily be read or listened to, and a good commentator can vividly describe a scene almost as well as you actually seeing it.
My own take is that we’ll move forward with a combination of all three. Once we can truly ‘turn on’ the Internet in the same way that we do the TV now, then the Internet in the home, and indeed in the living room, will become as common place as the TV is today – to the point where most folks consider you odd if you don’t have one.
It’s an exciting interactive future to look forward to, but we’ve all got our own take on what we want it to be like. Those of us that are already online have the chance that our forefathers didn’t really have, at least not en masse – that is to be able to participate like never before, in helping to shape what we want the media future to be.
Tags: alaskan senator, bandwidth bottlenecks, broadcast networks, doubt in my mind, generations, gutenberg, gutter, information overload, media stream, medieval church, no doubt, old school, own news, peasantry, podcasting, printing press, senator ted stevens, series of tubes, ted stevens, verge
08 Aug 08 Flock
I’ve installed Flock on one of my computers. I am finding it really useful for Social Media use.
The sidebar which I can display or hide with one click is great for seeing who’s updated on services such as Twitter, Dig, Flickr, YouTube, Pownce, and Facebook. If I choose the feed option instead, I can read any number of RSS feeds, and in my opinion, I like the display option better than Google Reader, although, the latter is still my main feedreader of choice with all the extra options such as sharing that GR has.
If I click on the Mail envelope I can go straight to my email. I only use webmail these days – I have Gmail set up like a pop3 client. I liek having my mail up in the cloud. No more synching nonsense, and no more muttering because the email I want is on the computer at home or in the office, or whereever else I happen NOT to be at the time.
I can also add Yahoo Mail and AOL mail if I wish. I can also use the sidebar to see my Favorites, and my History. The Accounts and Services section is one of my reasons for using Flock. I can set up several Social Media networks in here, and then a single click on them will take me, already logged in, to the relevant site.
There is also a blog editor, from where I can post directly to the blogs of my choice, and a photo uploader which I can use for Facebook, Flickr and Picassa.
Once any of the above options have been set up, it’s mostly one or two clicks to get to where you want to be.
The media bar is another cool option that can also be displayed or hidden, and you can look at media from various services. One great feature of that is you can share items from the media bar by dragging them down to people that are displayed in the sidebar in the People option. Hovering over an image opens it as a larger drop down, and a double click takes you to the web page where the image is hosted.
There are a number of useful icons and indicators in the address bar. One lights up when there is a media stream in the web page you’re on (which means you can display the contents in the media bar instead of opening the page; another lights up if a feed is present in the page; and another when an installable search engine is present.
There is also an option to directly send a link in the address bar, via email, using your chosen client.
I am using Flock Beta 2, which is based on Firefox 3. This means I can run most of the Firefox 3 plugins, to give even more flexibility.
Web browsers, while not exactly replacing the OS, are certainly moving towards becoming the desktop interface, particularly for people like me, who have their head in the clouds much of the day.
Tags: blogs, double click, email, facebook, feed option, feedreader, flickr, flock, google, gr, mail envelope, media networks, media stream, nonsense, photo uploader, pop3 client, pownce, sidebar, web page, youtube
