Category: I subscribe :: Go to Main
May 03, 2005
Podcast Review: Viva Podcast
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4 stars
, I subscribe
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Format: conversation
Content: music and movie commentary, general life stuff
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 15 - 25 minutes; typically right around 20
Your hosts, Lisa and Greg, are parents, students, music and movie lovers, and podcasters especiale. The Viva podcast is a podcast primarily about this couple's life. The interchange between the two of them is smooth and flows well, keeping the podcast moving along and highly listenable.
Greg and Lisa (let's not show any favoritism, eh?) are heavily into music and movies, so along with a little bit of content about school, jobs, and kids, much of what they discuss has to do with movies and music. They treat us to movie reviews and commentary, not just about first run movies, but also about rentals and movies that are off the beaten track with the occasional trailer review thrown in for good measure. On the music front Greg and Lisa listen to quite a bit of new music and give us some pretty in-depth looks at what they're listening to. They also listen to a lot of music that doesn't make the main-stream radio air-waves (at least not where I'm at), so they're a good way to find music you haven't heard about. In addition, while some musicians may rail at this, they often couch their musical comments in "sounds like" comparisons. I guess this tends to pigeon-hole artists, but it's quite helpful when looking for music you may want to try. They also play a portion of a track as a break in the middle of the show, and usually comment on it afterwards.
Lest I mislead, the Viva Podcast isn't about reviewing movies or music. Greg and Lisa also discuss their own life events with an engaging humor and vivacity and sprinkle in a bit of topical or societal commentary often based on something they've seen on television.
The audio quality is typically good; aside from the occasional clipping or distortion (I think caused by one of the hosts getting too close to the mic) the vocals are all clear and easy to understand and the levels are good. However after a recent change to the Propaganda podcasting software they seem to be still working out the levels and there's some new distortion that I hadn't heard before.
The podcast is family- and work-safe, and the balance between music and vocal is good and the fades well-executed. They started out podcasting 5 days a week or so, but have recently dropped back to thrice a week, which is still a healthy amount of work. Meta-data for the podcast is good; the file- and track-names match (which is nice) and consist of a channel name and date, and the album and artist name all work as well. The Viva Podcasts is encoded at 64 kbps, which is a good level for primarily talk.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 10:22 AM
February 26, 2005
Podcast Review: The Big Chap Podcast
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3 and a half stars
, I subscribe
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Format: back to back music tracks
Content: wide variety of different styles
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: I subscribe
Typical Length: 1 hour to 1 hour & 15 minutes
While I haven't written it in so many words, but I think from my previous music podcast reviews it's clear that I'm not partial to podcasts that are nothing but music. The audio/music-phile in me definitely sees that advantages of having little or no talk mixed with the music itself, and I fully apreciate the departure from the mainstream radio model of incorporating commercials and "personality" into the soundtrack that most radio stations broadcast, something in me still wants to hear something of the personality of the editor of the particular musical thread that I'm listening to. I suppose this is partly becuase when I'm listening to a music podcast I want something different than what I get from listening to a CD - I spend a fair amount of time listening to music while alone, and one of the reasons I used to turn to radio was that listening to a CD seemed lonesome, while listening to the radio provided some level of companionship. Podcasts of music without the human touch of commentary seems more along the lines of a CD. I suppose this also might be due to being conditioned by listening to the radio for so many years.
But that's enough about me. Obviously (or not so obviously, perhaps) The Big Chap Podcast is a podcast of this type. As such podcasts go, it's brought me a little closer to embracing the format of a music-only podcast. Gordon's our host here, and he puts together as varied and appealing mix of music as I've heard. Listening to The Big Chap Podcast is remeniscent (to me, at least) of getting a new mix from that friend with the really eclectic musical tastes. Listen to the Big Chap and you'll hear music you've heard before and some you've never heard. You'll hear from artists you know and ones you've never heard of. Anything from The Who to Frank Zappa to Cake to Alison Moyet to Curtis Mayfield is fair game. The music Gordon mixes matches strangely with my own varied musical tastes, and the juxtaposition between tracks lends a great deal of interest to the flow of the podcast.
Unfortunately Gordon is that friend whose musical tastes you like a lot but you don't hear from nearly as often as you'd like (like I can talk, huh?). He hasn't sent out a new podcast for nearly a month, and even the posts on his blog have been irregular. Also on the negative side, the sources that Gordon uses for his music are widely varied as far a quality; some sound great and a few less so and the volume varies somewhat, requiring some adjustment over the course of the 'cast. Gordon also doesn't concern himself with RIAA risks as far as I can see, because much of the music he 'casts is certainly freighted with RIAA licensing issues. All of this said, if the Big Chap offers up more podcasts I'll definitely be downloading them.
Meta-data is minimal (rant); I'd at least like to see the channel name in the track and file name. For the last 2 podcasts Gordon included a date-stamp, which is useful. The Big Chap Podcast is also encoded at a fairly low bit-rate (48 kbps), which means that the hour-loing podcasts are relatively small, but certainly effects the quality - since this podcast is about the music, I think a slightly higher bit-rate would be adviseable. Clearly since there's no podcaster voice in the podcast, it's unlikely that individual track lengths will be forthcoming.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 06:51 AM
February 03, 2005
Podcast Review: Starfrosch Podcast
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3 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
Starfrosch Audioblog :: Podcast :: Netlabel in English
Starfrosch in German
Format: stand-alone music tracks
Content: Electronica, Drum & Base, Ambient, TripHop, Techno, Rock ... you get the point
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: varies widely - from a minute to over 2 hours
The Starfrosch podcast is a new kind of podcast for me to review. Basically simply an RSS feed of music tracks of various types, it shares features of the IndieFeed podcasts. But on IndieFeed there's typically a little bit of human commentary for each track - a tiny bit of background or at the least a contextual frame that indicates this is an IndieFeed track. The lack of a context for the 'casts from Starfrosch is a little disconcerting to start with; listening blithely along to a playlist of podcasts only to encounter a seemingly random musical track can be surprising. I would have preferred a little context for these files, although that would be likely to be useless since I don't speak German. A side-effect of the nature of this podcast was that I had to consider my personal definition of podcasting with respect to The New, New Podcast Review (if you care to, you can see it here).
