Category: Podcast Review :: Go to Main
May 03, 2005
Podcast Review: Viva Podcast
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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
April 19, 2005
Podcast Review: May it Please the Court podcast
This entry posted in:
2 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
WLF | May it Please the Court Law Weblog
Format: short audio blog posts
Content: quote of the day, commentary, rants
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 1½ - 3 minutes
May It Please the Court is the irregularly published podcast from the Williams Law Firm in California. J. Craig Williams et. al. produce short podcasts containing a quote of the day and some commentary on the headline of the day. Most of the time the headlines and related commentary are related to a legal issue or court case that's come to the attention of the producers. On a few other occasions the loosely law related headline serves as a spring board for a rant about congress in baseball or Microsoft Word.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes a rant is just what the lawyer ordered. I'm certainly guilty of enough of them. But in this case the rants take away from what I perceive to be the value of this 'cast: a short opinion by a lawyer that could serve to clarify a complicated issue. The May It Please the Court blog at the link above certainly fulfills this purpose more often than not in its posts, but the podcast does it less often. On some Fridays, MIPLC repodcasts several other podcasts (Grape Radio and Reel Reviews Radio, to be specific). I'm assuming for the sake of this review that he's got the rights to do so, but I'm not sure why he would choose to repackage that content here.
In terms of audio quality, the actual sound quality is satisfactory, although there are a few occasions where there's significant clipping of the vocals. It's encoded at 128 kbps, which is quite high for the content, but given the short length of the 'cast the size of the files is still negligible. The quality of the actual delivery is sometimes uneven; it seems as though the podcasters are still getting used to the medium, but if they continue to podcast I suspect that will improve.
Speaking of rants, this is probably the first podcast the I've reviewed where I have a beef with its RSS feed. For one thing, there's no
May It Please the Court also produces a tech channel and a video blog ("Vlawg") with different content. They originally requested reviews for both podcasts, but unless there's some more activity on the tech channel I don't see a reason to add it to the queue.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review law williams vlawg video
Posted by cori at 09:35 PM
April 12, 2005
Podcast Review: Shakespeare Souffle
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: rambling talk
Content: talk about Bradley family culture
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 15 - 30 minutes
Shakespeare Souffle is a "blogcast" of the audio antics of a family of 4 from Chicago. Subject matter is as widely varied as the activities and events of Bradley family life, ranging from a soundscape of a typical day to a recording of a trip to the field museum to 2 or 4 of the family members (and maybe some firends, too) sitting around a microphone and talking.
This family has the good fortune to get along well and to lead fairly busy and interesting lives, as families go. They're homeschoolers and have what appears to be a wide social circle. Daughter Fiona and son Liam get along as well as can be expected, as do the parents Ken and Kim. They have a cat. Fiona is a girl-scout, and Kim participates as well.
If you found the preceding paragraph somewhat interesting then Shakespeare Souffle is for you. If you found it less than compelling (as I did) then probably not, because that's largely the extent of the content on Shakespeare Souffle; details of the Bradley family life. My intention here is not to belittle the effort the Bradley's are putting in to their podcast; quite the opposite. They enjoy the podcasting, and it is the first podcast that I've heard that involves an entire family. They have a great time doing it and it's a great new way for a family to spend some additional time with each other, which is great! However, for some listeners the subject matter will be less than riveting.
