Here is a quick summary of audio streams I have loaded/unloaded listened/skipped on my iPod. I hesitate to call them “podcasts” since I am manually downloading MP3 files and manually moving them on and off my Shuffle. All are found from ITConversations.
For what its worth, I typically use the auto fill mode to populate my Shuffle and then play in shuffle mode (is that a double shuffle?). When I have some speeches to load, I clear enough songs off and manually move them to the Shuffle playlist, inserting them in the top tracks, and then switching the shuffle to run in playlist order. What I have not mastered is getting the Shuffle to jump to the top of the playlist (it is supposed to be 3 button clicks, but I have not gotten that to work).
Anyhow, here are some casts that have been on my pod, listening recently while bicycling and sitting on the plane/beach.
- Lawrence Lessig “Clearing the Air About Open Source”. Lessig is clearly a masterful speaker, and gets it going in his first words that come out in punctuated fire power:
When I come to events like this, I try to figure out whether people in the audience recognize that there is a war about to break out.
In one sentence, he sets the tone, gets our attention (reference to war brings it home). He is not afraid to refer to those entities that want to control the content as “dwarfs” and admonishes the creative industries for not taking a stand. “I have no influence, I am just a puny professor”. It is a masterful hour plus of Lessig. He hammers us with passion and intricate arguments that can almost make the law comprehensible. Gold.
- “Meg Hourihan – Memory Lane” Weaving her own stories into those of the growth of Blogger.com from start up to buy out from Google, a mildly engaging interview. Of high interest to blog fans who refer to the top tier by first name “meg” and “Jason” and “Mena”….
- Will Wright’s “Lessons form Game Design” was one of the best I heard recently. The whole approach of game design as described by Wright, plus his self effacing humor, make it a worth listen even if long. You miss a few things lacking the visuals, but I am fascinated by the notion of “Possibility Space” and his “Calvin approach” (assumed referring to the Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes) to probing new unknown software- doing everything you are not supposed to do, e.g. driving the race car against the race flow. There is a huge amount to be learned from the ideas behind SimCity and TheSims.
- Tim O’Reilly “The Software Paradigm Shift” while general is fairly interesting in terms of how O’Reilly’s books and conferences have fostered the Open_____ movements and how many other mainstream businesses have missed the mark. He comes across as practical and humble. I like it.
- Kim Polese — Web 2.0 I could not listen to more than 10 minutes. Web 2.0 is great, different, software is in a revolustion, blah blah blah. The pas poster girl for Marimba is not hawking SpikeSource some sort of outfit to “facilitate the adoption of open source software in the enterprise through testing, certification and support services. We see a world full of powerful, reliable and freely extensible infrastructure””free of vendor lock-in.” it might just be above my feeble cogdog brain to understand. Pass.
- Ana Marie Cox “Wonkette: South by Southwest Interactive 2005”. Gag me with a ZEN Micro. I must really be an untrendy hick occupying a space far outside the hip SXSW cool zone. I had never clicked over to “Wonkette”, and doubt I will, but it just seemed to be a lot of “I am just to hip for words” stuff. Grab this one with a pooper scooper.
Keep i mind this is the beauty of this media form. We can all be critics, and we can all pick and discard stuff we like from stuff we don’t. My tastes may vary widely from yours, and mine are no more valid than the next listeners.