The music that Markus puts together for podcast is widely varied in nature as well as in quality. As can be expected, some of it is excellent, and other of it less so, but what was less expected was the wildly divergent audio quality. Seemingly without regard to the encoded bit-rate the music varies in audio clarity - some relatively high bit-rate files are also highly distorted while others are low in bit-rate but sound adequate. Of course this may be intentional - I am not familiar with all of the music the Starfrosch podcasts, so the distortion may be part of the art but in some cases it definitely detracts from my enjoyment of the music either way. I suspect that Markus is at least somewhat constrained by the source material he has as far as quality is concerned, but the tracks enclosed in the Starfrsch podcast are also encoded at bit-rates all over the map, from 0kbps (okay, that was probably an unsuccessful download) to 64kbps to 320kbps (no, really!). In addition, the 'casts vary in length from around a minute to almost 3 hours (Markus apparently podcasts some full-length radio-shows).
One really nice thing about Starfrosch is that there is an RSS feed for each of the different categories of music that Markus 'casts as well as one for all of the music (the one referenced below). There are too many to list here, but you can explore the site to find the ones you want (unfortunately I did not see a page that aggregated links to all of the distinct feeds). Another nice side-effect is that if you like the music and want to keep a copy (which is apparently OK) then you don't need to trim any extraneous audio from it.
Since there's no talk, it's difficult for me to rate this podcast in terms of delivery or production values. Track lengths are also unimportant, since the 'cast is the track. File-naming is all over the map, like the audio quality and bit-rate - some tracks are well documented and others have nothing of any value in the filename or other meta-data. While I expect that Markus only controls a small portion of that, it would be nice to have the files tagged as being from the Starfrosch podcast channel somewhere in the ID3 tags (perhaps under album, since that is commonly visible from portable player displays).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 04:46 PM
January 18, 2005
Podcast Review: The (In)Famous Green Dragon Radio Show
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3 and a half stars
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The (In)Famous Green Dragon Radio Show
Format: radio show
Content: unsigned music from the UK
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 1-1/2 to 2 hours
Green Dragon produces one very British music show for your listening pleasure. And a pleasure it is as well.
GD puts together a weekly 2 hour long festival of the best in unsigned bands in Great Britain. There seems to be no shortage of talent to be had there. While any music podcast focusing on unsigned musicians is going to have a wide variety of quality, the bands on Green Dragon's show are for the most part very good. The variety of music GD lays in any one show is quite brilliant as well; he really mixes it up, throwing punk, rock, blues, pop, and techno together to create a surprisingly cohesive pastiche of musical genres. With the length of the show, GD is able to fit between 20 and 30 tracks in each weekly event, and he rarely repeats artists within a show, so the listener gets maximum exposure to as many different artists as possible.
Green Dragon's patter is pretty well put together as well, and he provides podcatchers with some decent band-related information, almost always including where the band is located (although I'm not sure what use that information is). The website also contains the playlist for the current show, as well as that for archived shows, all of which can be downloaded directly from the site.
Green Dragon's production values are ambitious, but not altogether successful. GD tries hard, it seems, to make the show come off like a broadcast radio show, and he does a pretty good job. However, his intro clip has changed a bit over the half-dozen or so shows I listened to, and the most recent one comes across like a monkey on acid - particularly the opening speeded-up MGM theme seems out of whack. In some cases the interludes between groups of tracks are a little difficult to understand, and in fact in a lot of the pre-produced "cart" tracks the speaking vocalist is too soft. Aside from that, Green Dragon maintains a good balance between music and speech throughout the show, and the balance of talk to music to promos is pretty good.
One relatively severe drawback I took note of is, I suspect, related to bandwidth issues. GD has had some bandwidth difficulties (to be expected when you're streaming and podcasting a show of this length), and he has chosen to encode his podcast MP3s at a relatively low bit-rate - they show up on my system as around 64bps, and some are as low as 31. I suspect this was an attempt to fit 2 hours of music in a small enough file to not choke podcatchers out there and to save himself a bit of money to boot. The problem is that in some cases the music definitely suffers from that underencoding.
Green Dragon does not give track lengths (rant), but that's probably a tall order for a show of this nature. File- and track-naming also leave something to be desired (rant), changing from show to show and without any date information anywhere, and sometimes named simply "ipod16.mp3". Something shorter, with some consistency of artist, album, and track name, preferably including a date ID in the ID3 tags would be helpful, with corresponding changes to the file-name itself. The show is generally work-safe, less so for children, and not guaranteed to be either.
All in all a strong podcast that makes it into my regular work-day soundtrack based on the strength and variety of music.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:40 AM
January 16, 2005
Podcast Review: WebTalk Radio
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4 stars
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Format: radio show
Content: technical talk
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 45 minutes to 1 hour
Rob and Dana Greenlee have been staples of the technical audio realm for some time, having spent time in broadcast radio (where their show still plays on several stations through the US via Talk One Networks) and on CNET radio (and thereafter, their own Internet Radio/Streaming webcast production). Now they've broadened their distribution base by adding podcasting to the mix.
Rob and Dana are dedicated to bring you up-to-date and relevant technical news regarding the internet and issues from the business of the web to connected technologies. The 'cast is structured as a conversation beween the two of them and their occasional in-studio guests, albeit a conversation that consists of short bits of technological news. Their rapport is good, and they've been doing this long enough that the podcast/webcast succeeds at the informal feel of a conversation for the most part.
