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December 28, 2004
Podcast Review: podcat ... daily best of podcasting
This entry posted in:
3 stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
podcat ... daily best of podcasting
Format: compilation
Content: clips of other podcasts
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: listen occasionally
Typical Length: 35 - 60 minutes
Podcat's providing a service to the podcast community with podcast ... daily best of podcasting. Since podcasting is a viral sort of community, podcat's interlinking of podcasts provides an expression of appreciation for the podcasters doing the work and some good additional attention to good podcasts. It's also a great resource for newcomers to the podcasting phenomenon, who can rely on any of the podcasts they'll hear in a particular episode of the daily best of podcasting to be at the least enjoyable and a good listen. More seasoned podience members may find this podcast to be somewhat less useful than newcomers but might still enjoy it as a resource to discover and "test drive" podcasts they've never heard. For myself, however, the second round of clips (podcat usually has a quick run-down of clips from the podcasts he's covering followed by the full 5 - 10 minute clips of each one in turn) is too much - by that time I'd rather be listening to the podcasts themselves.
There's no commentary about the content of the podcasts included, I believe by design - podcat's letting the podcast clips speak for themselves. There is also no mention of what inclusion in podcat's podcast (that's kind of fun to say) represents; does it mean that a particular episode was strong, or is it a commentary about the podcast channel as a whole? If it's about the specific episode, are the clips presented the parts that pushed it into the best of... , or are the representative of the podcast as a whole and not necessarily the best parts. These are questions I had while listening, but I probably ask too many qestions.
Podcat has had some issues in the past with his audio, in particular his musical bed overpowered both his vocals and in some cases the podcast clips he was playing. He's largely overcome these challenges in the most recent postings, and hopefully he'll keep the balance between underscoring and transition music and the vocals and clips easy to listen to. Podcat's delivery leaves a little something to be desired for me. Podcat speaks fairly slowly, and while this is important when communicating something that a listener might want to write down for later reference, but for the rest of podcat's commentary the slow speech patterns do little but increase the length of the podcast. Podcat does have some nice production touches in the 'cast; I especially like the use of the cat sound effect to point out a jump from one clipped segment to another - makes it much easier to follow the clips. Other production and audio aspects are primarily well-handled, including fades between music and vocals and the interleaving of the clips from any one podcast.
The daily best of podcasting is a bit of a misnomer for the title of this podcast (I know, a bad case of the pot calling the kettle black); podcat's publishing more like once a week. Podcast meta-data is satisfactory.
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Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at December 28, 2004 12:45 AM