Early in the podcast series Shakespeare Souffle suffered from some problems with audio quality. They've made great gains in that area more recently and their "at home" podcasts are intelligible, although with 4 or more people around a microphone it's inevitably hard to hear some portions and other portions are too loud. Their mobile 'casts still have some quality difficulties, but that's perhaps in the very nature of mobile podcasting. Track-naming is adequate but not ideal, comprised of the podcast channel name and podcast number, but no date; the file names contain the date and a shortened name, which is fairly accessible. Tracks are encoded at a variety of bit-rates, from 64kbps (probably a good rate) down to 24 kbps (too low in my opinion), and may be the cause of some of the quality problems they've had, especially seeing that the later podcasts have been the one with the higher bit-rates. The show is typically kid- and work-friendly, but on occasion hasn't been - and they've let the listeners know when it's not, which is good form. The Bradleys podcast somewhat irregularly, but average about every 2 weeks.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review Chicago Shakespeare Bradley family
Posted by cori at 03:57 PM
April 08, 2005
Podcast Review: open source sex
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
tiny nibbles - podcasting
Format: talk
Content: education sex talk and reading of erotica
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 15 - 35 minutes
Disclaimer: this review may not be suitable for all audiences
Our host for Open Source Sex, Violet Blue, is a professional sex educator, author, and porn reviewer. As such she is highly qualified for the content of her podcast. Not only does she have a strong background in pornography and sex education; I believe she's also given up her day job to do this stuff full-time. Violet (may I call you Violet?) is striving to open our minds to the power of eroticism, fantasy, and sexual play.
She does a good job of it, as well. Her voice is well-suited to reading erotica, with a soft and sultry quality, and while she's not an actor she clearly enjoys the reading and puts herself into the characters' roles.
Early in her podcasts she was including a little more in the way of educational topics, and the more recent ones have been directed more exclusively at readings of a wide variety of erotica, from the racy to the raunchy. I don't think of myself as a prude, but I'm less interested in the erotica than in the educational topics Violet covered in her first podcast or two. She has returned to more "informative" topics in her latest podcast, however. In any case, if you're looking for erotica in a podcast, this is the place to go.
Violet's early podcasts suffered from some audio quality problems; the audio was difficult to hear on my portable player, even when turned all the way up and piped through my car's audio system. The levels were OK for listening on my laptop, however. In addition, there was a liitle bit of a tin-can syndrome in the first few podcasts. Since then, however, the audio has improved greatly, although they could still stand a little more volume. Violet encodes at a variety of bitrates, the early podcasts encoded at 32 kbps, which probably accounts for some of the quality issues. The more recent ones are anywhere from 64 kbps to 128 kbps, although I think the 64 kbps would be sufficient. The podcast meta-data is lacking some detail, but the latest few have been OK, albeit without a date tag in the file name (rant).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 06:31 AM
April 04, 2005
Podcast Review: Tech Nation
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I watch
, Podcast Review
Format: interviews
Content: Technically knowledgable host and guests talking about the guests specialities
Rating:
What I'm going to do: watch podcast feed
Typical Length: 5 - 40 minutes
Dr. Moira Gunn is something of a jack of all trades, with degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and work experience as a professor and at NASA. Perhaps that serves to explain the varied nature of the Tech Nation podcast's guests and subject matter.
Tech Nation is produced for public radio, and is one of IT Conversations first forays into repackaging National Public Radio audio into podcasts. The NPR show's format typically consists of 2 or more interviews; the IT Conversation series breaks these into separate 'casts. The Tech Nation website has similar information to the detail pages at IT Conversations, and points solely to IT Conversations for the internet audio.
One of the most refreshing aspects of the Tech Nation podcast is that unlike most tech podcasts (for example most of the techpodcasts.com affiliates), Tech Nation doesn't focus primarily on computer, web, and gadget technology. Dr. Gunn covers everything from special effects (Jim Rygiel - effects supervisor, LotR) to social science (Barbara Heinzen - geographer and social scientist). One of the interviews from each set is often part of a regular sub-series; Bio Tech Nation, which deals with, um, biotechnology. Guests cover the gamut from authors to entrepeneurs, professors to CEOs, programmers to futurists.
As we've come to expect from the IT Conversations series, the audio is well-mixed and well produced. The balance of host and guest voices is even and the intro / outro music fades smoothly into Dr. Gunn's own vocal introduction and closing. File- and track-naming is adequate, including both channel (series) name and the name of the guest; however I would like to see a date tag in the name in addition to the existing information. Also, more recently IT Conversations has begun naming the tracks with an abbreviated channel name (i.e. "ITC.TN..."), which I find less clear than the older naming, which had the full name of the series (i.e. "Tech Nation"). That said, the shorter name is probably more useful on a portable device, where the slow scrolling of longer names can be frustrating.
