Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Five

TED talks audio and video feed - Often compelling and sometimes inspiring lectures from the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) event TED ("is an event like no other. It brings together more than 1000 thought-leaders, movers and shakers... in Monterey, California every year... for four days of learning laughter and inspiration.")
A couple of the lectures that excited me were Cameron Sinclair (founder of Architecture for Humanity talking about Open Source Design and Architecture - and the DIY ethic) and Nicholas Negroponte (on One Laptop Per Child and how it will be done - and what it means for education). Other interesting casts were David Pogue and Arctic explorer Ben Saunders. I've got to listen to and watch more of this stuff. The site says "For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. They have a cumulative effect." I agree - that's what I have just done. I am excited.

The Show with Ze Frank - is what I've been watching a lot of recently. (There's over a year to catch up on to) (And then a few days later I saw his thang mentioned on the 3rd episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe BBCPage WikiPage (series 2)).
Watching Ze Frank is compulsive watching, it has echoes of Armando Iannucci's stuff... I'm trying to find a way to describe it (if you haven't watched it already)- a face to camera talking about "the knowledge", reading something from the comments, provoking viewer interaction rearranging his perceptual architecture...

And then there's TWIT. Which is all good. MacBreak Weekly, and TWIT are my favourite, due to the informal, looser and "rathole"-y nature of the show (they refer to their veering off topic moments as ratholes) and their reliable characters - Leo Laporte and his voices and accents, Merlin Mann and his joshing, John C. Dvorak the grumpy old man etc. net@nite is interesting cos it's has live listener interaction (people phone in) and I like the back and forth between Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte.

I'm thinking of creating a deli.cio.us tag - podcasts I like - or something - can I be arsed? After listening to those TED talks with all those go ahead and do stuff people I feel incredibly lazy. But my reasoning is - I am a duck, ducks laze and doze a lot, I'm the only duck I know that can understand human language. But that's a very specious argument.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Four

Sounds Good podcast "The podcast that makes you sound better"- Audio engineering and how to get sounding good podcast. It's an enhanced iTunes podcast. The images (of enhancement) explain how to achieve certain effects, there's advice, tips and tricks with visuals that make tricky things easier to understand. The host Hens Zimmerman has an intriguing (is it Belgian?) accent. Clearly he's an audio professional, very authoritative and the advice is detailed and fairly easy to follow if you take it bit by bit. He seems to be working on a Mac - this is an exciting podcast that I have to listen to more of. Lots of listener interaction too - which is fab.

Indiefeed - I discovered Mixel Pixel's Coming up Xs on this podcast. The site allows you to chose from different genres like Hip Hop or Blues or Electronica. Each little podcast contains a song and some information about the artist. The website has a page with flash players where you can listen to streams of various genres. Have to make more use of this too. - Oh there is also some spoken word on the site too - I have yet to check that out. The posts on each genre page have the feed link, some of the posts don't seem to - if you scroll down far enough you'll find the feed link somewhere.


So few Mac apps with the podcast download and play ability - or even better preview a podcast. I was trying out Juice but I found I don't give it much of a go, I have a knee jerk dislike of Java apps. I'd also had enough of Playpod which was buggy. So I'm now trying out new podcast feeds in Vienna to see if i like them - If I do I import them into iTunes. I don't like that iTunes doesn't allow you to copy the feed URL from within the app - but if you drag the podcast feed to the desktop it will create a .pcast file which you can then open in a text editor and copy the feed URL. Or I could open the exported OPML file, but my list is so huge it's faster to do the drag and open thing.

Songbird Web Audio Player/Browser

Songbird is this media player/web browser thing. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Click for Gallery + Features. I've been playing around with for a couple of days. I'm trying to figure out what is is and can do. it seems to be a Firefox based browser with an iTunes type audio player integrated to allow it to play media on the web. It plays many different file types - and is extensionable (like Firefox). You can listen to web radio and streams. It's got built in Audioscrobbler, but I can't seem to get that to work properly.

So - if you go to a net label site (like this one) you can go to an artist or releases page and play and browse all playable media on that page as if you were in iTunes.


p.s.The Finder seems to be telling me that the app is 113 MB - what!?


