9th January, 2012
I still love podcasts as much as I did back in 2009. Trevor and Erica threw up some tweets about posting my favourite podcasts. So I thought I’d take a second to post my faves. In no particular order (the headline is link bait (suck on that)), these are the podcasts that I find myself listening to the most:
Tech News Today
Back in June 2010 Tom Merrit left CNET to start a daily tech show on the TWiT network. It’s serves as my main source for tech news, like a 6 o’clock news for tech.
Industrial Strength Nightmares
I’m fairly musically agnostic. I really like a lot of different genres of music. ISN Radio is my main source for Industrial music. Not a huge fan of the host (sorry), but the music makes up for it. If you’re interested in expanding your music horizons, check it out.
CBC’s Spark
It’s from the CBC it’s about technology, they interview smart people and it’s awesome.
The Talk Show
Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber is kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of Apple punditry. He mainly talks about how awesome Apple is.
Film Sack
Four extremely nerdy men in their late-thirties review bad movies. If that is not great enough, their “Bonus Sack!” commentary is especially great.
cbc spark film sack industrial strength nightmares tech news today the talk show top 5 in Podcast Review
5th April, 2011
This year’s flood season is too be the biggest since 1997. Back then the Internet wasn’t really the internet as we know it. This year I’ve come across a few flood resources online.
MBFloods.ca is a resource for crowd-sourced flood data. Background info is on Ushahidi.com.
MTS has a few webcams setup around the province, The Winnipeg Free Press plotted them on a google map.
Look at all the water!
flood manitoba webcams in Review Websites
24th March, 2011
Full Disclosure: VPN Authority approached me with a trial account for review purposes.
A VPN (or Virtual Private Network) is a system for securely joining a remote network over the internet, typically they’re used to allow remote workers secure access to their company’s internal networked file system and other network resources. When a computer connects to a VPN all internet traffic can be configured to route through that VPN. As a side-effect, this re-routed traffic appears to be coming from whatever geographic location the VPN server. In other words, if you connect to a VPN in the USA, you can use geo-restricted sites – like Hulu and Pandora – from anywhere in the world; if you use a VPN located in the UK, you can access BBC iPlayer and Spotify. You get the picture, see Wikipedia for all the glory details.
A while ago, someone decided that they could charge money for access to this side-effect. When you to a search for something like US VPN you get a tonne of results, some free, others paid. It’s hard to tell them apart and for the most part, they’re fairly similar. The main differentiating factors for the purposes of watching geo-restricted video are connection speed and cost.
Truth be told, before VPNAuthority contacted me I had not tried using a VPN to access US content, at least not in a very long time. I had assumed that the free options were too slow and the paid options weren’t worth it. I’m not about to shill for VPN Authority just because they set me up with a free account (sorry guys). It’s only fair to pit them against some of their competitors. So, I took a look at 2 other services: HotSpot Shield and CastleVPN. HotSpot shield seems to be the most popular free VPN and I picked CastleVPN because they had a professional looking website.
bbc iplayer hulu vpn in Review
25th August, 2010
The Pomodoro Technique is one of those nebulous life hacks I’ve heard about on the internets in the past but never given much credence to. In 50 words or less: it’s a time-management method wherein you spend 25 minutes intently focused on a single task without distraction, then take a 5 minute break. Every 4 cycles you take a 15 minute break. As someone who works from home, distraction from social media (and sometimes household emergencies) are my main productivity killers, any time-management magic that could help me defend against those distractions would obviously improve my productivity.
After hearing Scott Johnson talk about Pomodoro on a few of his podcasts, I decided to give it a try last week. In all honesty, I did very little reading on the subject, I based my implementation on his description and reading through the (short) Wikipedia entry. In theory the Pomodoro Technique is supposed help you force yourself to stay 100% focused on a given task, by giving you a 5 minute break as a reward. At the end of the day, the sum of the breaks is should be less lost productivity than the sum of all memes, IM jokes, emails and reddit visiting, etc that you’d normally be distracted by throughout the day. It worked for me, for about 6 hours. Overall I had mixed feelings about Pomodoro.
My main productivity boost came from shutting down IM and twitter clients; turning off email checking; and making a conscious effort to avoid all web usage. After the first couple of pomodoros it became really easy for me to do this for a 25 minute stretch. Once I was in the zone, I felt really productive and got a lot of work done.
While 25 minutes was the prefect amount of time to try to trick myself into doing a small task, it didn’t leave a lot of time for larger tasks (hell, this blog post has taken me way more than 25 minutes to write) and it didn’t give me a lot of leeway to sync up with other people’s schedules. I found myself needing more than 25 minutes for some programming projects and I had to postpone a phone call in order to stay on target.
In conclusion: all that said, give it a shot. Especially if you’re self-employed or self-motivated. You’ll probably learn something about yourself, your workflow, the kinds of things that distract you the most. Who knows, it might be a better fit for you.
PS.
productivity time management in Random Review
20th January, 2010
I love podcasts. In 2009 I probably listened to more hours of podcasts than music. Here are my top 3 podcasts of the year. As with my Top 3 Board Games of 2009 these are not necessarily podcasts that launched in 2009, instead they are podcasts I really got into for the first time in 2009.
1. Car Talk
Car Talk has been on NPR for 33 years. It has been podcast for 3. The hosts, Click and Clack even made a cameo in Pixar’s Cars as Rusty and Dusty Rust-Eze. I am probably one of the last people on earth to have heard the show. I’m not too sure how to explain my fascination with the show. If you’ve ever owned a car, or ridden it one, I highly recommend this show.
Wikipedia
Official Site
iTunes Link
2. The 404
As a die-hard Buzz Out Loud listener I was initially turned off when they hijacked the BOL feed at CES 2009 (or was it ’08?). I didn’t give them a chance for quite some time. Once I gave them a chance I quickly grew to love their brand of humor. If you’re of BOL or anything on the TWiT Network, definitely give these guys a listen.
Official Site
iTunes Link
3. AppSlappy
Scott Johnson w/co-host Eric take about iPhone apps news and reviews. It’s basically the same tried and true formula used on The Instance: a little bit of news, some rumours and scuttlebutt, a few reviews and user feedback. Makes for a great and informative show.
Official Site
iTunes Link
Honourable Mentions: Everything else from Frogpants Studios – Scott Johnson is the new Leo Laporte; The Movielicious; Hype Machine Radio
Most Irrelevant Podcast of 2009: The Dawn & Drew show. I know they’re pioneers and I used to be a big fan. But it just became too much of the same boring 90s psuedo-hippie BS. 2009 is the year I finally unsubscribed for good.
appslappy car talk Dawn and Drew Frogpants Studios Hype Machine podcasts the 404 The Movielicious top 2009 in Audio Review