Tech Nation is produced weekly.
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Also see reviews of 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
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Memory Lane
Disclosure: To avoid any sense of impropriety, I am going to be working on IT Conversations as an editor in the near future.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review technology biotechnology itconversations moiragunn
Posted by cori at 09:49 PM
April 01, 2005
Podcast Review: Acowo Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
ACOWO: Introduction of High Quality Netlabels
Format: individual music tracks
Content: independent music
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 3 - 12 minutes
The Acowo podcast is essentially a companion to the Acowo blog, a resource for "Introduction of High Quality Netlabels." In other words, Acowo is essentially a site for tracking new releases from a few hand-picked netlabels.
Your host at the weblog is Kengo Miyazaki, and for this site he's picked a few "labels that are dealing with minimal, techno, abstract, experimental, ambient, noise and stuff like that." (from the FAQ). Kengo blogs information about new releases from his chosen labels, including label, artist, album, track information, availability of a donation page or shop, license for the MP3s, and host for the MP3s. There is often additional descriptive information about the artist culled from the source site for the netlabel. To that extent, the Acowo site seems to be a very useful place to find new music of this sort.
The podcast aspect of the production consists of the individual tracks that Kengo links to from the blog posts; all of the tracks he posts links to on the site are also 'cast over the feed. In this sense the Acowo podcast is very similar to the Starfrosch Podcast. I have detailed my opinions of single-track podcasts previously, in the reviews for both the Starfrosch Podcast and The Big Chap Podcast, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say I can't comment meaningfully on delivery or production values for this podcast. The music Kengo podcasts is not altogether to my taste, but it is well executed and of high quality. The encoding rate is high (typically 192 kbps or above) frequently resulting in fairly large downloads. Given that the podcast comes out several times a week, you'll be downloading a fair amount of data. Track naming is satisfactory, and the file naming is OK as well, although it's sometimes difficult to decipher.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review music minimal techno abstract experimental ambient noise netlabel
Posted by cori at 03:58 PM
March 30, 2005
Podcast Review: The Bob & AJ Show
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I watch
, Podcast Review
Format: funny talk with some music
Content: interviews, music, general shenanigans
Rating:
What I'm going to do: watch this feed
Typical Length: 40 - 60 minutes
The Bob and AJ show comes to us from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and is (I believe) the first Canadian podcast I've reviewed. I really liked listening to these guys, partly because I lived for a few years in Sudbury, Ontario and hearing them speak brought back a lot of memories.
Bob and AJ mix up talk and music in a pretty good melange; they typically play 2-3 songs during the course of the show, and their musical taste is good. They've found some good artists in GarageBand and at least a few really good ones (Christa Couture in particular comes to mind), and must spend a fair amount of time researching their selections. The talk in the show centers around podcasting and recently they've been doing a lot of Skype interviews with other podcasters. In addition they throw in a fair amount of personal talk (but not too personal, if you know what I mean). Their self-deprecating humour (threw in that extra 'u' just for you guys, Bob and AJ) and self-effacing manner make them both easy to listen to and highly funny.
Bob and AJ are occasionally non-child- or work-safe but are for the most part unoffensive. In fact (and it may not seem a compliment to them) but this is one of the things that appealed to me about the Bob and AJ Show - perhaps I'm just getting old, or perhaps parenthood has taken its toll on me, but gratuitous cursing doesn't appeal to me much anymore. It's refreshing to hear some guys being funny without feeling like they have to swear. They broadcast once a week for now (typically on Sundays) but have been considering doing a shorter show more than once a week. They claim to shoot for 30 minutes but consisitently overshoot that and end up at 40 to 50 minutes. File meta-data is good, but I'd love to see the date in the track name as well (currently just the show number appears) (rant). Also, it'd be nice to have the track lengths in the podcast (rant).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review canada canadia comedy humor humour music
Posted by cori at 01:08 AM
March 12, 2005
Podcast review: Teach42 Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I watch
, Podcast Review
Format: audio blog entry
Content: technology and education
Rating:
What I'm going to do: watch
Typical Length: 25 - 35 minutes
Stephen Dembo at Teach42 is an educator by vocation and a podcaster by obsession. Stephen's podcasting about educational issues and often about the conjuncture between education and technology, as befits his role as a Director of Technology. Stephen also occasionally podcasts about podcasting, blogging, and gadgetry without a direct link to education.
