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So I find myself working on a podcasting solution for an old client that now wants to share a weekly 30 minute talk with the world and it got me thinking.

Podcasting is something that is so simple, but so often misunderstood. I remember only a little more then a year ago talking to otherwise intelligent, tech savy, people who asked me how a podcast was different then a mp3. I tried to explain to them about the metadata and subscription aspects of podcasts but I rarely convied the true power of podcasting.

Wikipedia says:

A podcast is a media file that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

Okay, fine - but what podcasting really does is allow the masses to simlplify the distribution of content they’ve created. The xml file that describes the media file allows everyone - itunes, thisblog, technorati - to learn about the latest mashup that you created in GarageBand, why you did it, when you did it, and where one might subscribe to the other media files that you are going to publish in the future.

Get a decent rss aggregator or podcast specific app ( even itunes ) and subscribe to a few active podcasts.

That being said, here’s a list of my favorite ( mostly ) talk radio type podcasts - try one or two, almost all of them are better then the standard mainstream media swill.

1. Free Talk Live - while not a pure-play podcast, this is easily the most important podcast on the net today imho.
2. The Onion Radio News - The Onion Radio News is a daily newscast from The Onion’s award-winning news team.
3. DiggNation - Diggnation is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories.
4. Coverville - A Podcsts about cover songs. How can that be good? Tune in, find out.
5. Movies You Should See - Brtish movie reviews - an amazing amount of detail about the movies discussed even though they stray off topic so often.
6. The RU Sirius Show - A MondoGlobo Production…
7. Common Sense with Dan Carlin - Sometimes topical, sometimes historical, always worth listening to.
8. Rubyfruit Radio - Where it’s all girls, all the time.
9. MacNation - One Nation Under Pod.
10. Red Bar Radio - Listen to MIke D. harshly judge pop culture .

Allright! In all the confusion I thought that I had lost podcast #3 but it turns out I had just uploaded it to a strange place. So without further ado I am happy to present my best podcast to date and the last podcast to that will bare the This Damn Blog Name:

Podcast #3

It’s about 11 MB and 5:30 mintues long.

Welcome to the second This damn blog podcast.

This week we’re bringing you 5 great creative commons tracks that we downloaded from the CC Mixter site. See the blog post or the RSS Feed for the URLs where you can download these songs yourself.

All of these tracks are licenced under the Sampling Plus 1.0 license. If you download this podcast, please abide by the license.

Smitten Kitten
by Ashwan
This was the song that first opened my eyes to the potential of CCMixter music - This slow, downtempo track is as interesting as anything that you are going to hear anywhere.

StarLight flies
by Rhythm Beating Silence
StarLight flies is a 90’s style grunge influenced rock track with interesting low spoken vocals that builds into an expansive chorus.

Blood Ties
by Cezary Ostrowski
Based on the original track “Scared Of My Own Blood”, Blood Ties by Cezary Ostrowski highlights the abiltiy for a remix to be transformed into something completely new.

Clockwerk Girl
by sHORT fACED bEAR
And now for something completely different… This is the type of track that you are never gonna hear on traditional radio, but that if you did hear might just effect you.

Destination Non-Specific
by Colin Mutchler
Vocals and accoustic guitar with a few effects and a few other guitars quietly mixed in..

Thanks for tuning into this Damn Blogs Creative Commons Music Podcast, feel free to let us know what you think. Just got to thisdamnblog.com and click on the link for this post and add your comments.

Here it is, This Damn Blog’s first podcast - you can Tune in here.

Bill discusses when one should use Windows, Open-Source software, hosting, and software patents. Bill is a very smart guy and is fighting the good fight in the IT trenches every day - so give him a listen.