My Media Intake (End of 2012)

Some people have asked what magazines I read or what podcasts I listen to. I intend to write this post every year so that I can track how my interests change over the years.

The list below is my full media “intake”. If something does not show up in any of these channels, then the chance that I have seen it is very small. This also works the other way around: consider this a playlist for any media manipulator targeting me.

Magazines

  • Wired – I have been reading the US version of this classic Internet-age magazine from cover to cover for over 10 years now.
  • New York Review of Books – A liberal (and quite US centric) look at books about the world.
  • Adbusters – Magazine from “a global network of culture jammers and creatives”.
  • Makeshift Magazine – Showing the hidden creativity of resource constrained locations.
  • Vives – Free (Dutch) magazine on the use of technology in primary and secondary education.
  • Kaskade – The European juggling magazine.
  • Linux Format – Easily the best Linux magazine in the world.
  • Shell Venster – The “house magazine” of my employer.
  • The Economist – Even though I much more align with the political/economic views of the Guardian Weekly, I still can’t find any other weekly news source that has the breadth of the Economist. I would appreciate recommendations for alternatives (I don’t read German, so the Stern wouldn’t work for me).
  • NRC weekly book supplement – A weekly overview of the latest books from a Dutch newspaper.
  • Linux Magazine – The only Dutch magazine on Linux that I know of.

Podcasts

  • This American Life – I cannot imagine somebody making a better radio show. Has me both crying and laughing out loud regularly.
  • Guardian Science Weekly – Alok Jha is knowledgable and extremely funny.
  • Guardian Tech Weekly – A good weekly overview of technology news only slightly slanted towards the UK.
  • This Week in Tech – Leo Laporte’s podcasting empire keeps growing, but this is the original weekly show with a set of regular pundits.
  • Radiolab – Probably the most artistic way to talk about science.
  • 99% Invisible – A podcast about architecture and design that nearly always find fascinating.
  • Security Now – Steve Gibson has a knack for explaining complicated things in a simply fashion.
  • Econtalk – I would probably disagree with most of Russ Roberts’ ideals and politics but he does have interesting guests and he manages to have interesting conversations with them.
  • Triangulation – Leo Laporte again, but now with a single guest.
  • FLOSS Weekly – I listen to this show about Free (as in speech) software when the topic is appealing.
  • How Stuff Works – Still not sure what to think of these two presenters explaining things, often I find them a bit too loose with the facts and the noise to signal ratio isn’t optimal for me either. They do have great titles and questions though.
  • TEDTalks – I can listen to the talks that interest me at 1.4 times the normal speed and while I am on my bike.

Feeds/Email newsletters

  • Twitter daily digest – Twitter sends me a daily email with a few of the stories that have been tweeted about the most in my network,they combine these with the tweets that got the most retweets. Consider it my personalized news service.
  • News.me – Similar to the update that Twitter sends me.
  • Stephen Downes – Unsung hero of the learning world. Subscribe to his daily email.
  • Audrey Watters – By far my favourite ed-tech journalist. Get the weekly newsletter.
  • Springwise – A weekly update of fresh business ideas.
  • To email – I’ve am using a folder in my Google Reader account to create a single RSS feed from multiple RSS feeds. I then feed this into If This Then That so that I get an email whenever one of the following people or blog create a new item:
  • Shell news from the New York Times, the Guardian and Shell itself – I make these feeds come into my email inbox too.

Other

  • NewsConsole: Innovation and Learning Innovation themes – A big data approach to finding news (patterns).