Twelve Black Code Monkeys

As I become more and more addicted to reading news from a collection of blogs and other sites, I have been trying to come up with ways to get more of this reading done faster.

Newsreaders have been a favorite tool for some. It’s a program that one downloads and installs on a computer and lets you subscribe to and read just the content of each entry of each feed without having to navigate to different addresses. This blog is actually a default syndicated blog for one such newsreader, called Project DU.

While such applications serve their purpose and do make things easier, I haven’t quite taken to them yet. This may be simply because I haven’t really played with many, and I might find them to be much more useful than the alternative I list below. But the main problem I see with these is that they are somewhat proprietary, meaning that I can’t just use them on any and all platforms I want. They are usually designed for the PC, or for Mac, or for a mobile device, but not all of them. Plus I don’t want to go around installing programs on a friend’s machine and I’m not supposed to install any programs on my work machine either. Finally, I have a Treo 600 Phone that theoretically could serve as a way to read some of these feeds, but the Treo newsreaders I’ve played with so far have left me wanting.

I want something that I can access from all the platforms I use, be they my home computer, work computer, phone, or a friend’s computer. With this in mind, it seems, the perfect solution is something along the lines of a web-based newsreader. My Yahoo! has a beta that incorporates RSS feeds, and it’s probably only a matter of time before Gmail supports them as well. But so far the site that has been most useful to me is Bloglines. The features make reading news very flexible. I can wade through the dozens or even hundreds of messages and check off the ones I want to come back and read later. Those will stay until I tell them to go. It remembers what I’ve read and what I haven’t. It just makes managing the reading a lot easier. And I just found out that it has a mobile version, woo hoo! Of course, the mobile version seems to be lacking some of the main feature I find the most useful! Hopefully, though, they will be added it soon.

I’m not stuck on Bloglines by any means, but currently it suits my needs the closest. I think in the future I may start downloading “podcasts.” Currently podcasts are primarily audio content that is normally listened to on the net via streaming audio – internet radio programs and such. But I see the potential of this idea combining with the popularity of newsfeeds and weblogs to compel bloggers and others to actually create audio versions of their content so that they can be listened to in addition to being read. This would tremendously increase the amount of feeds one could keep track of, especially for those who do a lot of driving and/or exercising, or other activities where reading simultaneously is an impossibility. There does seem to be so much development in this area that it will become easier and easier to find ways to manage and keep up to date with your favorite feeds almost anywhere.

Engadget has a piece on cellphone company’s starting to market phones to the elderly. All I can say is, what took them so long??? The article wonders “will they become like so many other markets, one for every type? Will there be a soccer mom phone with a built-in kid herder?” Um, hello? Aren’t there already lots of phones geared to specific market niches? There are so many different phones of different styles with different functionality, why on earth are the elderly somehow not a valid market niche? I have a lot of older relatives who simply don’t have the technical propensity (not having grown up in a world of computer automation) to operate your average cell phone beyond the basics of calling a number or answering the phone, let alone being able to easily see and press the tiny buttons. We have laws that compel builders to create “reasonable accommodations” so that those with disabilities can access places that are meant for the public, while others actively seek to provide equipment or services for those who have special needs. So why is it such a stretch to expect that companies making high-tech devices must ignore a huge market segment because it doesn’t fit with some “young and sexy” demographic they’ve decided for themselves? I’m not saying that all companies must provide phones for every niche market, but I’m shocked at how this sizable market has been almost completely ignored, at least until fairly recently. And why on earth would someone complain because it isn’t their niche. Don’t you have enough devices marketed at your own demographic? If so, why be so stingy and deny an underserved market their fair share?