Search results

Podcasting article and my 15 favorite podcasts

by Tom Johnson on Nov 21, 2006
categories: technical-writing

Thanks to Beth for sending me this article on podcasting. It covers some of the big issues -- monetary ROI, audience size, purpose. It's a good read. Link to the article.

I know podcasting has a poor monetary model right now; that's probably why it hasn't taken off as much. Plus so few people listen to them.

I've listened to Diggnation and Dawn and Drey. I really like Diggnation -- the other week I was running on a treadmill and I just kept laughing and laughing while listening to Diggnation. Luckily I was the only one in the small YMCA gym at the time.

I recently stopped listening to Diggnation, though, because the guys get pretty crass sometimes, [started listening again -- they really have awesome shows] and they seem to add a lot of fluff instead of delivering the information. You can go to https://idratherbewriting.com/wp-admin/www.digg.com and get the news first hand in a much shorter time.

I tried listening to Dawn and Drew, but their purpose is so different from my purpose for listening. Dawn and Drew involve 2-4 people sitting in a room talking about everything and nothing for a half hour. I listen more for information, to learn. That's why I like IT Conversations so much.

http://share.opml.org/toppodcasts/ has a list of the top podcasts according to listener-submitted OPMLs.

I have been meaning to make a list of my favorite podcasts. Here are my 16 favorite (I've just listed the RSS feeds, so you can easily subscribe to them with your feedreader). Most of them are tech shows, but not all.

1. Talk Crunch: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Talkcrunch
2. 43 Folder: http://odeo.com/channel/rss/34348
3. In Our Time: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/inourtime/rss.xml
4. IT Conversations: http://feeds.gigavox.com/gigavox/channel/itconversations
5. Manager Tools: http://www.manager-tools.com/index.php?feed=rss2&category_name=podcasts
6. New York Times Tech Talk: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml
7. Podcast 411: http://feeds.feedburner.com/podcast411a
8. Podcasting Underground: http://feeds.feedburner.com/podcastingunderground
9. Web 2.0 Show: http://feeds.feedburner.com/web20Show
10. The Podcast Academy: http://feeds.gigavox.com/gigavox/channel/podcastacademy
11. The WordPress Podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/wordpresspodcast/
12. The Chris Pirillo Show: http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow
13. Geek News Central: http://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml
14. IT Author Podcast: http://www.itauthor.com/podcasts/podcast.php
15. DMN Communications: http://dmn.podbean.com/feed/
16.Tech Writer Voices: http://feeds.feedburner.com/idratherbewriting (okay, so this one is mine)

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the tech comm, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.