Podcasts, and why I don’t read books..

There was a time when I used to read books, regularly. No better way to pass the time on the daily commute into London than losing yourself in a good book.

Then things changed. Firstly, it was free newspapers. When you are walking to the station and someone thrusts a newspaper into your hands, you can’t help but take it. The combination of the Metro in the morning, followed by the London Lite and the London Paper in the evening (now both superceded by the Evening Standard becoming a freebie) - led to me carrying a book around in my bag, and never reading it. Eventually I stopped even carrying the book.

Then I got an mp3 player (not an iPod at first, it was a Creative Zen thingy, it was pretty  good).  I’m not the sort of person who can listen to music and read at the same time, so the music took over for quite a while, and the books and papers were both relegated to the Reserve team.

iTunes

2006 – I switched. I got a Mac. Everything changed. I got totally into iTunes and all it has to offer. Wasn’t long before I got my first iPod – a 30GB iPod with video.

Then I discovered podcasts. and that was it for me. No more books, newspapers or music. Well, I still pick up the newspapers and thumb through them, and I do listen to music when I’ve got through all the podcasts, but primarily it’s podcasts for me now.

It’s great to be able to listen to radio shows you missed, or someone talking about a subject that really interests you. There are some great video podcasts too, both entertaining and educational. I should add I now have an iPod Touch 32GB, and watching video is a joy.

If you haven’ t tried podcasts, I suggest you do. They’re completely free – just subscribe to them in iTunes and they are automatically delivered to you whenever a new one is released.

Here’s some of my favourite podcasts:

Adam & Joe

Adam Buxton’s Mixtape

The Collings and Herrin Podcast

Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio

The Perfect Ten with Phill Jupitus and Phil Wilding

British Mac

Pets

Photoshop User TV

D-Town TV

Photofocus

Friday Night Comedy from Radio 4

As It Occurs To Me

That’s just the ones I can remember. See what I mean?

Twitter – my thoughts

Just thought I’d share my thoughts on my first couple of months using Twitter.

I joined Twitter a few months ago just to get a feel for what it’s all about. Initially I set up my account and started following a couple of ‘real’ friends, and a bunch of celebrities. My ‘real’ friends followed me back and I was up and running.

Initially, after posting a few tweets, I started to wonder what the hell is the point of this? I was saying things I thought to be interesting\funny, and only about 3 people would read it – these were my real friends and I could have just emailed or even phoned them to spread my words of wisdom!

I was about ready to stop at this point, but I knew I must be missing something, as Twitter had become so huge there must be something in it. I took the time to learn how it all worked (RTing, Follow Friday etc), and it began to dawn on me. You have to get actively and regularly involved, you have to tweet, re-tweet and reply.

Slowly, things started to pick up, and I would get one or two followers whom I didn’t know in real life! Things really took an upward turn when I started to actively participate in hashtag games (making jokes\puns eetc about a given subject where lots of people join in). This is when people would start to re-tweet me, message me directly and start following me. It’s at this point that you start to build a ‘network’ of like-minded people with whom you can share your thoughts. You do get ‘spam’ followers, but you can just block them.

Now as for ‘celebrity’ tweeters, they have been a real eye-opener.

Firstly, I should just say that I will be referring to a number of ‘celebrities’, and I think it’s best I don’t name names, unless I’m saying something nice about them!

I started following some of the big names on Twitter, just to hear what they had to say. Some celebs are very nice, always have interesting things to say, and take the time to reply to you if you message them. Have to give a namecheck to Maggie Philbin here, her tweets are always interesting, and she often replies to you. Seems like a lovely lady.

Other celebs are very economic with their tweets, but it’s always quality over quantity – Peter Serafinowicz is a good example of this. You also get the ones who only tweet once in a blue moon, never reply and you have absolutely no chance of them following you. Good example is Will Self. Doesn’t say much, but it’s always worth waiting for.

Then there are the ‘listen to me, I’m famous and need your attention at all times’ tweeters! I won’t name any names here, but there are a few of them. To be fair, I suppose it’s all part of a celeb’s personality, the rather large ego.

Next up, the celebs with something to sell. My new book this, my new TV show that. But if you have something to sell, why not use the tools at your disposal? Even famous folk have to pay the mortgage!

So, in summary – Twitter is basically a good thing. It doesn’t have the slightly ‘invasive’ feel of Facebook. You can remain really anonymous, yet still participate. I wouldn’t recommend Twitter as a means of communicating with people you actually know in real life, Facebook is better for that (or maybe, just maybe, you could actually talk to them?). But as a great way of getting involved with people from all walks of life from around the globe, it’s good fun.

The ability to follow famous people is good fun too, love them or hate them!!

Cheers

http://www.twitter.com/eltele