My own relationship with TV has dramatically changed these last few years. Thanks to technology I now have the ability to set aside one evening a week to sit down and watch a few hours of selected TV shows (mostly American imports). I would very rarely sit down in front of the TV and just flick through the channels searching for something to watch, invariably there isn’t anything on that interests me. Instead I choose to sit at my computer, engaging fully with online media, creating content and absorbing information.

The downside of this setup is that I miss out on those opportunistic TV nuggets – those wonderful documentaries on completely random topics that are incredibly interesting but contain sets of knowledge that I would never have actively sought out by myself.

How did David Blaine hold his breath for 17 minutes? Why is sustainable fishing so important? How has cricket changed India? What does open data mean for the web? What’s it like to treat a patient on top of Mount Everest? How can gamers change the world?

These are all questions I’ve had answered without asking them via the Ted Talks video podcast available through iTunes. A new video becomes available approximately every two days and they’re never any longer than about 20 minutes, so they’re perfect for a bus journey or lunchtime viewing. Obviously the Ted website has been uploading new Ted talks for a long time now, the difference with subscribing to the podcast is that you are treated to topics from a massive range of different Ted conferences. Subscribing means you’re stopping yourself from picking and choosing what you’re going to watch, thus you open yourself up to a far richer learning (and entertaining) experience.

Everyone talks about “information overload” and the noise created online, but when you use tools like I do to filter everything (the same way I filter my TV viewing) you miss out on learning about topics outside of your comfort zone. It’s important to step outside of this zone because the more information you have about the world outside of your bubble the greater your ability to understand that world and your impact upon it. It can also inspire your creativity and perhaps pique an interest in you that you never realised you had.

Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Theory, Research, Applications: This blog contains each individual chapter from the newly published book of the same name. Readers are invited to read each chapter and comment or ask questions of the individual writers. Topics covered include privacy and trust online, internet abuse, flow states, cybertheraputic theory and techniques and sexual activities online. It’s wonderful to see an entire book on the topic of Cyberpsychology readily available online and open to discussion. Very much looking forward to reading all of these chapters.

For your eyes only: Custom interfaces make computer clicking faster, easier: University of Washington engineers discuss a new approach to software design. They propose that instead of standard off the shelf user interface designs, that by putting the user through a brief skills test a mathematically-based version of the user interface could be generated that is optimized for the user’s vision and motor abilities. This research is especially important for the disabled, elderly or anyone that has difficulty using a computer mouse.

The Effects of Background Television on the Toy Play Behavior of Very Young Children: This research study found that background television, disrupts very young children’s play behavior even when they pay little overt attention to it and even when tuned to adult themed shows. Background television was found to cause short play episode lengths, which are a marker for poor developmental outcome. These findings are important because play is directly related to healthy cognitive and social development. Related Article: TV Really Might Cause Autism

Internet users refuse to put up with intrusive ads: From 1000+ internet users sampled 59% indicated that they had stopped visiting a website because of irrelevant, annoying and intrusive online ads (including pop-ups that cover web content, loud noises and ads that were difficult to close, minimise or click away from). This study relates back to my own undergraduate research on pop-up advertisements, where I found that the more experienced a user the more likely they are to actively attempt to remove pop-ups from their online experience. Web designers need to start paying attention to research and surveys such as these, or as demonstrated, users will stop visiting certain websites completely.

If anyone has anything they’d like to contribute to the next digest, or related articles for this volume, feel free to drop me a comment or an e-mail – Sinéad.

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4