I don’t have time to read. Because of that I listen to audio books on the go, and it’s really great. During the last ear I’ve consumed a dozen of novels (yes, non technical books), can you believe this? I did it while walking, driving or riding. Listening to the books is great.

I also listen to audio podcasts,lectures, and radio programs available as audio files or as a stream.

But what to do with video presentations from youtube? There is some great content there that I would not want to miss. On the earlier stages of my evolution I was using the Firefox plugin called dwhelper, which can save (most of) youtube videos in the files in mp4 format. Then I’d copy it to my iPhone to play using the VLC application.

When I walk or drive I can’t watch the iPhone screen. I listen. You’ll be surprised, but most of the presentation slides are pretty much useless for the audience. You can listen to the audio and visualise what the speaker refers to. With presenters like Steve Jobs it was easy – there were no program listings on his slides. It’s not difficult with most of other speakers too – they read from Powerpoint slides anyway.

So now I’m getting rid of the video part completely. This is how it works. Go to youtube and find the video you’d like to listen to, for example, Martin Fowler’s intro to NoSQL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qI_g07C_Q5I

Then copy this URL to a converter service that can extract the MP3 out of it. So far I’ve been using free service at http://www.vidtomp3.com. In some cases it works very fast, in some cases it’s slow, but it does the job. Copy the mp3 to your audio player and consume the info on the go. This is all it takes.

P.S. If you of better ways to consume info, please share.

P.S.S. If you believe that we already have too much of the information to consume, do not follow my advices. Consult with your therapist.