Their conversation ranges widely from discussions about technology issues such as the value of smart phones or of wifi in your car to web/culture issues like blog sponsorship and the Internet Tax Ban. They typically feature an interview in each show, and their choice of interview subjects covers a tremendous variety, including politicians, technologists and officers of tech companies, bloggers, and writers. The content is timely and interesting
WebTalk Radio has a (very visible) sponsor. In fact, this is the first time that I've felt advertised to in a podcast. In other cases where there's a sponsor for a podcast, it's seemed very much like the text ads on google.com or in gmail, but these ads were very much like a radio ad. Not that surprising since, after all, they are radio ads. I mention this not as a positive or a negative feature, but simply as an observation.
Audio quality is generally good and production levels fairly high in WebTalk Radio podcasts. Voice and music balance is fine, and the fades to and from the musical breaks between segments and between the content and the advertisements are well executed. Even the interview audio quality was universally good in the episodes I listened to. Rob and Dana don't play any complete musical tracks and their file- and track-naming model is both consistent and easily parsed. Their delivery is relatively smooth with few hesitations or false starts, and the vocal quality is pleasant and easy to listen to. The show is produced weekly and is completely work- and family-safe.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:19 AM
January 09, 2005
Podcast Review: The Podtridge Family
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4 stars
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http://www.podtridgefamily.org/
Format: music tracks with short intros
Content: tracks of family produced music
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 10 - 15 minutes
Maichael Lehman should be familiar to TNNPR readers; he was previously reviewed for Michael Lehman's Podcasting from SoftwareLand. What you may not know is that Michael is also a musician of some accomplishment, as are (some of?) his children.
This time Michael's offering up some of this family music for our consumption. He and his children Lyndzie Taylor and Daniel DuBois each play their own style of music, and often write the music as well. The Podtridge Family podcasts so far have been a single track from each of the artists, and all the tracks so far have been granted full podcasting rights.
Michael plays rock and roll. His lyrics are thoughtful and his melodies catching. Daniel plays in a punk band named Argyle (pretty funny name for a punk band - makes me think of socks) [link is pretty dated, I think]. What I've heard of their music is driving and filled with typical punk attitude. Lyndzie also plays rock, but her own kind, very different from Michael's. Her vocals are great and her writing strong.
The overall quality of the podcast is good - Michael's intros to the tracks are clear and the overall balance between music and talk is fine. The recordings of Michael's and Lyndzie's tracks is good, but the quality of Argyle's tracks leaves a little somthing to be desired, though still listenable. Track lengths for the music is not given (rant), and the file and track meta-data is satisfactory for viewing in media players or in Windows (although I encourage Michael to use the ISO 8601 Date format).
All in all, The Podtridge Family is well worth a listen, both to support podcast-friendly (and podcaster-created) music and because the music is worth a listen on its own. Michael indicates on the web page that he's planning on a podcast every week; he hasn't lived up to that yet, but hopefully he'll catch up soon.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 10:06 AM
January 04, 2005
Podcast Review: The Bitterest Pill
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4 stars
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Format: online blog post
Content: Comedy, commentary and music from a stay-at-home dad/shut in
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen often
Typical Length: 20 - 30 minutes
I recently spoke to Daniel Tierdiman for his latest article on podcasting (Wired News: You, Too, Can Be a Podcaster, if you're interested). He didn't use much of what we talked about, probably because the other folks he talked to (Dave Slusher, Doc Searls, Carl Franklin, and Andrew Leyden, to name a few) had much more interesting and insightful things to say.
All of this is related to The Bitterest Pill. Really.
One of the things I mentioned that Daniel also heard from a much more thoughtful voice was in response to the question "What's most important in a podcast?" My answer was "honesty", which is where Dan Klass and The Bitterest Pill come in.
"Comedy, commentary and music from a stay-at-home dad/shut in" is the tagline for The Bitterest Pill, and that's pretty much what you get. Dan used to be a stand-up comedian and is now an actor, not to mention a shut-in. Dan makes the most of the fleeting moments he can grab while his young daughter naps, and we get pretty much all of it, from chance encounters with his slightly older son to phone calls to the faltering, frustration, and confusion involved in trying to learn something new while the world is watching. Dan mostly edits pretty lightly, resulting in some definite rough-around-the-edges 'casts, which is part of the charm of The Bitterest Pill. Dan is at heart a performer, and even in the depths of technological hell he keeps the patter going and salvages some humor about the situation. In fact, as Dan's become more adept at podcasting some of what entertained me about his earlier work has evaporated. Not to worry; as he's had to expend less energy fighting the tools (or has become resigned to them), he's filled the gaps with insightful commentary about his life, and by extension ours.
As a comedian, Dan has a sharp eye for the foibles and follies of human nature, especially his own, and his commentary is wry and self-deprecating. It's also broader than his life alone, as a lot of his observations apply to other humans as well (or at least they do to me). A case in point is Dan's retelling of the story of his family's most recent Christmas Tree buying foray. As Dan describes the emotions that caught him up, I could replay those same feelings in myself in other situations. His relationships with his children, to the extent that we are witness to them, are also heart-warming. To my mind, The Bitterest Pill is one of the most honest pieces of podcasting out there right now.
Dan's audio is generally good, although there are times when he gets a little too far from the mic and is hard to hear. There's little distortion and the levels are comfortable and even between vocals and music. Production values are pretty high as well, with the fades well-executed and the music choices integrated nicely. Dan's encoding at 96 kps, which might be a little high, but not outrageous.
