Tool Box
Issue No. 37 - October/November 2007
How web media brings ideas together
by Lee Hopkins
In trying to understand the growth and impact of new media, I like comparing where my own knowledge and typical technology use stands today with where it stood, say, a scant three years ago.
Three years year ago, I didn’t subscribe to podcasts or use RSS feeds in any meaningful way. In very late 2004 or very early 2005 I had read about something called “podcasting” on legendary business communicator Shel Holtz’s blog, and from there I downloaded and listened to a couple of episodes of Shel’s podcast, ‘For Immediate Release’.
At first I didn’t take much interest in learning how to “subscribe” to a podcast — it was all too ‘geeky’ and technical — and I didn’t exert much effort in finding good shows to listen to. On the RSS side, I downloaded a free ‘feed reader’, GreatNews, and clumsily added a feed or two. But I found the application slow, clunky, and not entirely useful.
MySpace? I’d never heard of it. Facebook and LinkedIn? Again, I’d never heard of them.
Blogs? I was figuring these out, at least, and in fact on the strength of what Shel Holtz was up to, I started my own on a site called ‘blogger’.
Then, at some point around June, the light finally dawned.
I started contributing audio segments to Shel’s podcast, and was shortly thereafter invited to be a regular correspondent.
Now, it’s hard to imagine not being a consumer of and advocate for blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, and social media in general.
My iTunes podcast subscriptions number around 15-20, though I’ve listened to several times that number of programs over the past two years. Shows such as the twice-weekly For Immediate Release have become appointment listening at my computer or in my iPod, and many weeks I spend more hours listening to podcasts than the radio — yes, I still listen to the radio.
I subscribe to and read nearly 200 RSS feeds on ...
