Transitioning From Print to Digital: A Word from 303 Magazine
Last Friday, one of the magazines I write for announced that after seven years, it will discontinue production of its print publication and move fully digital (which is sad, but exciting!) What this means for all of us at 303 is yet to be seen, but our editor-in-chief, Laura Standley, addresses the transition while pulling no punches in the post above. If you like what I write or support what 303 does or even if you just like to support local publications or whatever digital media you consume, please give the post some love and attention. We are only as good as the community of which we’re a part and that includes our readers.
New web app is like Pandora for your tastebuds
I interviewed these guys recently—really interesting web app that’s sure to be a hit with bloggers and foodies alike.
Other options for RSS readers?
The great wonders of RSS readers have allowed many of us to completely circumvent the process of having to go to an actual website and/or blog to get our news—regardless of whether or not it’s “professional” journalism, online blogging, or just an expert in the field of whatever trips our fancy at one single, solitary given moment.
A good handful of what I read ends up inspiring conversations throughout the day, pitches that end up on my editors’ desks, and even posts here. However, I’m running into what is becoming a giant limitation with Google Reader, so I’m reaching out to blogosphere for some advice. I oft will read a post by say, Fred Wilson, and will want to keep it as reference for future articles and/or blog posts. However, in starring it, I also wish to add notations in order remember why I starred it and cannot seem to do this.
Is there an RSS platform available that allows for this—much in the same way that one can add comments and bookmarks within almost any PDF reader software? As much as I love Google Reader, this is progressively becoming more of a frustration, so any suggestions would be amazing!
Technology Killed the Engaged Listening Star
Okay… I am playing off a certain song by The Buggles. Seriously, however, technology has most certainly made us the most passive information consumers—we don’t even necessarily have to be awake to receive it by our “I-can-do-everything” tracks-everything, super-mega, hyper-cool communication devices. We’re tuned in, turned on, and connected twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Technology and its ability to grant access have allowed everything in our lives to become overwhelming oversaturated. We reblog. We retweet. We re-post.
We hear the songs played over and over again on Last.fm, run to Hype Machine to download the “sample tracks” to our heart’s content, and then fail to buy the album and really suss out the details of the lyrics.
We follow dozen of people on Tumblr—most of whom simply recycle the same old posts over and over—but do we ever take the time to read the sometimes exceptionally long or beautifully original posts from Roger Ebert? Or the random blogger we found by accident?
Twitter has conditioned us to hang on the value of the anecdote and the link. Do the majority of us actually click through to read the full story or have we defaulted to Tim Ferriss’s “low information diet” tactic of subsisting on the headlines alone?
If we’re working towards consuming more “quality” in less time, is the consumption itself even worth it? Are we ever truly listening—whether it be to a song, a story, or a moment expressed as an image?
You listen to the words being said, but do you hear what is being said?
Everyone should have a printing press and should use it as often as they see fit. Through things like RSS and Twitter’s follow model, we can subscribe to the voices we want to hear regularly. And through things like reblog and retweet, the voices we don’t subscribe to can get into our readers, dashboards, and timelines.