Dan usually plays music at the end of the podcast, so musical track lengths are not as important as they might be (although they're always nice to have (rant)). Podcast track tagging is adequate, with the title including the podcast number and often a brief synopsis of the contents and the album title representing the podcast channel name. File naming, on the other hand, could be a little better, usually consisting of "BP" and the 'cast number - at least the full name of the podcast would be much appreciated, and the addition of a date-stamp would be great (rant).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:16 AM
December 20, 2004
Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Voices in Your Head
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4 and a half stars
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IT Conversations - Voices in Your Head
Format: talk show
Content: Interviews with important figures in Science Fiction
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: listen regularly
Typical Length: around 50 minutes
While I've mentioned before that I was nervous about reviewing any of the IT Conversations series, that was a little bit misleading. In fact I've been greatly looking forward to reviewing Voices in Your Head since the first episode was published, primarily because Dave Slusher's other podcasting effort, Evil Genius Chronicles, was the first podcast I ever reviewed, and Dave is the first podcaster to mention this site "on the air". It also helps that I like Dave's work a lot.
Dave Slusher's work on the Voices in Your Head series of IT Conversations thus far results in some tremendously engaging content. When it comes to Science Fiction I'm a little bit of a dilettante, which might explain why I was unfamiliar with both of the subjects of Voices in Your Head. Nevertheless, by the time Dave had finished his interviews, I felt I had become a little bit familiar with the subject as a person, if not with all of their work. Dave's general style with his subjects is genial and conversational, and he seems to put them at their ease. This style also serves to bring the listener into the conversation. In each case there's enough personal backstory to make the subject interesting as a person, and enough discussion of the subject's work to create some opportunities for critical thinking and interest in exploring the work further.
I'm not exactly sure how these are IT Conversations, but let's set that aside for now - what's important to me is that Dave has a venue to present these interviews to us. They may not be "important" from the standpoint of impacting our day-to-day lives, but they are important in the same way that teaching literature in schools is important, and for that reason I'm glad that Doug has decided to include them here. I only wish they were produced a little more often.
The overall quality of the interviews is strong. Audio quality is good, with little difficulty hearing or understanding either participant and a good balance between the two voices. As you might expect there's not a lot to the production of these podcasts, simply some intro / outro music which is well handled. Track length is unimportant, and file- and track-naming is satisfactory - it's easy to determine the content of these files both in my player and in Windows - Doug/Dave use the interview subject's name as the track title and the series name as the album title in the ID3 tags, which works well from a player standpoint, and both are included in the windows filename.
Postscript
While doing this review, I ran into a bit of a challenge. I had to spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what was different about Voices in You Head as opposed to Memory Lane because some of the objections I had about Memory Lane weren't shared in my opinions about Voices in Your Head despite the similar format. I felt that this was more than just an exercise in self-analysis; the tag-line for The New, New Podcast Review is far more than simply a tag-line. I really do try to be fair and balanced in my reviews, and I felt the integrity of my writing here was partially at stake if I couldn't discern why these two similar shows didn't engender the same objections.
After considerable soul-searching (OK, maybe that's a little overdramatic), I was able to uncover the source of my difficulty. What I was concerned with is the sense that i had of wanting Halley's interviews to be a little more challenging. I had no such concerns about Dave's interviews in Voices in Your Head. But here's why that's the case. I don't place nearly as much importance on Dave's guests voicing their opinions about Science Fiction as I do on the opinions Halley's guests may hold. It's much less important to me, for instance, what Eileen Gunn's concept of what Science Fiction should be than what John Patrick's ideas about the role of IT in the healthcare system.
See also my reviews on other IT Conversations series:
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; The Gillmor Gang
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Memory Lane
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 08:14 AM
December 17, 2004
Podcast Review: Bandtrax
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
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Format: radio show
Content: independent music and writing
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen regularly
Typical Length: 25 - 30 minutes
BandTrax.net is a website based on a great idea for distributing independent works. If you're an independent (read non-RIAA) band (or a writer or comedian), they want to sell your work. You set the price, they'll tack an extra couple of bucks on the top, and away you go. Their podcast is a way to get the word out about the artists that have listed with them. If that sounds like an advertisement to you, I think you're partly right, but I don't think these folks are in this for the money; their promos in the podcast are solely about getting artists to submit their work. In this case that's pretty important - in their current format they'll run out of material fairly quickly if they don't get new material regularly. For the time being they're selecting some music that's not yet for sale on their site to boost the content of their podcast, but my impression is that when they have enough material on the site they'll play primarily that music.
All in all, the quality of the works they're playing in their show is pretty high; I was pleasantly pleased with everything I heard on the show, including the clips from a book read by the author. The music was at least decent in every case, and in some cases very good. The audio quality of the music and the readings was generally pretty good as well, and they played a fairly wide variety of music to boot.
Production values for the BandTrax podcast are fairly high - they've mixed together an intro and outro that sound good, and mix in various external sound effects and clips successfully. Vocal to music balance is good; I can listen to the entire podcast without having to alter the volume on my player. Transitions in and out of the vocals are also well handled. The audio quality of the show as a whole is decent; the vocals are clear and easy to understand. They're encoding at 64Kbps, which seems a little low for a music-focussed podcast, and I think some of the music may suffer for that - I think they should boost that a little, especially seeing as they want people to buy the music heard on the podcast.
As far as my usual rants go, the BandTrax podcast doesn't do so well. The file- and track-naming is a little bit generic; they've included the date of the podcast, but not the name of the podcast channel itsel - "BandTrax" appears no where in either the filename or track title. In their first podcast at least they included the channel name in the Album title, but they stopped doing that (rant). In addition, there's no mention of the length of the included clips or tracks in their podcast (rant).
