Life without T.V.
Saturday the 28 of October, 2006 Filed in:
Productivity
I do not own a T.V.—never have. In all my time in
front of a T.V. I have never felt like a better
person, and occasionally I have felt worse. I
think it boils down to the lack of quality
content & large percentage of bad advertising
that give me such an aversion to it. What T.V.
attempts to provide us—news, entertainment, and
education—can all be had elsewhere.
News
Owning my own business naturally taxes my time and spending an hour watching news on T.V. to get 10 minutes of filtered data is ludicrous. So for the past few years I have been slowly building a workflow of alternative sources & tools for news. Here is what I use on a daily basis:
NewsFire allows me to receive news from all my favorite sites that support RSS—articles are delivered to me just like email. Any articles of interest are bookmarked to my del.icio.us account via Cocoalicious, which has integrated support in NewsFire. Lastly I use Safari to view the full news articles because it has full integration with Apple's Mail—I can email the entire contents of the web page if I want to share it with anyone.
Entertainment
Thanks to the world of legally downloadable movies, T.V. shows, and music there is no need to tune into the networks—just buy it off the iTunes store, or search for it on YouTube.com.
Education
This is the most fascinating (and scary) change that the internet has brought to life. I am old enough to remember a childhood without a computer, and schooling without the internet—I used to have to go to the library to look up information! But as a college freshman I got a Bondi-blue iMac and my life changed forever. My regularly used sources when searching are:
But even more valuable than the ease of searching is the ease of networking—the internet has enabled rapid communications so I can ask a specific question on some appropriate message board and get an answer from half way across the globe in a matter of seconds. These chance encounters can lead to great opportunities for information-sharing.
News
Owning my own business naturally taxes my time and spending an hour watching news on T.V. to get 10 minutes of filtered data is ludicrous. So for the past few years I have been slowly building a workflow of alternative sources & tools for news. Here is what I use on a daily basis:
- NewsFire—the ultimate RSS experience for the Mac.
- del.icio.us—online bookmarking
- Cocoalicious—a Mac App to access del.icio.us
- Safari—web browsing with email integration
NewsFire allows me to receive news from all my favorite sites that support RSS—articles are delivered to me just like email. Any articles of interest are bookmarked to my del.icio.us account via Cocoalicious, which has integrated support in NewsFire. Lastly I use Safari to view the full news articles because it has full integration with Apple's Mail—I can email the entire contents of the web page if I want to share it with anyone.
Entertainment
Thanks to the world of legally downloadable movies, T.V. shows, and music there is no need to tune into the networks—just buy it off the iTunes store, or search for it on YouTube.com.
Education
This is the most fascinating (and scary) change that the internet has brought to life. I am old enough to remember a childhood without a computer, and schooling without the internet—I used to have to go to the library to look up information! But as a college freshman I got a Bondi-blue iMac and my life changed forever. My regularly used sources when searching are:
- Google—a blanket search tool
- AskJeeves—an alternative view of what's on the web
- Wikipedia—taken with a grain of salt and some good cross-referencing
- News archives (NewsFire & del.icio.us)—interesting things I have saved
But even more valuable than the ease of searching is the ease of networking—the internet has enabled rapid communications so I can ask a specific question on some appropriate message board and get an answer from half way across the globe in a matter of seconds. These chance encounters can lead to great opportunities for information-sharing.