It's a great idea, and the app looks interesting but it's only in 0.2.1 so is still awkward. I find it works best just using it for web playback and not importing my iTunes playlists + Library. I have downloaded one of the nightlies (0.2.5) and this works a load better than the release I used before.
Yeah -it's buggy but still promising.

Anyway - so still I am confused, but this is a interesting app. It's nice to visit a feed burner type podcast feed and preview the podcasts in the browser.

Right so - I'm still messing at the mo. Will tell more if I learn some astounding thing.

--

On a podcast note been listening to loooaads of TWIT podcasts. Really like net@nite and MacBreak Weekly, but others are good too. And you get some Merlin Mann in MacBreak - Mr Jocularity - always worth a listen.

Links for 18th February 2007

So a few links.

Charlie Brooker on the UK "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" ads and the concept of personifying machines - stereotyping the people who use them. (He claims he hates macs - and as you can expect gets many replies)

Armando Iannucci on the value of comedy and the necessity for it when the "serious media" refuse to address important issues, saying that comedy is important and it does matter and it has a unique place in society.

Fine Water - Bottled Waters of the World. An epicurean view of bottled water - reviews of water from around the world (this for example is the Evian page), guides to different bottled waters and their "mouth feel" (different intesity of bubbles etc.), guides to different waters to drink with certain foods. Plus bottled water news. Yes, keep uptodate on water related newsy news.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Three

The R U Sirius Show and NeoFiles - They have all the past shows up online - I've been listening to these over the past few days. R U Sirius's show covers things such as transhumanism, interviews with people such as Cory Doctorow or Jimmy Wales (Mr Wikipedia), or the author of "Mind Performance Hacks" . Lots to listen to - it's almost like a portal to discovering all kinds of stuff. The tag lines for each show are different (NeoFiles is "The hottest ideas in tech culture today", The R U Sirius Show is "Exploring weird memes and alternative cultures") but there is a lot of overlappage happening. These shows belong to the MondoGlobo network to which belongs other blogs and casts; one of these is destinyland (The happiest show on earth). I've listened to a two episodes of this so far. Oh yeah, and NeoFiles s a nice pun. Files from neophiles (is that a word? (Cocoa doesn't think so) lovers of the new)?

The Splendid Table podcast - with Lynne Rossetto Kasper is an American Public Media programme - all kinds of food related items the latest programme (that I listened to) included - Liquid nitrogen in the kitchen (great for making ice cream in seconds) - Using essential oils in cooking - a short thing on double decker sandwiches in Cincinnati - Talking with the head chef from one of NY's prestigious restaurants - And of course the essential listeners' Q and As with the host. A friend tells me she experiences "A salivation and desire for succulent things" when listening. One episode featured a phone interview with Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand on his new book on food. I assume she was talking about food. The host has a wealth of information about food at her fingertips, but doesn't come over as condescending - me likey.

Fair Game with Faith Salie - an amusing, magazine show with Faith Salie ("possibly the only Rhodes Scholar doing comedy today") as host. A recent epidsode featured an interview with Louis Theroux on his new book The Call of the Weird and on his documentaries, and about himself and his attraction to "weird". That was a welcome surprise. There are interviews with people in the news, or people with something to plug - you the kind of thing, and a musical interlude. I heard a great band called Best Fwends - short power pop/punk elecronica of the kind John Peel might have played. Click on the more button to listen to 30 second clips here at the Moshi Moshi Shop.
The programme is another one from US public radio. This time from Public Radio International.

OK this isn't very in-depth but the podcasts are out there, if you find anything here vaguely interesting have a listen for yourself, you don't need me quacking on.

There'll be more soon (that is, in my interpretation of the word soon - reading "when I can be rouse myself from lethargy")

So...

I've been listening to podcasts - some good ones. I will blog about them soon.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Two

Coolness Roundup with Stephen Schleicher and Charlie White (Charlie White of Gizmodo). For tech, gadgets, things web and computer. There is a 2 minute daily - (is it daily?) show and a longer in depther show. The last podcast I heard by them (not the most recent) covered one of the hosts' refusal to use anti-virus products (seeing no need for them, he says he doesn't use them and has no virii) and his advice on how to go anti virus free "I think their (anti virus companies) applications are fraudulent" Charlie (I think it was he) says. Another feature on that show was search tips - stuff about Google and other engine searches that you may or may not know. In the glut of tech podcasts out there I still think this is worth a listen. Not heard loads about the Mac on there though.