I'm going to add one more mini-rant to these two this time. Several times throughout their podcasts, I heard Canis Lupus and Chris mention bands that "deserve to be signed". I'd like to see podcasting lead to a completely different model of music distribution that exists totally without reliance on the RIAA as an infrastructure. The RIAA has decided to treat its customers as an owned commodity, and therefore don't deserve our business - I'd like to see us find a way to allow musicians to make a living from their music without the "help" from the RIAA. I think podcasting as a whole, and podcasts and sites like BandTrax are the beginnings of an infrastructure that could enable that.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:36 PM
December 11, 2004
Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Memory Lane
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3 and a half stars
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IT Conversations - Memory Lane
Format: interviews
Content: important people in technology
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen regularly
Typical Length: 55 - 65 minutes
Halley Suitt has a fairly long history in the IT industry. In addition, she's a strong voice for women in IT and an advocate for a larger contingent of women in technical fields. This is an important voice to be heard; it's good to know that my daughter will have a role model in IT and I'm glad that Halley has a public forum like this.
Halley's body of work for IT Conversations is in the format of interviews with a broad selection of people important in IT, either historically or currently (or both). Some of her subjects are important because of their technical contributions and some for their cultural ones. Much of what she discusses with her guests are issues surrounding the history of IT and the Internet, thus, I presume, the title of the series.
Halley's a good interviewer insofar as she is able to keep the conversation focussed around interesting subjects and for the most part keeps control of the conversation. She asks good leading questions to encourage her guests to talk about the subjects she thinks her listeners will find interesting. For my part I favor a slightly more challenging interview style than Halley's and that is occasionally a disappointment - her guests sometimes espouse contestable positions but Halley takes them at face value without asking the probing questions that I would like to hear answered. I'm not looking for blood, mind you, but when someone takes a position I disagree with I want to know why so that I can re-evaluate my position if that's warranted. Perhaps this is a conscious decision made for reasons of time, since a more challenging interview can also be a longer one. Still, she does get a lot of valuable commentary from her subjects, making a very worthwhile interview.
Halley's podcast contains a small break in the middle of the 'cast which doesn't make any sense to me. She mentions in one of her programs that her listeners demand a break around the 30 minute mark, and that would make sense in a way if the content was being streamed. But this is time-shifted audio, and we all have pause buttons and presumably know how to use them; we can take a break whenever we like. So, for that matter, can Halley. The half-time break seems like a throw-back and I'd as soon see it disappear.
Production for the series is adequate and relatively simple - Doug Kaye uses one of his standard musical selections for both the intro / outro music and the break. Doug's intro to the podcast is good as usual, and the transitions into and out of these elements are handled smoothly. The audio has some difficulties, as might be expected in what is essentially a series of phone interviews; there are definitely instances of the participants cutting out and occasionally Halley or one of her guests is difficult to hear. For the most part, however, the audio doesn't interfere with the listener's enjoyment of the podcast.
Track naming meta-data has gone through a shift in the Memory Lane series; at first the tracks were titled Memory Lane and the artist referenced the guest. This has lately been swapped, which I think is a better arrangement. In any case, the naming meta-data provides all the requisite information for finding the podcast both in Windows and on my portable. There's no date in the title or filename, but I don't think that's relevant in this case.
See also my review on other IT Conversations series:
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; The Gillmor Gang
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Voices in Your Head
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 09:30 AM
December 10, 2004
Podcast Review: Radio Clash
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4 stars
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Format: radio show
Content: music - mashups, bootlegs, and covers
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen regularly
Typical Length: 35 - 45 minutes
Before I listened to the Radio Clash podcast I knew what mashups were. I'd even heard one or two. I understood, in principle, the idea behind mashups. Now that I've heard Radio Clash, I understand a lot better what a mashup really is, and the freedom that the genre affords to artists who practice it. For this I have Tim to thank.
Not knowing much about the mashup scene, I don't know whether the information Tim had to impart was in depth or not. Neither do I know if the artists he played were well-known in mashup circles or were relatively esoteric. Many of the covers he played were by bands I recognized, and some of the other music was as well.... All in all, I'm not sure how much any of that mattered; the plain and simple fact is that Tim's playing some really great music by any definition. My personal favorite so far is C.H.A.O.S. Productions' Are You Gonna Be My Animal?, a mashup of the Muppets's "Mahna mahna" song with Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", although there have been absolutely eye-opening mashups in every show thus far. In fact, listening to this show really educated me to how much of an artform of its own a mashup can be - Tim has picked some extremely good tracks to play.
Tim's got a decent delivery; he's obviously comfortable enough with his material to get it across with a minimum of hesitation. Audio for the show is good; the volume level is decent and I didn't need to adjust my player at all. Transitions to and from music/vocals are quite well handled and the intro and outro are well produced. Tim encodes at 144kbps, which is a little on the high side, making for a slightly larger file. The filename meta-data is good - the files are easy to identify (both what podcast and what date) in both Windows and on my Rave media player. I'd love to hear Tim tell us what the track lengths of the music he's playing, however (rant).
Keep up the good work, Tim; I'll be listening.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:37 PM
December 06, 2004
Podcast Review: IT Conversations; The Gillmor Gang
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4 and a half stars
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Format: "on-air" conversation
Content: wide variety of technical subjects of import today
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen often
Typical Length: 45 - 70 minutes
As you may have heard, the next few talk-related reviews I'm going to be doing are for a few of the IT Conversations podcast series. Here's an unsolicited plug for IT Conversations as a whole (skip to review):
Doug Kaye at IT Conversations has put together an unbelievable set of recordings about information technology. IT Conversations is a wonderful resource of a tremendously wide variety of technical conversations, interviews, and conference sessions. Doug's work in this field in undeniably important; he is, in essence, the archivist of today's IT world, capturing the issues that IT professionals deal with and the voices of those making IT what it is and guiding it towards what it will become. He provides a record of many sessions from the better-known technology conferences and interviews with many luminaries in the field. Along the way he throws in cultural information in the form of interviews with authors, legal thinkers, and others.