Gadget-based podcasts often provide interesting information about how other real people use their technology and how well the technology works in the real world - I found some of Stephen's commentary about his iPaq phone/PDA to be very interesting. However, I think the real value of Stephen's podcast is his commentary on education and technology in education. Stephen's been in education for some time and has seen it from a variety of positions, both in the classroom and out - he's one of those rare male teachers who loves to teach early childhood and has more recently been the Director of Technology for a small school in Chicago. His insights cover a wide variety of subjects within education, and he pays a lot of attention to other educator's blogs and podcasts and comments freely on those as well, bringing many different viewpoints into his podcast. His commentary on technology and education is especially enlightening, and he's clearly got a love of technology that provides an important viewpoint into this controversial topic.
Stephen is in his last semester as Director of Technology, but I hope that Stephen will continue to evangelize the importance of technology in education even after he's left behind the day-to-day worries of network outages and printer problems.
Stephen often speaks very quickly, which shows his enthusiasm for his subject, but can make it hard to follow his podcast - this issue might be worth an extra effort on Stephen's behalf to try to account for. Audio quality is mostly good in the Teach42 podcast, although Stephen's car-casts have an understandable weakness with regards to audio quality. In addition, some of Steve's podcasts have less than ideal balance between music and vocals and I occasionally have to adjust the volume of my player to account for the difference between Stephen's intro / outro or interstitial music and his vocal segments. Stephen makes a point of noting that he's not editing his podcasts and we're getting the "real Stephen" all the time. I think that it's great that many podcasters aren't editing what they say in their podcasts - that level of honesty is one of the things I like about podcasting. The downside of this "live production" model is that the balance of content to environment doesn't get the attention it deserves in many cases. Stephen encodes at what seems to be a variable bit-rate (the podcasts range from 65kbps to 96kbps) which is ok, although the structure and content of this podcast doesn't seem to require a 96 kbps encoding. Stephen's vocal quality is decent and his podcasts are almost universally work- and child-safe. Music track lengths not too important - Stephen doesn't always include music in his podcasts and rarely more than one track. Meta-data is OK - Stephen gives us the name of the podcats and the date in the file and track name. He uses the album name tag to include descriptive information about the podcast, which while not logical from a data standpoint at least gets that information on my portable player where I can see it. Stephen podcasts every couple of days, perhaps twice a week.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 08:58 AM
February 26, 2005
Podcast Review: The Big Chap Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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 10, 2005
Podcast Review: HOT Radio
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: talk
Content: trading tips and market information
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 15 - 20 minutes
The HOT Radio podcast is aptly named; not only is it about High Octane Trading, but your host, Steve Wirrick, is definitely high octane as well.
From what I can discern, Steve's podcast is an extension of Steve's existing stock market training business. From what I can hear in the podcast, Steve is either fairly successful at what he does, a very good actor, or optimistic to the point of insanity. His high-energy podcast leaves you in no doubt that there's money to be made with Steve's High Octane approach, and Steve markets his podcast as "The Quickest and Easiest Way For You to Consistently Learn My Money-Making Secrets." The only question that I have is whether or not Steve is intending to train people who already know something about trading or whether he is targeting his podcast at the complete trading neophyte. Because I have to say, I'm one of those neophytes and I didn't understand more than 1 word in 5 of what Steve was talking about. I'm sure once you know the jargon Steve's rapid commentary is meaningful, but certainly not from the outset.
All of that said, I should also point potential liseners to Steve's disclaimer, where he states:
Neither Steve Wirrick, nor anyone else at Planet Cash, Inc., are registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser either with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or with any state securities regulatory authority.
