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While marveling over the release announcements for the Kindle 2 the other day, I watched a video of a Kindle user talking about how it has changed his reading habits. The thing that he said that struck me is that the Kindle had changed what he read; now he is reading things that he might not have considered before because with the Kindle it is so easy to obtain and easy to discover. That's what I'd like to do, but with web content.

I need to discover things on the web that are of interest to me, but not within my normal realm of attention.

My reading on the web has been focused in fairly specific areas. I have some regular blogs I read that I've discovered outside of my usual interest areas, but I have no way of bringing in new ideas from other ways of thinking. Like my fears for the Philly tech community becoming insular, where all of the same people attend all of the events without really inviting outsiders to the conversation, I fear that I am not embracing an adequate number of outside ideas, and my brain is becoming atrophied with lack of new stimulus.

So I'm looking not for specific single locations of interest, but for topics that I might put into a Google Blogsearch feed that would yield some thought-provoking returns. Got any ideas?

Comments

Comment by roz duffy on .
roz duffy
http://asymptomatic.net/2009/02/11/2787/out-of-my-element#comment-262973
I'm really into User Experience right now, reading books, checking out blogs, listservs, etc. I'm finding new things to google all the time. I think there is something to be said about going analog and picking up a book on a topic you've been interested in and looking into the sources they reference, etc. To be honest, I'm at this point because I joined a book club, which you might want to look into or start. You're always welcome at Refresh Philly, on the first Mondays of the month. We've been getting a very diverse audience.
Comment by Michael Chermside on .
Michael Chermside
http://asymptomatic.net/2009/02/11/2787/out-of-my-element#comment-262978
No particular suggestions, because it depends on your interests. For instance, I follow a bunch of programming blogs (including yours) and wanted to branch out some. I added a bunch of .net blogs, since that's something I *don't* use and don't know so well. I tried looking for blogs on intellectual property law (an interest of mine), but I the only one I found which I liked soon stopped publishing. Recently I started doing a lot of web development so I've been reading lots of CSS and design stuff. But all these suggestions worked for me because they are aligned with my own personal interests. So my best suggestion is to think of something new that you are INTERESTED in and look for that.