Saturday April 23, 2005

Adam Curry: The starter podcast

I've been listening to podcasts lately mostly on my laptop. I use rubypodder to keep a set of podcasts updated. I thought I might review of few of the podcasts I've heard lately in this section of my blog.

The "starter" podcast is from Adam Curry: the ex MTV VJ, media maven, and podcast father.

Adam produces a podcast named the Daily Source Code. Adam talks a lot about podcasting, the rig he uses for producing podcasts, and software he is building to make producing podcasts easier. Sometimes he will take "sound scene" tours of flight lessons or other parts of his life. Other times he talks about the music industry. In addition to his own podcast Adam regularly runs promos from other podcasts and highlights podcasts he has found interesting.

One of the bigger problems with podcasts is that they don't contain section information. So in a 45 minute podcast Adam might segue between 3 different issues. If you are only interested in the 3rd topic you have to use fairly imprecise fast forwarding to find the interesting topic. Other podcasts which are more focused don't face this same problem. While I suspect most podcasts in the future will be very focused Adam's podcast serves as an important center for the podcasting community. I suspect I will always download the Daily Source Code eventhough I often skip podcasts that start off uninteresting. ( Apr 23 2005, 10:13:52 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Tahoe Deathfall

I finished this book last night after the local poker game broke early. This is the second in a series of mystery books by Todd Borg. The first was Tahoe Blowup. I didn't enjoy Tahoe Deathfall as much as I enjoyed the earlier book. The main character (a detective named Owen McKenna) was developed reasonable well as is his girlfriend but the rest of the characters are harder to get close to. They are either very strange or keep developing well into the epilog. While this is a murder mystery some of the plot devices are a little unbelievable. Owen is an ex-policeman from San Francisco turned private investigator in Lake Tahoe. But multiple times he commits felonys for what looks like dubious ROI to me. Other plot devices are equally hard to believe although I won't detail them as to not destroy the storyline. One or two of these eyebrow raisers would make for good plot devices but they came too thick to make this book as enjoyable as the first one. Still, its centered around Tahoe and I have a hard time not enjoying the references to places I have breakfast or places I hike. ( Apr 23 2005, 11:12:20 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]