If you're reading this, you've got this far at least! I can just about get my head round how forums work these days, let alone email and attachments. The web is a blizzard of information and it's not so much what is there, but organizing your time to try and filter out what you want from it.
Just like impulse purchases in a supermarket, you can get sidetracked (which is maybe a good thing) or force yourself to just buy the same old beans 'n' bread (which is maybe a bad thing) but you get my point - the rate at which things change in terms of the way we organize information is as confusing as the size our list of bookmarks *used* to be.
Not only do we now have to contend with the entire old body of work (music, film, text, whatever) being a search term's distance away as opposed to having to trawl through a record shop or order a title by - gasp - talking to a human, but now we can consume entertainment product without the helpful/unhelpful corporate arbiter's of taste (publishing companies and record execs) deciding what should be in our basket.
How do you keep up with it all? I struggle with all the concepts, let alone the information itself - I am only just getting to grips with an RSS and a podcast, let alone a portal (a rapidly updated page which lists links to other pages on a certain subject)
Is anybody else struggling with information overload - or has anyone come up with a good way to keep up with the web?
Information overload
Re: Information overload
Says the IT wizz!! Still, it's kind of you to see it from my level.Dadaist wrote:If you're reading this, you've got this far at least! I can just about get my head round how forums work these days, let alone email and attachments.
Over to you Poppy?Dadaist wrote:How do you keep up with it all? I struggle with all the concepts, let alone the information itself - I am only just getting to grips with an RSS and a podcast, let alone a portal (a rapidly updated page which lists links to other pages on a certain subject)
Is anybody else struggling with information overload - or has anyone come up with a good way to keep up with the web?
Seriously, if you're toiling Dada, then I'll just give up now methinks!
www.porty.org.uk
. No chance of overloading anything in here.......Re: Information overload
Dada you sound like Victor Meldrew on speedDadaist wrote:If you're reading this, you've got this far at least! I can just about get my head round how forums work these days, let alone email and attachments. The web is a blizzard of information and it's not so much what is there, but organizing your time to try and filter out what you want from it.
Just like impulse purchases in a supermarket, you can get sidetracked (which is maybe a good thing) or force yourself to just buy the same old beans 'n' bread (which is maybe a bad thing) but you get my point - the rate at which things change in terms of the way we organize information is as confusing as the size our list of bookmarks *used* to be.
Not only do we now have to contend with the entire old body of work (music, film, text, whatever) being a search term's distance away as opposed to having to trawl through a record shop or order a title by - gasp - talking to a human, but now we can consume entertainment product without the helpful/unhelpful corporate arbiter's of taste (publishing companies and record execs) deciding what should be in our basket.
How do you keep up with it all? I struggle with all the concepts, let alone the information itself - I am only just getting to grips with an RSS and a podcast, let alone a portal (a rapidly updated page which lists links to other pages on a certain subject)
Is anybody else struggling with information overload - or has anyone come up with a good way to keep up with the web?
You don't have to understand it all to get by
Take a valium or have a hoegaarden and calm down dear
Marya the Ned said 
(2) When is Bob coming back? I'm gonna tell on you and that Bellybabe Another Ned for calling me a technothicko hussy!!!!! How rude!!
(3) But I agree that if Dadaist is at a loss on this matter, then [most of] the rest of us are
deep in the unmapped jungle!!
(1)Over to you Poppy?
(2) When is Bob coming back? I'm gonna tell on you and that Bellybabe Another Ned for calling me a technothicko hussy!!!!! How rude!!
(3) But I agree that if Dadaist is at a loss on this matter, then [most of] the rest of us are
deep in the unmapped jungle!!Any else here into "podcasts"?
For the uninitiated, a podcast is just an mp3 of (usually) a radio show which has been made available on the web by the people who originally aired it.
To get them you download a special program (the latest iTunes does it) and subscribe to any of a blizzard of shows - a lot of radio shows in the US which syndicate to other stations nationwide are now podcasting too.
Last week at work I listened to a rather odd assortment of audio - all of which I got for free by downloading shows :
1. recordings of historical speeches by John Glenn (when he got into trouble during the Friendship 7 / Gemini orbit mission), Nixon (detailing his personal finances) and Martin Luther King.
2. a fantastic show called "Verbivores" where the kind of people who used to inhabit the dictionary desk on Countdown talk about, well, words. maybe more for your English teacher but I loved it
3. "Bad Cop - No Donut" a show from Canada detailing that week's police brutality in the US. Wrong on so many levels, and compulsive listening.
4. I'm battling my way through a 4-hour weekly show from Chicago called "This is Hell" - leftist chat and bizarre rants - informative and boring in equal measure, but you gotta love them yankees when they talk partisan politics.
If any of you have an iPod, I really recommend spoken-word podcasts as an occasional alternative to music.
For the uninitiated, a podcast is just an mp3 of (usually) a radio show which has been made available on the web by the people who originally aired it.
To get them you download a special program (the latest iTunes does it) and subscribe to any of a blizzard of shows - a lot of radio shows in the US which syndicate to other stations nationwide are now podcasting too.
Last week at work I listened to a rather odd assortment of audio - all of which I got for free by downloading shows :
1. recordings of historical speeches by John Glenn (when he got into trouble during the Friendship 7 / Gemini orbit mission), Nixon (detailing his personal finances) and Martin Luther King.
2. a fantastic show called "Verbivores" where the kind of people who used to inhabit the dictionary desk on Countdown talk about, well, words. maybe more for your English teacher but I loved it
3. "Bad Cop - No Donut" a show from Canada detailing that week's police brutality in the US. Wrong on so many levels, and compulsive listening.
4. I'm battling my way through a 4-hour weekly show from Chicago called "This is Hell" - leftist chat and bizarre rants - informative and boring in equal measure, but you gotta love them yankees when they talk partisan politics.
If any of you have an iPod, I really recommend spoken-word podcasts as an occasional alternative to music.