Tagged "podcast"

Over the last while I’ve been collecting wonderful podcast episodes from the hundreds of hours I’ve listened to. I’ve even workshopped some of my favourites with colleagues and friends (they all approve!). Luckily a neat service called HuffDuffer allows you to create a personalised feed from episodes spanning any podcast you see fit. All you need is a direct link to the MP3 or indeed any format audio file.

So here it is, my favourite episodes spanning many podcasts. Mostly I love good stories, with unexpected twists. I suppose you could simplify that to “Surprise and Delight”. Be prepared to be entertained, surprised and delighted…

Just a quick post about a great application I’ve seen mentioned by Cali Lewis: Stitcher. If your a talk radio fan like me, you’ll really appreciate this app! Ever since I switched from an iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S3 and stopped using Apple’s Podcast application it has been frustrating to keep up to date with podcasts.

I’ve used BeyondPod on Android (which I’ve praised before - excellent Google Reader integration). I then tried to search for a third party podcast application on the iPad that would synchronise with Google Reader. First there were none, then some (like Feedler and Instacast) but all have been bitterly disappointing with Google Reader integration. Instacast could import OPML (after a messy bundling of feeds in Google Reader) and Feedler could read the feeds (but not handle the video and audio contained within the feed item properly). To be honest I’d given up hope, I said to myself I’d chalk it up to fate and just buy a Nexus tablet when the iPad 2 was no longer serviceable. But - happily - I was wrong and had been looking in the wrong places…

As I’ve mentioned before¹, I regularly watch technology podcasts and I’ve had a subscription to sites like Lynda.com. Between those and Youtube, I’ve watched an awful lot of technology how-to videos and 90% of them are quite poor in terms of editing, sound and being coherent/properly scripted. Sometimes though it’s a joy to genuinely learn something new in a short, concise and to the point video.

This haktip is right up there with being among the best: short, concise, to the point and about a utility that will be super-useful to me. In work I’m in an agile software development team and I spend a lot of time on the command line. I like the command line, but many don’t (personal preference I guess). As part of being agile, we produce a lot of video demos to stakeholders. Increasingly though the demos we produce are just as useful for the team - you can’t be every team member at once and this provides huge visibility to the team of progress. Our software is a Unix product, but we develop on Windows - so Camtasia is usually used - which is fine for GUI demos. This handy utility will be great to demo CLI stuff we do.

I try to listen to as many podcasts (netcasts?) as I can. They fall in to two categories: Irish radio and technology. Luckily, there is so much competition in this space it’s hard to pick the best - so quality is high!

1. Tech News Today (TNT) by the TWiT Network

Regular and fills you right up to the minute with the latest tech news. Can replace RSS of many blogs (HUGE time saver) since lively debate of tech topics is the order of the day.

I usually listen to podcasts on the excellent Twit.tv network and it goes without saying Floss Weekly is one of my favourites. A recent episode covered Haiku - an open source operating system based on the design of the old BeOS. What’s very interesting about BeOS is the design, an integrated all in one operating system - and the fact Apple almost purchased it. That’s amazing to me, literally in one fell swoop, if Apple had of offered the 200 million Be Systems wanted, there would be no NextStep into Apple and by extension - Steve Jobs. It’s especially poignant since Apple just surpassed Microsoft to become the second most valuable American company.

Even while podcasts are relatively new (well a couple of years - like blogs), Irish Radio Stations are surprisingly well in on the act. Even our incumbent state broadcaster, RTE, is podcasting en-masse on both RTE Radio 1 and RTE 2FM. To recieve podcasts, you need podcasting software, start by getting Juice Reciever(Formerly iPodder), available for Linux, BSD, MAC and Windows. I will start with my top 5 Irish Radio podcasts:

In case you have never looked at it, Click Online is the flagship technology program for the BBC. It broadcasts on the Internet and can be viewed even on a 56k modem. I have been watching click online for over a year and a half now, I first saw it on BBC World, while holidaying in Portugal. It also broadcasts on BBC News 24 at 7am on a Sunday morning (I have never seen it at this time!). Although by its nature a technical program, it is very much aimed at the average PC user and so most things are explained fully.