As a side-note (remember, this is unsolicited by Doug), Doug does all of this work at his own expense. He has only recently started accepting donations via a tip jar, and if you subscribe or download please leave a tip (I know I will be). I say this not for Doug's sake, but for my own selfish reasons - I want Doug to be doing what he does for a long time to come.
Now to the review:
The Gillmor Gang series of IT Conversation recordings is so called because it's led by Steve Gillmor (Steve Gillmor's Inforouter). The rest of Steve's band of merry men are typically some combination of Jon Udell (Jon's Radio), Dana Gardener (of The Yankee Group), Michael Vizard (of Editor-in-chief of CRN Magazine), and Doc Searls (Senior Editor | Linux Journal). A sharper, smarter group of individuals you'd be hard-pressed to find.
The topics of the conversation cover such a vast array of technology topics that it's an exercise in futility to try to encapsulate them here, or even to do the breadth of coverage a modest amount of justice. Within that long list are issues such as open source, blogging, distributed computing, and (gasp) podcasting. There are often guests on the show, whose presence usually directs the conversation (when Jonathan Schwartz is the guest, for example, talk naturally gravitates towards Sun). In other conversations the regulars discuss the week's IT news. The participants each have their own take on the subjects at hand and each their own understandings of the issues involved and the implications of the technology under discussion. The combination provides for an assessment that is both deep and broad.
Therein lies one of the main strengths of the show, and also one of its "problems", if it can be termed such. The regular participants and their guests are far smarter about these subjects than I am, so much so that I find myself occasionally having to listen to segments of the podcast more than once in order to grasp the entirety of what's being said. This is something important to be aware of. While listening to the Gillmor Gang will always enlighten you, the level of enlightenment you desire may require a greater involvement and more active listening experience than other podcasts might. I think that's in tune with what I see as the educational aspect of these podcasts, at least for me. For educational they always are; even when discussing a subject I think I know a fair amount about, I universally learn something new - a new factoid, a new way of looking at a problem, a new product or technology.
From the content point of view then, the discussions on The Gillmor Gang cover a tremendously wide variety. There is certain to be a Gillmor Gang recording for everyone in the IT industry, and more likely several or many that any one person would be interested in. But not every one will interest every person. The quality of the discussion is always high but also naturally varies with the guest(s) involved; the specific appeal of any one show will depend entirely on the listener.
Production and audio factors for the Gillmor gang revolve almost entirely around the technical questions of the recording. Aside from intro / outro music and an introduction from Doug Kaye, there's little aside from the conversation involved here. However that in itself is quite a feat as there are a tremendous variety of different recording situations involved for the Gillmor Gang. Venues vary from someone's office with a couple of folks around a microphone to podcasts from a conference show floor with 3 or 4 people using a couple of mics, and there are almost always one or more participants who call in. That must pose some interesting technical problems, but Doug and whoever his helpers are always seem to get it right; no matter what the difficulties, and while the audio quality is different from one podcast to another, there is never a substantial problem being able to hear or understand any of the participants. The biggest difficulty that I've heard is from momentary static on the phone line as one person gets disconnected for one reason or another, but they always come back without undue interruption of the discussion, and the disruption is minimal in the rare cases when this does happen.
All in all I find that I make better use of the Gillmor Gang by subscribing to one of the feeds listed below in my text aggregator instead of in a podcatcher. While that does mean that I need to go download a specific Gillmor Gang manually, it insures that I do not blindly download podcasts that I am unlikely to listen to. Until iPodder becomes able to allow me to select a particular enclosure within a feed, or until I find a podcatcher that does allow for that, I am likely to continue this practice in order to save Doug needless bandwidth.
There is no internal music in the Gillmor Gang podcasts, so music track lengths are irrelevant. As far as meta-data goes, the file naming is satisfactory - I can easily identify the files in Windows (although they appear as http encoded, which is a slight pain), and between the track title and artist name in my media players (both orotable and desktop) the podcasts can be identified. This is one case where some additional information in the comments ID3 tag would be tremendously helpful; right now to find out what a certain show is about I need to go to the website and find its entry. Luckily all the entries for past shows are there for easy reference, but having a brief description (even just the participant's names) in the comment field would be very helpful.
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Memory Lane
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Voices in Your Head
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:02 PM
November 29, 2004
Podcast Review: The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
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4 and a half stars
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Format: radio show
Content: old-time style radio drama
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen weekly
Typical Length: less than 5 minutes
To do this review properly I had to enlist the aid of an expert; my 10-year old daughter. Her review:
"I think everyone should listen to this podcast because it's really funny."
I couldn't agree more, but I suspect you might be looking for something a little more in-depth.
Grant Baciocco and Doug Price have brought a segment from a TV show they produced to the podcast world, and they've done a marvelous job of it. This is the first podcast that I've heard that is fully child-safe, and even focused on being family friendly. While not everyone is going to go for that, for me it's a nice change of pace, and it lets me show my kids a little of what podcasting's all about.
The short 'casts are events in the struggle between Dr. Floyd, the most brilliant inventor in the world, and his arch-nemesis Dr. Steve, as they battle their way across space and time. The writing is humorous and lively, and definitely recreates the feel of an old-time serial drama for the radio.
The audio quality is clear, and the voicing and delivery are, for the most part, crisp and dead-on. Volume was never a problem, and the mix between intro / outro, background, and vocals was very good. There was one "actor" whose delivery was less than completely confident, but I believe that was a younger cast member. The production values are high, with the background sound working to support the action and enhance the setting. The only thing missing from an completely believable recreation of an actual old-time radio show is the rich foley artistry [warning:flash-based site] that enhanced those shows; aside from background audio we don't hear much of the foley artist's work in these shows. Not much of a detraction, but if you listen to old-time radio you might find yourself missing it.