I am neither an economist nor a trader, but much of what I could glean from what Steve had to say seemed to contravene what I understand is commonly held to be sound investment strategy - invest for the long haul. Steve's strategy seems to be about short-term trades. To be fair to Steve I don't think he's pitching a long-term strategy here, but based on that fact this may not be the strategy for you. Your results, as they say, may vary.
Steve is very comfortable behind the mic, and his delivery is fast and smooth. A habit of his that I found to be somewhat annoying was his repetitive use of the NATO phonetic code to represent the ticker symbols of the companies whose stock he's discussing. While certainly helpful for clarity's sake, a little less repetition of those codes would be preferable to my listening pleasure. The meta-data for the HOT Radio Podcast is good, with a full title and date in both the file and track names and consistent tagging elsehwere. Steve's audio balance is good for the most part, although at the beginning and end of his vocal content he often seems to be fighting against the volume of his intro / outro music, so perhaps fading that music down a little more before he starts to talk would make things a little easier both for him and his listeners. In a strange twist of podcasting chance, Steve uses the same intro / outro music as another energetic podcaster, another paragon of promotion, Matthew Bischoff of Esc From The World!. In fact their delivery is so similar that if they didn't live on opposite sides of the country I'd be tempted to say they might be related.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 10:56 PM
Podcast Review: The Skinny on Sports
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Skinny on Sports - Podcast - skinnyonsports.com
Format: talk show
Content: sports talk
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 10 minutes
Andy and Matt Skinn are podcasting a good, compact volume of sports talk once a week (usually Sundays) for all the sports interested podcatchers out there in podcast-land.
If you're a regular reader of the site, or have looked at the back posts, you're probably aware that I'm not much on sports. Don't watch 'em, don't really pay that much attention to them. But I've long been surprized that sports podcasts aren't a lot more popular, given the fairly common shared interest in various sports not just in North America but seemingly world-wide. However, I do see that that's changing; while the iPodder.org : Podcasts directory only lists 7 or so, SportPodcasts.com lists around 30. That's great news for you sport fans, I think.
Back to Andy and Matt's podcast. The guys have a good format put together. They've broken each episode into 4 quarters and an overtime, dividing the 'cast into 5 roughly equal-length segments, each about a different sports topic. Their topics often involve recent games and/or predictions for upcoming ones, but they often also discuss the intersection of sports and society (issues such as women playing men's sports or steroids in Major League Baseball). They've also had a few interviews and seem likely to have more. They have fairly insightful things to say about all these subjects and seem knowledgeable about the sports side of things (I'll have to defer that decision to the more sports-knowledgeable among you since I hardly know the difference between a full court press and an offside pass). Their sports "obsessions" are dealt with in a fairly level-headed manner, which is refreshing.
The style of the podcast is likewise refreshing and easy to listen to; it has the feel of a couple of guys having a conversation at the water cooler (which I suppose it largely is, minus the water cooler). While in their interview at Podcast Alley they comment that they think they've gotten more comfortable since the first podcast, they were pretty comfortable to begin with and now they sound highly professional, with nary a stutter or hesitation to be heard. The audio balance between the musical bed and intro / outro music and their vocals is satisfactory. I would say, however, that while the use of the quarter-buzzer as a device to delineate between segments is effective and fitting, it's fairly loud and often obscures part of their commentary. While I'm sure it serves to keep them on target time-wise (because they are very conscious of their self-imposed 10 minute limit) they might be better served by playing it only when they're truly done with the commentary in any one section. File- and track-naming is satisfactory - while the track name doesn't contain the full podcast name they are consistent in using the name of the podcast for the artist tag, so the data is easily available.
All in all, if you like sports you're likely to enjoy The Skinny on Sports
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:23 AM
February 08, 2005
Podcast Review: The Overnightscape
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: personal talk radio
Content: new york area life, product reviews, personal commentary
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 30 minutes
The more podcasts I listen to, the more I am impressed with how personal the content of many podcasts are. The Overnightscape is no exception to that tendancy. Your host at the Overnightscape, Frank Edward Nora, brings to the podcasting world his experiences and unique perspectives dealing primarily with New Jersey, New York, and the mental space between them. Throw in a few product reviews, some Nora family members, and the audio from a home-cooked video series and you'll have The Overnightscape.