Jason Byrne's Just Comedy (now defunct but a small archive is available) is one of the Times' podcasts. Each episode Jason interviews a comic (the ones I have heard so far have been Robin Ince, Mark Steel, Adam Hill and Jo Caulfield), beginning talking about their latest shows and progressing to talking about whatever things get on to. Funny and interesting. Jason Byrne now does a podcast called The Knowledge Podcast which is a what's on - music, films arts, entertainment etc. with other reporters on stuff. I'm not so keen on this one. I think more of Jason's comedy and charm was in the Comedy podcast. This one gives him little room to do more than read the stories. The comedy podacast would veer off in tangents unforeseen (as he remarked in the Adam Hill interview), but no chance for such interesting and amusing meanderings in this, and I'm not all that keen on what is left. But then again I'm not all that keen on entertainment news type programmes in general. Though I'll listen to a few more episodes to give a fair go - it's not execrable.


Science Weekly (Scroll down a bit on the linked page) on Guardian Unlimited hosted by Alok Jha. Yes, another Guardian podcast and yes it's interesting and fairly brief (half an hour or so) on the latest science news and just interesting science stuff. In a Guardian stylee.

All podcasting men this post. Most podcast hosts are male, or if there are women involved they are usually as some kind of sidekick (sometimes a female sidekick is there to laugh at all the hosts jokes). Though there are exceptions - Buzz out Loud Molly Wood and Veronica Belmont: Gadgettes Molly Wood and Kelly Morrison: Media Talk on Guardian Unlimited Emilyt Bell: The Chillcast with Anji Bee (Which I'll talk about another time when I've listened to a few more episodes) - there are other Podcasts but those are the first that spring to mind. It might seem from my quick list as though there are loads, but (in my reckoning anyway) men still waaaay outnumber women in the podosphere. If there is anyone out there reading (heh heh!) please instruct me to the contrary.

On silentmiaow And then Rambling on to Me

I have been noticing people noticing silentmiaow on YouTube. I first came across her blog Ballastexistenz on a link from Autism Diva (found on Mind Hacks blog). I then found silentmiaow from a link on Boing Boing. I also found a link to an MetaFilter thing on a link from submit response blog.

So some buzz. On MetaFilter especially. Some People responding to the opening post want to defend certain ways of comprehending, processing and understanding the world, valuing only certain ways and ignoring other ways. Though it is heartening to see there are many who are willing to open up to difference and that don't want to impose their limitaions upon everyone else's experience, and their right to their experiences.
Read Life's Infinite Riches (a post at ballastexistenz) to get a feel for what "other ways of being" I am talking about.

Here is a comment in reply to Life's Infinite Riches that I agree with. Or rather I read it in a way that it would agree with the things I have noticed. Namely that: the world around you and the stuff of the things around you (I mean like media, the objects around you, the things people say and the things they do) show you what you should do with your attention and, time and thoughts, tell you what is important and unimportant. If the way you are and the things that interest you are sanctioned/encouraged by society then this is fine, but if the way you are and your interests and things that you want to pursue are not sanctioned/encouraged by society then there is a whole part of yourself that, if you aren't aware, ends up atrophying. Otherwise why are we encouraged by those who make us realise that it is possible to do certain things, for a simple e.g. Edward de Bono and his concept of lateral thinking said that it's OK to spend you time doing these things and thinking in this way. I think that rather than having invented lateral thinking he made it more acceptable. If things can be shown to be useful to business then in our society that make it worthwhile, this is what he did/does with lateral thinking - Before it might be thought of as idle daydreaming, but now it could lead to money making so now there are people having meetings coming up with kerrzaay (!) ideas as part of a process. Anyway the point is not about de Bono it is about how we take our cues and we live our lives by what everthing around us tells us. And the things that tell us so by their shape (rather than explicitly) do so more powerfully.
Anyway this post is rambling along and now is about something else. All about me again.