Psyberspace

A few posts ago I bemoaned the iPod interface. Well Tod Maffin has a way to work around all this. How I Listen to 100 Podcasts A Day (I Love Radio .org):

STEP ONE: SET UP AN iTUNES ‘RIVER OF SOUND’ PLAYLIST
I have what I call my River of Sound smart-playlists (taking a page from Dave Winer’s ‘river of news’ metaphor. I have two: Podcasts-Cdn and Podcasts-Other. These are based on genres I force in place through my podcatching client: Canadian podcasts are forced with the Podcast-Cdn genre and all others get the Podcasts-Other when they are downloaded.
The criteria for these Smart Playlists is critical to making this work. They are:

* Genre is Podcast-Cdn or Podcast-Other
* My Rating is 0 stars (this last criteria is the big secret. That way, as soon as I rate a podcast, it disappears from my River of Sound smart playlist, and I can ‘work through them’ much like you’d read and email then put ita folder.)

STEP TWO: USE RATINGS AS A CODE SYSTEM
I use my star ratings as a way to categorize podcasts I’m listening to. Here are my five categories:

* 1 star: Delete from iTunes at next sync

* 2 stars: Potential content for The Feed — I used iPodderX to convert to bookmarkable format, so that when I find a moment I think would work, I pause it right there, rate it 2 stars, and move onto the next one. Then when I’m back at my Mac, I can easily find that moment again.

* 3 stars: Great podcasts. These are just ones I really love listening to again and again, or playing for people as an example of what a good podcast is like.

* 4 stars: Take action. This reminds me to do something — email the podcaster, change the genre it’s filed under, check out their web site, etc.

* 5 stars: My favourite music. Gotta have a list.

I also have a cheat-sheet label on the back of my iPod to remind me of what all the codes mean.

STEP THREE: SET UP CATEGORY-CATCHERS IN iTUNES
Now, the last step is to create ‘category catchers.’ These are Smart Playlists that funnel your star ratings into their own playlists for you. That’s fairly simple — it’s just one playlist for each star (i.e. When My Rating equals 1 star.) This way, when you rate something as a particular star on your iPod as you’re listening (or, indeed, when listening from iTunes) they will pop into the right category here. (Note to Apple: I wish I could delete files from a playlist — you can only remove it from the playlist, not actually remove the file.)

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Jobs announces iTunes will accommodate podcasts:

The new version of iTunes will let users of Apple’s music management program and integrated online music store find and download podcasts, which are homemade radio-style shows that have become a grassroots phenomenon on the Internet.

Probably a Good Thing, I don’t really quite get this. With FeedDemon I have excellent integration with Itunes. Would iTunes try to take that over? They could even mess it up. It is not so much iTunes that is the problem but the iPod that is the problem for podcasting

• not being able to delete files
• having half listened to files – still showing up as New
• not being able to see the full name of the podcast till you play it
• and not having an aphabetical access

And worst of all the recording function being crippled. A really good feature would be to be able to save clips to post into your own podcasts.

In this post NewsGator Acquires FeedDemon, TopStyle…and Me! Nick Bradbury explains what has happened with the aqisition & why. All sounds very promising, and I hope it will work for Palm!! I’d love to access the same data via the Palm, fat chance though. I can see it working on the PPC first, damn.

I have finally done it, registered the Feeddeemon that had expired. Bradbury Software – Announcing FeedDemon 1.5 I like it. It uses IE and makes IE into a tabbed browser, lets me read stuff in a great way! Beautifully integrated with the “external browser” I had gone back to Sage in Firefox – but it is just not as good as FeedDemon. Nick Bradbury the author seems to have a way of making the best stuff in the feild. I loved homesite in its early days. Then he sells it off. That has happend again with Feeddemon. Nick’s blog and the Bradbury Forums.

I have started, finally, reading the Lanny Budd series. In my associated browsing found: audio file! The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – Project Gutenberg also a pic from wikipedia

tags: upton_sinclair

I have been listening to Dave Winer on my walk to work and home today. Here is his blog, and link to podcasts. Scripting News I like him, he is a friend (as he puts it to his listeners). Boy, can he say nasty stuff about people though, and companies. I can see his point usually, but he must be good at making enemies! I also like his openness and reality, is an example of what he advocates, true voice, in it for the love of it, for connection. He has a great heart.

My own podcasting fell foul of having too much trouble with the tech, and then with the cost of it on my website, and mostly no time to solve all those hassles. But I want to do it again and Dave W is a role model for me. The other day one of his files appeared on my MP3 player… just him singing a song, a warm and friendly song. Now that was sweet, thanks Dave.

Dave Slusher interview John Buckman of Magnatune in this IT Conversations As I write this I am streaming a beautiful mp3 from Ehren Starks. And the whole concept has totally grabbed me – the future of music is here! No more kazaa. No more fat cat record labels. Look, I even get something like the record cover or CD booklet, bios and this great pic of the artists:
. I began by listening to a Jazz m3u from the Genre site giving me urges to go the specific artists. I have enjoyed some but in a few hours of exploring I have not found anything really great. It is the cocept that is good, but an it produce great music? I hope so.

The philosophy is summed up here:

# I thought: why not make a record label that has a clue? That helps artists get exposure, make at least as much money they would make with traditional labels, and help them get fans and concerts.
# Magnatune is my project. The goal is to find a way to run a record label in the Internet Reality: file trading, Internet Radio, musicians’ rights, the whole nine-yards.

Hi from the Palm with wi-fi & bluetooth. I began this post using my Tungsten T3 & the wi-fi card – and am editing it while having dinner, using bluetooth & my mobile phone. I have it working more or less as I want.

The web pro browser will not do all sites, eg Gmail wont work.

For all that I love being connected on the go!

In so many ways I am more integrated with cyberspace all the time.

I experience it as living in a new environment…

Psychotherapy and Eclecticism: I stumbles onto this site from Google news, and there were a couple of interesting articles.

Moreover, no one is really ‘knowledgeable’ about how best to combine differing treatments. Little evidence is available with which to inform eclecticism. Hence, although mixing techniques is a constant temptation in therapy sessions, it is best avoided. The risk inherent in eclecticism is that therapists will fall into idiosyncratic approaches, as they did in the pre-empirical past. It’s important that psychiatric residents be trained in carefully defined treatments (psychodynamic, cognitive, and so forth) so that such eclecticism—a euphemism for entropy—is minimized.

John C. Markowitz, M.D.

In my own psychotherapy journey I went from an eclectic start to a very focussed & pure psychodrama stage… have I lost that to eclecticism as I have learnt more about Jung and analytical practitioners? My approach is not so much eclectic as a comfortable old hours which retains it character but has had some efficient modifications well incorporated all in keeping with its original style. Of course I would challenge his whole notion of pre and post empirical times. The past was quite empirical, perhaps more thasn he thinks, and the present is not as empirical as it might seem, and anyway empirical is not really the right word.

Still his point about the muddied eclecticism makes sense, though it might not really include what happans in the post purity stage in the case of experienced clinicians.

tags: psyber waltzzz psychotherapy psyche empiricism