The shows are short, which is usually good, but you may find yourself wishing for more, especially since the podcasts are only being published once a week. Meta-data is ok, although the podcast name does not appear in the track title or file name (rant).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 08:38 PM
November 26, 2004
Podcast Review: In The Hands
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4 stars
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Format: standalone music tracks
Content: classical piano
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 1 - 10 minutes
In a similar vein to Prent Rodgers' Microtonal Podcasts, Paul Cantrell podcasts some classical pianio pieces at his musical blog In the Hands.
These are very brief pieces, none (so far) longer than 7 minutes, and to my mostly-untrained ears, Paul plays very well. The pieces are a mixture of ones Paul composed with other composer's pieces (Chopin, Brahms, others). Each podcast is limited to an recording of the piano music itself and nothing else.
The recording quality is good - Paul says he records at a variable bit-rate, but all of the recodings that I saw were recorded at 158kbps or above. Since these are short pieces that's probably OK; it equates to just over 1MB/minute, much higher than some other music podcasts out there. Since there are no vocals, production values such as cleanliness of fades or other audio balance concerns are absent. In addition, since there's nothing but the music, track lengths are unimportant. Paul's meta-data could be a little better though; the current posts are both named and titled (in the track data) with simply the name of the piece excerpted, with no reference to the podcast title. That additional info would be helpful (rant). Paul seems to be aiming at pulishing every Tuesday and Saturday.
While these podcasts are clean and simple, I would love to hear a little more about the pieces being performed - a little of something human to the podcast. That said, I think it's going to be a great accompaniment to Prent's pieces in breaking up the music styles in my day-to-day soundtrack.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 07:33 AM
November 24, 2004
Podcast Review: The Delta Park Project
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4 stars
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The Delta Park Project | Jason & Paul | Comedy Podcast
Format: radio show
Content: comedy variety
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 20 - 30 minutes
Jason and Paul are publishing a great comedy radio podcast. They're shows are full of good, semi-clean fun. It's not so clean as to be bland, but yet not full of the potty humor that can turn some people (myself included) off.
So far they're only 2 shows in, and normally I wouldn't consider that to be enough of a sampling to consider a full-fledged review, but the 2 shows they've done have been remarkably consistent from a format standpoint, and while I'm certain that they'll undergo some format changes as time goes on, this is a "skellyton" that works for them.
They've had a few regular segments on the two shows thus far, one with Ronnie, who shares just a little but too much of his personal experiences, and Anna reading from the police blotter of her home town. Both were very amusing both shows and well worth the time. The Monster Defense segment in the first show was not repeated in the second, but I have high hopes for its return. They look to be publishing about once a week, which I hope will strike a good middle-ground between content and quanitity.
The production quality of the podcast is fair; fades in and out of other segments and the intro / outro are well-handled and do not clip Jason and Paul's vocals. The balance between the vocals and the inserted segments is OK, I only had to adjust the volume on my headphones a few times, but the audio balance between Jason's and Paul's vocal is a little wonky - specifically Paul's vocals are too heavy on the bass and can be hard to understand. Also, during the police blotter segment in the second show Jason and Paul were difficult to hear. Jason and Paul have encoded their shows at either 66 or 96 kbps (I see different values in different locations) and 128 kpbs; the 128 kbps show (the second one) sounded better, but I think that that might have as much to do with other changes they might have made to their audio set up than to the bit-rate; 128 kbps is probably over-kill for this kind of show.
Delat Park's meta-data is satisfactory - file names and track titles are easy to figure out both from the filesystem standpoint (although a more full podcast name than DPP might be of additional help) and on my Portable Audio Device Of Choice. Jason and Paul don't play enough music for track lengths to be essential. The Delat Park Project is probably work-safe, but I'll leave child-safety determinations up to the listener in this case (my kids are too young for this, but maybe not yours).
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p.s. sorry for the gap in posts, folks. I was under the weather and lost most of my podcast listening time so had no content to review. :-(
Tagged: podcast podcasting review kalispell montana
Posted by cori at 03:12 PM
November 20, 2004
Podcast Review: Podcast1024
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4 stars
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Format: musical tracks
Content: primarily microtonal music
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 5 - 10 minutes
What is microtonal music you say? I'm not an expert, either on microtonal music ro music in general, but here is my layman's definition: microtonal music is music composed for instruments that are tuned with greater than 12 distinct tones (frequencies of sound) between one tone and the tone one octave up or down. In most Western music, there are 12 tones in an octave (like on a piano - 7 white keys and 5 black ones) - microtonal music alters those relationships between octaves. This is a gross over-simplification, but it'll give you enough to go on for now, I think.
Prent Rodgers at Podcast1024 is podcasting primarily microtonal music for various instruments in his podcast, some of which is composed by him and some by other composers. He also occasionally throws in some other contemporary composers not specifically working in a microtonal scale. This is kind of like the IndieFeed for contemporary composition; in fact the format is very similar. Prent inroduces the piece(s) he's 'casting with a brief vocal introduction and plays the track(s). That's it; simple and to the point.
The name of Prent's podcast comes from his ideas about composing and listening:
"I believe that composers should spend ten minutes a day, every day, making music. You can skip composing on those days you don't eat. Listeners should also spend ten minutes a day listening to music that is totally different from what they usually hear."
This is very challenging music to listen to, and for that reason also very enjoyable. I was somewhat surprised to note that much of the music was not merely tonally challenging, but was also highly rhythmically challenging. One might be tempted to think that the 1024 in the podcast name was related to the time signature of some of the pieces (regardless of the fact that I don't know how to play a tenth note). There is little discernable "melody" in many of these pieces - it's not "whistle-able" music, which makes it even more challenging to me (being an inveterate whistler).