Frank's is certainly a unique voice, both from the aural standpoint, and from the point-of-view standpoint. As is the case with most "personal record"-style podcasts, I think most listeners appreciation for this podcast will be primarily based upon their sense of Frank's personality. Frank's got some interesting things to say about working in New York City and living in New Jersey, and having spent a little time in NYC (but not much) there's a certain fascination that goes along with hearing about day-to-day events in Manhattan and its surrounds. Frank's attitudes regarding his fellow New York/New Jersey denizens is sometimes a little harsh, but to his credit Frank often turns that same harsh light on himself. These two sets of commentary, coupled with the sessions with Frank's father, Frank Ralph Nora, comprise the best of what The Overnightscape has to offer.
On the other side of the coin are the product reviews and the "Beublin A. Richardson" video series. I didn't find Frank's product reviews particularly insightful or entertaining, and the video series isn't particularly captivating either. To be fair, I had no interest in any of the products that Frank reviewed (OK, that's not true. The Hot Nuts sounded interesting, if mildly risque) and the current episodes of the Beublin A. Richardson videos that Frank is playing may be less successful for the fact that they are originally in video. Frank indicates that later in the series it switches to audio-only, and perhaps those episodes will be more successful in the podcast format.
Frank's delivery is very comfortable and the production values are decent; he's obviously at home with the microphone, and while the intervening music is somewhat bland, the fades between segments and the encapsulating music are well-executed. The audio levels are even and require little, if any, vloume adjustments during the course of the podcast. Meta-data is acceptable - the tracks are easy to identify in Windows or on my portable player, although a date-tag in the file-name would be welcome (rant). Frank has recently changed his format to a 30 minute show every day instead of a 2 hour show once a week. I think this is a great move on his part for the podcatching audience at least - I tried to listen to a few of the 2 hours broadcasts before I was overwhelmed with backlog and never was able to get all the way through one. The Overnightscape site also has a lively user community built around the show (many of whom seem taken aback by the format change).
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 11:40 PM
February 03, 2005
Podcast Review: Starfrosch Podcast
This entry posted in:
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
February 02, 2005
Podcast Review: TheCommute
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: conversation
Content: whatever comes up - often light tech talk, traffic, daily goings on
Rating:
What I'm going to do: maybe listen occasionally
Typical Length: 15 - 25 minutes (as long as the drive to or from work)
One of the two participants in this podcast (who are known only as voice one and voice two) thinks "it is entirely boring toss," whatever that is. In some ways, I agree. If Samuel Beckett wrote scripts for podcasts, this would be one of them. Nothing ever happens in this podcast (not that anything has to happen in a podcast), and little of any interest in it's own right is discussed. This is the blog-about-my-cat version of podcasting, where the greatest interest is likely to be from those who know the participants (disclosure: I have blogged about my cat). You know, if there were sparks that flew occasionally, or even some philosophical disagreement on a subject that I'm interested in - an interchange of differing opinions, whether it be confrontational or good-natured - that might give some compelling interest to the podcast.
But that's not what this podcast is about. And in point of fact, I was much more interested in Voice 1 and Voice 2's daily commute than I was in Chris Rockwell's dinner, and this is, if anything, less work than what Chris puts into his shows - a fine example of the fact that a person can podcast about anything (or nothing). No, this is a podcast about the mundanity of everyday life, and in fact revels in the basic boringness of driving to work and the ways these two gentlemen find to make it not so boring (for them, and by extension for us). And to be honest, I listened to a dozen or more of these an made sure I heard every bit of every one and while I wasn't enthralled, it was a briefly interesting slice of life in another country. Not something I'd want to listen to every day, and while there is somewhat of a through-line to the conversation as the participants refer to things they talked about several days ago or that occurred off-mic, none of the stuff they're discussing is important enough for me to feel the need to go back and find the earlier references, which is refreshing.
