by Mike Shea on 18 January 2007
Radio is dead. Long live podcasts. After living with Tivo for about two years and now exclusivly watching TV shows downloaded off of the web, it only makes sense that I do the same thing for radio. After a few months of listening to podcasts in the car on my iPod Nano, I realized how stupid mass media really is. What are the odds that you'll be watching a TV or listening to a radio at the exact moment someone talks about something you really care about? Think about the vast wide streams of information flooding over TV and radio and how little we actually get to listen of it. Doesn't it make more sense to pick and choose? Doesn't it make more sense to listen to exactly the content we want to listen to at the the most convenient time to us?
Listening to the radio or watching TV is like trying to stay afloat in a rushing river by holding onto a rotten log. You just have to go where the river takes you. Podcasting and show downloading on the net is like navigating the river in a motor boat.
Over-engineered metaphor aside, here are a few of my favorite podcasts and the feeds from which they can be accessed:
43 Folders: http://feeds.feedburner.com/43FPodcast
Personal productivity from the trenches. Merlin Mann is very entertaining and wastes little time cutting to the chase of his topic. It's only about five minutes per episode but it's a quality five minutes.
Dungeons and Dragons: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml
The latest D&D news, reviews of upcoming products, some great interviews, and a lot of excellent D&D info. I don't get a lot of D&D talk from people who really know the game so it's great to hear the makers talk about their product.
Massively Online Gamer: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MassivelyOnlineGamer
About 40% f-bombs but not too bad a podcast covering computer and console gaming. There isn't a lot of MMO talk for a show called Massively Online Gamer but what do you want.
The Instance: World of Warcraft http://myextralife.com/ftp/radio/instance_rss.xml
I've only just started listening to this feed but I'm hoping for some good chatter about World of Warcraft.
Battlestar Galactica: http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/podcast.xml
Ronald D. Morgan, the producer of BSG, talks about each episode and often posts writer's workshop discussion groups. It's a great listen if you're really into the show.
Diggnation: http://revision3.com/diggnation/feed/mp3
A couple of wacky rich guys, the inventors of Digg.com, go over their selected top stories from Digg over the week. Good geeky news but too much talk about beer.
Sony Online Entertainment: http://community.station.sony.com/podcast/SOE_cast_lrg.xml
I know the guys who do this one so I listen to hear them chat about SOE games. Too much talk about every other game than the one you play, but still not a bad listen.
1Up Podcast: http://www.1up.com/flat/Podcasts/podcasts.xml
Cutting commentary on the latest console games. A great listen.