DarrenBarefoot.com

Easy - Zencast :)

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My two favourites:
- the sniffer
- NPR’s On the Media

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Besides what Rebecca listed up above, I like a variety of things that it’s hard to pin down specific favorites. A few worth noting:
- The Onion
- Anything Uncle Weed (Dave Olsen) does
- CBC Radio’s BC This Week
- CNet: daily tech news
- Island Podcasting
- Spike O’Dell

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I enjoy the “Ask a Ninja” video podcast. Also the Battlestar Galactica podcasts, and the CBC Radio 3 podcast - in fact, I’ve discovered several new Canadian bands from there.

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I agree on The Sniffer, plus Tod Maffin’s Todbits. Short, funny, and informative. And Canadian, of course. If you enjoy NSFW, Mondays (featuring Vancouver’s Richard Campbell and a bunch of Americans) is hilarious, though very spotty in its released schedule these days.

IT Conversations can be overwhelming, but if you cherry pick there are so very many good things in it. NOVA podcasts are also short and good.

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Darren,

I totally didn’t expect to see a post from you asking for readers to share their favorite podcasts. The other week I was checking out some of your previous posts on podcasting:

You said,

“I’m skeptical about podcasting. I’m skeptical about who’s doing it, who’s going to do it, and who’s going to listen to it. In short, I don’t think podcasting is going to get very far into the mainstream.”

“I wrote the piece to debunk some of the hype around podcasting, and to articulate my reasons for not being particularly excited by the format. As often happens with these things, I became a bit of a podcasting antichrist, when really I was just “skeptical about who’s doing it, who’s going to do it, and who’s going to listen to it”.”

“My opinion hasn’t changed–I still think the phenomenon is over-hyped and destined to suffer fate of FM radio–but I’ve appreciated the range of opinions that I’ve heard.”

What changed your mind about podcasting? What “converted” you?

I produce a podcast on technical writing — Tech Writer Voices. It’s a podcast specifically for technical writers.

In the sidebar of the Tech Writer Voices site I list some of the podcasts I listen to. I need to update that list a bit.

I previously wrote a post on my blog, http://www.idratherbewriting.com, listing some of my favorites.

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Tom: If you go back and read that whole post again, you’ll see that I’m responding to the hype around podcasting. In fact, later on in that post I say:

“Of course, if all that podcasting really achieves is providing eager listeners with time shifted content, then that’s a great victory.”

I never say anything about my personal listening habits.

This is one of my frustrations with this blogging medium. If I write criticizing one aspect of a particular thing, you tend to get pigeon-holed as unilaterally opposed to the entire thing. That’s why I started my post about ‘Get a First Life’ with “I’m not a Second Life hater”, to try to mitigate that effect.

Truth be told, though, I obviously haven’t been converted to listen to everyman and woman podcasts the way I read a broad variety of blogs. The podcasts I do listen to are all professionally produced. I’ve tried other ones, but they haven’t stuck.

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Thanks for clarifying. Sorry for misinterpreting your thoughts from your previous post. I did just go back and read it. I saw something else that caught my attention:

“However, nobody (or very few) learns how to be a radio broadcaster. Like it or not, that takes ability, practice and, ideally, a great voice.”

I agree with much of what you say, particularly about audio quality, professional production, etc. But taken to the extreme, I am not sure that the majority of listeners want slick radio broadcaster personas; I personally prefer the authentic, real person. If that realness results in mumbling and long silence, I agree that it won’t fly. However, one of my favorite podcasts, the WordPress podcast, is done by amateurs, and I love it. I love that the people seem real.

Right now, many podcasters are using Skype, and there’s only so much quality you can get from that. Still, if it’s about a topic I’m interested in, I’ll listen. In contrast, I often skip past professionally produced podcasts that seem irrelevant to me. I like Leo Laporte’s voice in TWIT (This Week in Tech), but I also think it’s very much like the radio broadcaster type voice.

One podcast that I really like is the David Pogue NY Times podcast.

Thanks for all your great posts.

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Tom: No worries, it’s a common phenomenon. In truth, the professionalism isn’t so much about the vocal quality. That does matter, but it’s more about being well organized, staying on topic and delivering content that I find entertaining, compelling and valuable. I don’t want to hear people ramble, or scramble for something to say. It’s also about reliability–I’m a creature of habit, so I want a similar structure and length from show to show.

I’m also worried about this Scoble-powered ethos of non-editing. Since when did editing become a crime?

Those are just my preferences, obviously, and happily there’s plenty of people who have different ones.

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Thanks for all the suggestions–I shall check them out.

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The Absolute Peach (if you like British comedy) is hilarious.

http://www.theabsolutepeach.com

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