These fellows actually do a good job in keeping their conversations real. There's no attempt to make the podcast interesting for listeners - what you hear is what you get. And at least one of the participants is enjoying it enough to keep doing it five days a week. A classic podcast about nothing.
File-naming leaves a little to be desired here; while there's a date tag in the file-name, the file- or track-name "TC20050201H.mp3" isn't particularly revealing - the rest of the meta-data (artist, album - tags like that) is OK (rant). No music is played (although maybe they listen to the radio occasionally), so tack lengths are irrelevant. I would say that for the type of content (all talk) the 96 kbps encoding rate is pretty high, making for largish files. Aside from that there are no production aspects to speak of, and the participants are noticably un-self-conscious in their delivery. Since the motivating force behind The Commute seems to be enjoying what they're doing, I firmly encourage him to keep it up.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 06:11 AM
January 21, 2005
Podcast Review: Two Rights Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Two Rights: Conservative Political Discourse
Format: radio show
Content: conservative discourse
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 30 - 45 minutes
Bill Rice and Keith Burwell (with the support of Thomas Gaume of ipodio) have laid claim to the role of the conservative response to the liberal bias of the podosphere. From their "About Us" page:
Two Rights is now the strongest conservative voice on the Podasphere.
Whether they have a right to that title is an excercise for those you think about such things - I'm just here to review their podcast.
The format of the Two Rights podcast is still in a little bit of flux, which they mention in one episode; based on listener-feedback they're playing around with the overall format. At one point the format consisted of a Going Deep section where they discuss some current events in some depth, a Blog Bullets section where they parroted headlines from their blog posts for items that they don't have time to cover in depth on the podcast, and a Higher Level segment where they discuss in some detail a single issue of their choosing. At this point it's hard to determine what the format will be of course, but they haven't made drastic changes yet and some items from the prior format remains.
One of the goals of the podcast is "to create Political Discourse on the ... podasphere," and to their credit they do a fairly good job at this. They are interested in discussion with liberal listeners and thinkers and have participated in a debate with Mark Levine of RadioInsideScoop.com and played a clip of the debate on their podcast. Not only do they welcome further interaction with liberals, but they also do not share a monolithic conservative view point and we hear a conservative discourse between the two of them on some of the issues they cover. This is refreshing to hear.
Bill and Keith obviously put a lot of thought into their viewpoints and as political commentators of any stripe go they rely more on thinking and analysis than on emotion and FUD. However, like political commentators on any side of any aisle they have an unassailable belief in their grasp of the facts which, depending on your own version of the facts, may seem deeply flawed.
The Two Rights audio is still a little rough - in some of the latest couple of shows that I listened to the vocals were somewhat distorted, perhaps they recording at too high a level. They currently break their show into segments with promos for podcasts and ads, and the transitions between the vocal segments and the interstitials are well-executed. Their delivery has been improving continually since they started and they now seem comfortable "on the air". Track meta-data is great; they even use the ISO 8601 date format that is my personal preference, and unless you find their view-points offensive, the podcasts are both work- and child-safe.
In total, this is a well-executed podcast. My "not subscribe" action is due less to the quality of this podcast than to my disinterest in political commentary.
Subscribe to mp3s. I believe you can get the podcast via bittorrent at ipodio, but I can't get to that link right now.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 04:46 PM
January 19, 2005
Podcast Review: Goin' Deep with the Paralyzer and Mr. Clean
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Goin' Deep with the Paralyzer and Mr. Clean
Format: on air get-together
Content: crew of guys talking - girls, booze, current events, girls, booze
Rating:
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 50 - 80 minutes
I was never "one of the guys" when I was growing up - always a little too geeky, I suppose, being in band and heavily into RPGs. My idea of sports was cross country, and I didn't drink during high school until a graduation party (some peach schnapps concoction - ugh). After listening to Goin' Deep, I've determined that I didn't really miss all that much.
