Sunday Morning Shards #18
On my mind and in my reading queue this week. The “Getting Well” edition.
*All Consuming.net, a kind of Technorati for books, is a neat site designed by the endlessly creative Erik Benson. It not only tracks what books are being discussed on the blogosphere but allows you create lists from your own book collection and publish them on your weblog. The “Currently Reading” box to your immediate right is a product of All Consuming (discovered on the smooth redesign of Dansays).
*I’ve gotten dizzy from trying to keep track of all the Best Music of 2004 columns I’ve seen around. So I’m going with this column in the Dec. 15 issue of SFWeekly which also informed me that a bunch of artists I had heard of, neigh admired, were from right here in Da Bay.
*I had no idea that the legendary Ben Fong-Torres did a column on radio for SFGate. Another reason why The Gate needs RSS Feeds.
*A list of newspapers that have gotten their RSS on (via Micropersuasion).
*“The Next Big Thing” is a dense, rich public radio program like a hardy piece of maple fudge. It’s been described as a baby “This American Life” but that doesn’t quite get it. It’s got the same smart-people-addressing-topic-in-different-ways-format but TAL is a bit more structured, sticking rigidly to Act I, Act II,everything in mellow-tones. TNBT seems to give a bit more liberty to its contributors, honoring the diversity (shrill, whispery, resigned etc.) of their voices. I’m not describing it all that well so let them. I’ll just say it’s quite good.
*I’m trying out this program Audio Hijack, which lets you do timed recordings of radio, music and audio streams. It may be the Tivo for Radio I’ve been looking for.
*Mysteries are the most borrowed types of books from the nation’s public libraries (via ArtsJournal).
*2005 is being called The Year of Hyper Fragmentation. If even a couple of these predictions comes true, 2005 is going to be a very exciting year to be a cultural consumer.