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January 06, 2005
Podcast Review: In The Trenches
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3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: talk show
Content: tech talk and personal commentary
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: from 15 minutes to an hour, but mostly 20 - 40 minutes
In The Trenches is one of several strong technical podcast available to podcatchers these days. When ITT started it was one of the few podcasts that was focused on the IT professional, as most of them were more directed at users. Now there are a few more podcasts available for the IT Pro, but ITT is still the only one I know of that is for System Admins. Kevin Devin, your host at ITT, puts together plenty of good content for the Sys Admin crowd (too much good stuff to go into here), and some general technical info of a slightly more personal nature (problems with his new iPod being the latest of these sagas).
As part of the ITT series, Kevin also occasionally Skypes together a group of interested parties and the result is an ITT Tech Chat where the folks on the call discuss some technical subject. When these episodes are on target they can produce some great content; when they're off they're a little less informative but still quite listenable. In The Trenches has also recently been including a great segment called Geek Speak, which is directed a little more at the user end of things but still includes some informative bits for the professional. Kevin has invited others who are interested in podcasting but are concerned they don't have enough content for a stand-alone podcast to contact him. Perhaps this will lead to other segmants to be included in the podcast.
The In The Trenches audio is fairly good, even in the Tech Chats, where the limitations of Skype impact the overall audio quality. Production quality is pretty good as well, although Kevin occasionally has a little difficulty with the fades between his show and the intro and outro, making those clips overpower the vocals. No music tracks in the podcasts, and the file- and track-naming is sufficient, although using the full podcast channel name instead of 'ITT' would be appreciated (rant). Kevin's bit-rate varies widely, which makes me think he might be encoding at a variable bit-rate, so the file sizes also vary widely.
All in all, I won't be subscribing to In The Trenches because I'm not a Systems Admin, but I think ITT has a lot to offer folks in that field.
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at January 6, 2005 12:44 AM