One of the things I found the most refreshing about this music was its innate realization that the 12-tone scale is nothing more than a creation of humanity - a friend of mine, when I told him a little about this said "There's a reason why there are 88 keys on a piano" to which I responded "Yes there is. Becasue someone decided to put 88 keys there." Much like modern physics realizes that the artifacts of time are human creations and essentially meaningless, microtonal music emphasizes that a particular scale is nothing more or less than a shared musical syntax, to be discarded or overridden when the music requires it.
Sorry, waxed a little abstract there for a second. Suffice it to say that this music will challenge your ideas of what music should be, especially if you're not already familiar with contemporary composers.
This podcast is well-produced; Prent uses a consistent and recognizable intro, and provides some detail for each 'cast. The music is clear, although it's encoded at 64 kbps, which will turn off some audiophiles - please though, listen anyway. Prent's vocals are also clear and easy to understand. The tracks are short - some as short as 2:30, and I'm inclined to agree with Prent that anyone interested in music at all should have a little of this in their daily musical diet. In fact, it would be wonderful if Prent published this on an absolutely daily basis, but that's a pretty tall order. It would also be nice if Prent would give a little larger tidbit of information in his intro; I would be very happy to have Prent tell us a little about microtonal music in general in every 'cast, to help those of us who don't quite get it yet (OK, to help me) - he does give some details in most 'casts, but sometimes they assume more of a basis in the ideas behind microtonal music than his potential podience is likely to have.
Prent's meta-data is satisfactory, and since each podcast is essentially a single track, there's no need for time-stamping.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review 19 tone 21 tone 11 tone piano string woodwind ensemble
Posted by cori at 06:37 AM
November 18, 2004
Podcast Review: Michael Lehman's Podcasting from SoftwareLand
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3 stars
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Michael Lehman's Podcasting from SoftwareLand
Format: commentary
Content: primarily software development discussion
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: less than 10 minutes
Michael Lehman's been around the block a few times in the software world, so one might reasonably view him as a resident of Softwareland, and he's got some strong opinions that come from his 15+ year residency. The Podcasts from Softwareland are typically short segments with Michael discussing some aspect of software development. They're often delivered in a fairly accessible format (i.e. you don't always need to be a developer to understand what Michael's talking about).
Michael's content is typically evangelical. He's got well-formed ideas about the role of the developer and of software in the future and he wants to bring you around to his point of view. He's very eloquent on the subject and his podcasts are well-written. These are short, bite-sized chunks of information that are easy to listen to. Michael is currently working with Microsoft, so much of what he's been discussing lately has been related to that, but I suspect and hope that he'll talk about a wider range of subjects as time goes on. Michael also occasionally posts podcasts about more personal information.
Michael's delivery is well-scripted, if a little dry, with few hesitations. His vocals are fairly clear but very occasionally muddy - though not a serious barrier to understanding. Michael doesn't play much in the way of music tracks in his podcasts, but uses an intro / outro and musical bed that I believe he wrote himself, Michael being a musician as well as an evangelist. Some of the audio early on was a bit muffled, but that's improved in tha last few. The fades in and out of the vocals are well-handled, without overpowering Michael's vocals.
Mike's text blog has detailed notes (basically a version of the script) with links from the podcast.
Michael's filenaming and mp3 tagging are satisfactory, although I might like to see a file name that is more desciptive than using primarily his name.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 06:39 AM
November 16, 2004
Podcast Review: Indie Feed
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4 stars
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Format: Individual Music Tracks
Content: Variety of music, served in single track servings
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 5 - 10 minutes
Chris MacDonald has begun one of the more ambitious projects in the podcasting world at IndieFeed. IndieFeed produces single-serving helpings of independant music of several varieties. A podcast like this is a little hard to review, but I'm going to give it my bestest shot.
Currently there are 7 different IndieFeeds (listed below). Chris has plans to publish at least 3 more. The biggest challenge I think Chris faces is the ability to keep up with all of these varieties of music, while simultaneously doing them justice. He realizes his predicament and in order to help solve it has enlisted the help of a few brave folks who are willing to manage one of the channels (among them Jason Evangelho of Hardcore Insomnia Radio, reviewed here). Tightly bound to Chris's potential salvation are both the difficulty of my review and IndieFeed's potential weakness.
The first passel of IndieFeeds I listened to were of the highest quality. Chris encodes at 128 kbps, which is probably the right level to encode a track that is basically solely music. Some of the file sizes are somewhat large for their length, but since poeple will be likely to be adding these songs to their libraries, that's probably appropriate. Chris's introductions varied from short and simple to highly detailed and informative, depending upon his knowledge of the band. His delivery is pleasant and clear, and the relative volumes of music to voice are fine. However, as Chris gives up control of the channels I am afraid that the quality of the music, commentary, and production/delivery of the 'casts may fall from the high level that Chris has set as a standard. If that were to happen, the overall quality of the podcast would also drop. I haven't experienced this yet, but am wary of the potential. The music also is going to vary widely, both in quality and appeal, but if you're looking to be exposed to some new stuff you have to take some chances.
Chris doesn't give track lengths, but since the whole 'cast is the track that information is easy enough to find. However, Chris's meta-data leaves something to be desired. I'd like to see the name of the podcast, and potentially also the channel, both in the file name and the title of the mp3 track [rant].
One final note to podcasters; Chris's permissions for these tunes stop at his broadcast of them. If you want to use them for something else, you'll need to contact the artist directly.
Update 2004-11-16: Chris tells me the Jam Bands feed is going away due to lack of support. He suggests TheMusicNeverStopped as an alternative. Subscribe here
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 05:57 AM