Category: 4 and a half stars :: Go to Main
December 20, 2004
Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Voices in Your Head
This entry posted in:
4 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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
Subscribe to mp3s.
Subscribe to aac for iPod/iTunes.
Subscribe to notifications (no enclosures).
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 08:14 AM
December 06, 2004
Podcast Review: IT Conversations; The Gillmor Gang
This entry posted in:
4 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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
Subscribe to mp3s.
Subscribe to aac for iPod/iTunes.
Subscribe to notifications (no enclosures).
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 12:02 PM
November 29, 2004
Podcast Review: The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
This entry posted in:
4 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
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).
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 08:38 PM
October 30, 2004
Podcast Review: The Eric Rice Radio Show
This entry posted in:
4 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: radio show, sometimes spontaneous 'casts
Content: music and talk
Rating:
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: varies widely, from 8 - 50 minutes that I've seen
Eric Rice throws down some really high quality podcasting!
Snarky he is, but that's not a bad thing, Eric brings a lot of humor into his commentary on technology, culture, and human nature. He's comfortable on the air and since the speech potions of his show are really about everything and anything, it would be hard to claim that he's going afield. That said, he has a plan for his shows, and typically sticks pretty close to the plan.
Production values are high at The Eric Rice Radio Show; on 'casts that are recorded like a radio show (as opposed to the spontaneous ones) he's using a truly well-designed intro. His transitions into and out of his music tracks are fairly seamless (although he does occasionally have the kinds of flubs that you'd expect from a "live" show). Eric and his guests are easy to hear and understand. He's also got the relative levels between music and voice down pretty well; I don't usually have to adjust the volume on my Lyra at all.
Eric's also involved with slackstreet entertainment, KSSX Radio, and AudioBlog.com. Busy guy.
I'm going to say it again (and probably will everywhere I see it), but it would be great if Eric would give us the length of the music tracks he's using so that listeners (well, ok, I ...) could skip ahead to the end if we want to. Time-shift power to the listener!
One last note; someone should define "snarky" for the Wiktionary. Maybe I'll do it sometime....
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 07:20 AM
October 25, 2004
Podcast Review: Reel Reviews
This entry posted in:
4 and a half stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: Reviews
Content: Movie Reviews
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 5 - 10 minutes
I listened to the first 3 posts of Michael Geoghegan's podcast, Reel Reviews this morning.
Here's a fellow who has a real love for movies. He has a great deal to share about the movies he reviews, and his reviews are in-depth; covering characters and plot in plenty of detail, not to mention his own impressions of the theme and quality of the movie along with some cultural commentary. Seemingly there's enough information for Michael's podience to decide if they want to see the movie. He also includes some background information about the movie and the cast/production team.
So far Michael hasn't panned any of the movies he reviews - all three have been recommended - I don't know if he intends only to review movies he likes (and given that he's probably not getting paid for his time, I can see why he would want to spend his time talking about movies he doesn't like) or if he's going to give negative reviews as well, but the tag-line to the review section of his blog says "...Films Worth Watching", so my guess is that these are going to be more along the lines of recommendations.
His podcast has just enough lead-in and lead-out music to provide some transition and catch your interest. His speaking is clear with no distractions, allowing you to pay close attention to what he's saying. My only complaint here is that it was a little too soft on my Lyra MP3 player.
Another interesting tidbit close to my own heart is that Michael has registered the domain name podcastreviews.com. I noticed
this fact immediately after registering the nearly identical name podcastreviews.net. If he approaches reviewing podcasts with the same enthusiam and quality that he does reviewing movies then I may be redundant in short order, although I think there are far more podcasts than any one person can review.
Subscribe to mp3s. His blog also has text versions of his reviews.
--------
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at 02:19 PM