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October 29, 2004
Podcast Review: Promiscuous Bullet
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4 stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: talk, some music
Content: politics, technology, music
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: keep listenin'
Typical Length: usually around 45 minutes
Tamas and Steven Bates have been having an on-air conversation every couple of days since around October 11th. Their coneversations cover a widely ranging array of topics, but politics and technology figure heavily in the mix. While I hesitate to put a label on them, I think I can fairly say that they are on the liberal side of most political and social issues.
Their delivery is comfortable - they know enough about their subjects to be able to speak about them with seeming authority. One of the intersting asoects of their conversations is that they come from differing life experiences, which adds a richness and accessibility to their technological and political discussions; what one knows a lot about the other seems to know less well. Like some other podcasters, they are concerned with the interaction between technology and society. Also like many podcasters, they are supportive of the Creative Commons license and have discussed it at some depth and are interested in promoting non-RIAA music.
They play some pretty interesting music, and do a good job getting into and out of it. They're using a decent track for intro, although it plays a little long for my personal tastes. I think their biggest challenge is the technology they are using for recording; they're recording the entire conversation with one microphone. This allows them to interact on air and for each (and their occasional guests) to expound on each others ideas and statements. In some cases this is really great, and the single mic aspect can help to give a 3 dimensional auditory picture of the room they're recording in, but at times one or the other of them sounds distant and is hard to hear. That said, the sound is well balanced and not too tinny; their sampling rate is fairly high (128 kbps or above) making their downloads fairly sizeable and causing them fairly high bandwidth costs, I'm sure. Given what they are podcasting, I think they could reduce their bit rate and suffer little degradation.
One thing I'd like to hear from PBullet (and from other podcasters that are playing music on their 'casts) is a quick reference to the length of the track they're about to play so that the listener can skip over it if they want - that would really put the control of the time-shifting of the content in the hands of the listener.
Their website has links to some of the content they talk about in their podcast.
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at October 29, 2004 06:50 AM