Learning zapping again
/Zapping, channel surfing, channel hopping or whatever you would like to call it; I am learning it again.
There are about 90 video and audio podcasts in my subscription list in iTunes. They range from "This week in Startups" to "Dance department" and "Boagworld" to the excellent "TED Talks".
It is different from Regular Old TV (ROT) because I have conciously chosen each subscription as opposed to channels whose content I don't control. The amount of annoying advertisements is very low. There are Ads but they are better targeted to me and they can easily be skipped.
But with 90 subscriptions there is still too much to see or listen to. I can't consume it all. That's why I have been developing new habbits:
- Audio podcasts (talk, not music) are played back at double speed.
- If a podcast contains content that I've already heard: skip.
- If a podcast contains content that I may be interested in some time in the future: skip. (Except the TED talks.)
- If I have skipped several episodes of a podcast in a row: unsubscribe.
- For current affairs and news podcasts, if they're older than a few days: skip