The content on Goin' Deep centers mostly around women and liquor. Thrown in for good measure are the occasional tidbit of current events or sports, and the guys tell quite a few personal experience stories (mostly revolving around women and liquor). One actually enlightening exchange in a recent podcast was the information about whiffleball - I had no idea that whiffleball was so difficult and certainly no idea that it was a popular sport with the over-12 crowd.
The Paralyzer's audio for the podcasts has its ups and downs. Frankly I think they mostly do a pretty good job with making everyone audible; there are usually 4-6 guys in the room at the same time and the listeners can hear most of what's going on. On a few occasions the audio has been poor with many of the vocals cutting in and out and very difficult to discern, but this is the exception rather than the rule. The delivery is pretty smooth - most of the guys are competent story tellers and fairly comfortable behind the mic (maybe that's the Seagram's talking). Production quality is pretty good, with the musical interludes and intro / outro being fairly well integrated into the show. Track- and file-naming is adequate, with both including an identifiable podcast channel name and date.
The show is not work- or child-safe (disclaimer prominently displayed on the site). In fact, it might not even be girlfriend-safe.
While I didn't care much for the content personally I'm sure many guys out there will enjoy it, and the crew is definitely having a good time, and no one can fault them for that.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 11:28 PM
January 18, 2005
Podcast Review: The (In)Famous Green Dragon Radio Show
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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 12, 2005
Podcast Review: The Daily Download
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Daily Download
Format: man talking
Content: music, talk, daily toilette
Rating:
What I'm going to do: listen to Bandtrax
Typical Length: 5 - 10 minutes
I don't know Chris Rockwell (aside from having reviewed his other podcast, Bandtrax), so I can't rightly say that I agree with his wife, Lorrie, when she says "This is the stupidest thing you've ever done," at the close of every Daily Download, but I can say this: this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
The more credit to Chris, I think he might agree. In fact, I think that's the point. It seems that Chris has an overactive sense of irony, and it amuses him to produce the stupidest content that he can think of with what might be the most ground-shaking media technology since wireless radio. He's doing a pretty good job.
Chris's studio is his bathroom, and with a small stretch of the imagination I think you can determine what the primary content of his podcast is. Chris always discusses what he's had for dinner the last day or so and we "get" to hear the results of that, as well. To Chris's credit, there's other content in addition. Most Saturdays are new music Saturdays, when Chris play some new music for his listeners, and on Sundays there's usually a sermon. In addition, Chris accepts "experiments" from his audience - although they might be more accurately described as challenges (things like "How do women with really long fingernails use the toilet" or "Try some of this [reference to painful excretion] hot sauce"). By far the best show that I heard was the Thu, 30 Dec 2004 edition with Chris's wife Lorrie. The woman must have the patience of Job, although she gives Chris some pretty good jabs; I know my wife would laugh me out of the house if she knew I read on my laptop in the john, let alone if I was recording on it. Hint to you Lorrie; I have found that when experiencing difficulty in the toilet after eating hotsauce the results are often in direct proporation to the quantity of hot sauce consumed, not the heat of the hot sauce itself.
All in all, Chris does a pretty good job with the content he's limited himself to and has a pretty amusing podcast. If you can get past the given content (or think that it's funny in its own right) you might find something you like here. For myself, however, while I get the point behind what Chris is trying to do, I'd be much more interested in seeing Chris (or someone else) podcast from a variety of silly / stupid / difficult situations rather than the same one all the time - I think that would point out the ease with which anyone can do a podcast more clearly than The Daily Download does.
Audio is decent, with good levels and balance between vocal and musical bits. He only occasionally plays a full track of music on the show (once a week or so), but doesn't give us the track length (rant). File- and track-naming is okay, though I'd like to see the date in the track title. Chris encodes at 64 kbps, which is a good bit-rate for this podcast, and surprizingly, his laptop's internal mic does a pretty good job, and he's got a mini-disk recorder for remote set-ups that also gets pretty good quality.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review shit poop crap dump excretion bowel movement
Posted by cori at 06:00 AM
January 09, 2005
Podcast Review: The Podtridge Family
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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