Peter Seale's weblog

Thursday, August 03, 2006 5:09:28 AM UTC 

UPDATE 2007-07-18: This roundup is officially out-of-date! I've posted my newest update here: Great Podcast Roundup Turbo: Hyper Fighting Edition

Yesterday I burned no less than 10 CD-Rs completely filled with podcast .mp3's. Even given a generously low estimate*, I've burned over 100 hours worth of audio podcasts! And then, after all this, I found Microsoft's Technet feed. It's huge!

What I'm saying is: the time has come for another Great Podcast Roundup. (uhh, here was the last one)

*Estimate: 10 full CDs, 640MB stored per CD, 40MB per hour of audio.

Review Criteria in a Paragraph or Less

I'm looking for quality software development-related (mostly .NET) content, for some definitions of "quality" and some definitions of "mostly .NET". I listen to some shows for practical knowledge and some shows just to pick up the flavor. I've also discovered I don't like audio newsfeed shows, so I've notably left out several popular and presumably deserving feeds including TWiT, DiggNation and Chris Pirillo's show.

Let's get to it.

Good Shows

bias: .NET
The best way I can describe this is that each of these shows directly (and favorably!) competes with expensive, paid training. My only question is: how is this free?


bias: .NET
As I said in the last roundup: each episode short and sweet, like poetry.  Scott Hanselman proclaims his love for developer tools and lifehacks and all things .NET.
To clear things up a little, I'll note that he doesn't actually read poetry aloud; that would be super awkward.


bias: .NET
This is Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell's interview show discussing all things .NET. There are many copycats, but this is the original, and it's still better than the rest. What stands out most about this show is its: a) all-around quality; b) fun; c) endurance. 180+ shows in, DotNetRocks is going strong.


bias: .NET
Craig switches between topics that interest me, interviews, topics that bore me, and entire shows I can't remember anything about anymore.


bias: .NET
Generally good quality, but as Kimberly Tripp said in her interview, "I think there's a one-second delay," referring to the Skype-induced lag. My only unsolicited advice to the operator of this podcast: Greg, please use international long distance instead of Skype—the one-second delay is killing you.
On a totally unrelated note: Greg lives in a parallel universe called 'Australia'.  This Australian universe is entirely like our own, except for a few things: people routinely discuss SQL Server features I've never heard of, toilets flush the other way, Australians celebrate New Years during the summer, and (for whatever reason) Australians exist exactly one second behind our universe, causing a one-second communication vortex (commonly referred to as Skype lag). Boo yah, I slipped that in again!  Got you!


bias: .NET
It's true: you simply can't get enough Wally. 'Sir Wally' himself, in person, is enough to make up for the occasional sound issue or editing failure (the quote "we'll edit that out later" comes to mind), and he's cranking those shows out regularly. Uh, let us also not forget Paul Glavitch. :)


bias: .NET
This is an absolute flood of shows. If you're looking for a new part-time job, this is the feed for you.


bias: .NET
Like the other Microsoft-corp feed, this is an absolutely huge pile of content. Given the sheer volume, I might have to take drastic measures and start listening at double-speed, just to keep up!

Good Shows - not .NET-related

I have an implicit .NET bias when rating shows, and that generally reflects poorly on all non-.NET-related podcasts, so for this roundup, I'm, uh, segregating the podcasts. I swear I love all you guys; I swear it.

bias: Java
This show has some solid content. It can get dry, but then again—this is Software Engineering Radio, not MTV's Total Request Live.
This show carries a heavy Java bias, but in a good way.  the hosts are experienced in Java, so they relate mostly in Java terms, but don't have the…well, let's call it "the bad kind of enthusiasm." This is a really good show.


This is a show all about contract web development and all sorts of less-technical web design topics. Oh, and they're British, so they'll use "pants" as an adjective, and you'll hear them talk about Maypoles, and they'll generally max out your British Stereotype Meter throughout the show. For whatever reason, that's a big plus for me! Keep it British! (Stomp the French!)


bias: BMC
Define 'enterprise' by example: this series. Go ahead and subscribe; you know you're curious. The only thing I remember is their discussion of Single-Sign On—it turns out that it's hard to implement. Go figure.


bias: Ruby
Good quality; high on the hipster quotient.


If you ever want to dig inside the brain of a project manager, well: here's one—just don't let it corrupt you! To paraphrase: stare too long into the [project manager], and the [project manager] stares back into you!
There's something to think about.


I swear I love you guys. Anyway, this is the show about the new web, so if you're interested, hop on for the ride! This show carries a heavy implicit hipster bias, but in a good way.


bias: PHP
The host attempts to be 100% platform-agnostic—and fails*—but he does make every effort to cover web development in a way that non-PHP developers will be interested. There are some solid interviews in here, so I'm subscribed for good.
*You can't be platform-agnostic by removing platform-dependent discussion; instead you need to include as many platforms as possible in every discussion.

Inactive Shows

They came; they saw; they conquered. Then they stopped updating their web sites.

bias: .NET
I wish this hadn't gone inactive! I'm still looking for a proper English-language Sharepoint show, and this was the closest thing! Good quality, good interviews, and fun!  No more, though—their most recent show was January of this year. What a shame!


bias: .NET
Dead. It's been a while, but I vaguely remember they had some good shows in there.


bias: .NET
Dead after three shows. To make things worse, this German-language SharePoint show is up to episode #47! Forty-seven!


bias: Java .NET C++
Dead after a good run of 18 quality, short shows. The only bad thing I have to say about Code Sermon is that there's not enough of it.


Dead. My favorite on this series is the episode where someone else turned the tables and interviewed Adam Green.  In this show, Adam discussed "grassroots Data Processing" back in the 80's with dBase, among other things that fascinated me.


Dead until Season 2 arrives, which should be any moment now…a few months ago. To briefly explain the content, this was an interview show covering older computing topics.  This is History Channel of computing.

In the queue

Sifting through the garbage you'll find some gems…but mostly you'll find garbage.

FoxShow reeled me in with a show description that includes the word "DotNot", and no, that's not a misspelling. I'll report back when I find out more. Awesome.

Closing Remarks

If you're brave, you can try out this OPML file containing no less than 36 feeds: pseale-2006-08-podcast-extravaganza.opml (5.28 KB). Knock yourself out!