What do you do with all of the little moments in life that are between all of the big stuff we do every day? A walk from the office to your car or 20 minutes on a treadmill don't exactly require our full attention. Instead of zoning out, you can now take those mundane moments and engage your mind to learn about something new, courtesy of iMinds.
iMinds bills itself as an audio encyclopedia. With 72 tracks at launch, the company offers well-produced audio content on a variety of subjects in a similar format to an encyclopedia article. Think of this as a concept launch, though, as iMinds has plans for hundreds of titles across 12 knowledge areas such as Art, bet365体育赛事, History, Math, Pop Culture, etc. They can be purchased individually or a discounted bundles through iTunes and Audible.com.
The company sent a copy of all the available 72 tracks for review. They included titles such as Culture Jamming, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, UFOs, The Bubonic Plague, and l'esprit de l'escalier. In encyclopedic fashion, an iMinds track discusses an idea as fully as we'd expect from a written source, and they research and fact-check their articles before production. If you think listening to someone give a history lesson would be boring, you're wrong. The voice talent is pleasant and the production itself adds to the experience with a subtle electronic music bed that ebbs around the voice over and help to define sections within the title.
The content, too, is well chosen. Putting together an audio-encyclopedia is a very broad undertaking. Collecting their 'articles' in the various categories has helped to define what their concept is and how they'll move forward. iMinds has chosen their selections to be a cross between popular topics of the day, such as Lehman Brothers and Flash Mobs, and general knowledge topics. These selections help broaden your knowledge about what people are talking about today and a topic to learn about just for the satisfaction of knowing it.
So is the iMinds experience effective? I have a lot of podcasts on my ipods that I use mostly on car trips. These are, for the most part, episodes of This American Life and I listen to them when I want something engaging that isn't music. But those are 60 minute podcasts and aren't appropriate when I want to go on a walk during my lunch break or the short car ride home. In that respect, I really enjoyed the format and length of iMinds and the ability to take away knowledge on topics I hadn't learned about since school, if ever.
But sometimes I found myself wanting more information than iMinds could offer. For example, their piece on The Great Fire of London was informative on this historic event. But I've never been to London and the scale of the fire was lost on me as they described streets and neighborhoods that were destroyed in the blaze. Hitting up wikipedia.com afterward helped, but it illustrated that not all content could translate strictly to an audio form.
On the whole, however, the product is great. As a direct resource for information, it's hard to compete with online resources. But as a way to keep your mind fresh while out and about, look no further.
Wired: Convenient and informative. Well produced. Fairly inexpensive when purchased in bundles.
Tired: Topics which require references to maps, charts, etc. do not translate well to a purely audio format.
