Podcasts, Netcasts, call them what you want. Every geek out there should be listening to these things. Every single one of you. If ever you see a geek with earphones plugged into his/her ears, I guarantee you they are listening to the latest podcasts. It’s just something most geeks can’t live without. We thrive on the latest podcasts.
Now, I know there are still some people out there who haven’t listened to many podcasts, and I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for those people because they are missing out on so much. So, I’ve decided to make a list of my favorite podcasts so that new listeners can have some suggestions while sifting through the thousands of new podcasts each day.
There has been much confusion in the past as to what exactly a podcast is. To ease some of the confusion, it is basically an online show which can be in the form of audio or video that is downloaded on demand. Most notably, podcasts utilize RSS which stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS might even be how you subscribe to Make Use Of and podcasts work the same way. However instead of text posts you would be downloading audio or video.
Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.
Yesterday, I was working on a new post about popular tech podcasts. And while on it, I thought why not to integrate some of better tech podcasts to makeuseof.com as a service. In other words, to put all popular tech shows in one easy-to-navigate, auto-updated web player. After couple hours of work and another five of frustration with SplashCast media, it was running and functional. Check it out on our brand new Best of Tech Podcasts page (from now on it’ll be also accessible from the sidebar).
Current shows include:
DL.TV (Video, Weekly): For tech fans, by tech fans about what is going on in tech today.
Here you go folks, yet another makeuseof list, this one on podcasts. To be more precise, it’s about podcast directories.. the better ones. Not only do these aggregate, list and organize thousands of podcasts but also provide you with a handful of features to listen, store, discover, download and subscribe to your favorite shows.
What are podcasts ?: In case you didn’t know, podcasts are basically web-based audio (sometimes video) shows, you may think of them as audio/video blogs. Usually you can listen to them online, download desired episodes to your PC and even subscribe to shows you like. It can be a weekly tech show, language course, or weekly wrap-up of best stories on Digg.
Democracy player is an excellent entertainment tool designed to solve all your video needs, both on your PC and on the web. It’s a powerful all-in-one program combining multi-format video player, A+ video manager, internet TV guide, video search and downloader and more. It’s a video application for present. On top of that, it’s fast, user-friendly and absolutely free.
Features:
I see myself hanging around too much around video sharing websites these days Looking at the abundance of such services rolling every week there is no doubt online video and broadcasting is on the big BOOM. For generic web enthusiasts like you and me it means nothing but good. I am quite sure that in less then 6 month, I can put a RIP sign on my TV and let it bury in dust, and upgrade from 24″ to 30″ monitor. Maaaan, this obsession with screens is not healthy.
If you have not heard about RocketBoom yet, you should check it out it is fun and goes well with morning coffee. It is most popular video blog on the web, publishing 3,4 min video clips at 9am ET daily excluding weekends. Clips usually cover some particular news item or a story suggested by viewers. Host of the show is Joanne Colan, who is not just funny and interesting but also quite hot.
Odeo is a podcast directory. What is a Podcast ? If you are not familiar with the term, below is how wikipedia (profile) defines it:
A podcast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal >computers.
I personally would rather think of them as blogs in audio format that usually contain discussions or interviewes between 2 or more people.
