Here are the podcasts that I can’t miss:

• This Week in Tech – The technology equivalent of those Sunday morning political roundtable shows hosted by Leo Laporte
• Macbreak Weekly – Leo Laporte and a regular group get together each week to discuss Apple / Mac news.  Count on it going off-topic about 75% of the time (which is why I never miss an episode and keep coming back). One of my faves.
• Croncast – Yes, Kris and Betsy are local friends, but they’ve been doing this since day one and the show is as entertaining as ever. Kris is the hardest working man in podcasting in my book. :)
• Bwana.org Radio – Bwana McCall goes through all the latest news and tech stories that he discovers.  Everytime I listen to Bwana, I feel like picking up a microphone and doing something similar.  I then realize I don’t have a microphone handy and then never get around to it. :)
• Brew Bubbas Radio – I’ve gotten into homebrewing recently and this show has been one of the most resourceful things I’ve found to learn all about the art to brewing good beer.
• Drunk and Retired Podcast – Another podcast that I’ve been listening to for a long time. The greatest thing about this show is that it can varies from episode to episode.  One week can be about Java Programming, the next week is all “witty banter”. :)
• The Sound of Young America – Comedy podcast by Jesse Thorn (Radio’s Sweetheart).  Great interviews of people / celebrities who actually deserve to be interviewed.
• You Look Nice Today – Probably one of the funniest podcasts I have heard. My advice, listen from Episode 2 on.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. For me, they have pretty much completely replaced my listening of live radio. The radio that I do listen to is “timeshifted” through pretty much the programming coming from NPR such as Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, This American Life, Car Talk, etc.

One of my favorite podcasts has to be MacBreak Weekly. As you can tell by the title, it has a technical slant but is always very entertaining and the topics of conversation can vary quite a bit. As I listen every week, I always think to myself that there are certain things that always occur during the show that could mesh well with pairing a drinking game alongside it (not that my mind is always focused on alcohol ~ especially while listening to the show since I’m usually driving).

With that all said, I now introduce the MacBreak Weekly Drinking Game… Please feel free to add on or make any suggestions! :)

### Take ONE drink…
* anytime “the” Twitter is mentioned
* anytime Merlin Mann or Alex Lindsay mention their respective babies
* anytime you can hear/tell that Leo Laporte is looking something up while they are talking
* anytime Chris Breen’s hair is referenced

### Take TWO drinks…
* anytime Andy Ihnatko references anything related to comic books
* anytime Alex Lindsay mentions anything related to Africa
* anytime Merlin Mann brings up the Mac SE Backpack

### Take THREE drinks…
* anytime the “Rathole” theme is played
* anytime someone’s iPhone gets to close to a microphone and starts that GSM chirping sound
* anytime Scott Bourne starts talking about something that he randomly bought that costs more than an average person’s yearly salary

### Take FIVE drinks…
* anytime Alex Lindsay starts getting technical about something and you start getting the head-bobs/start drifting off to sleep :)
* if there is any special guests outside of the normal “crew”

### FINISH your drink…
* anytime Leo Laporte buys a new computer and it is updated within a week of purchasing
* anyone switches from MacOSX to Vista :)

disclaimer: marusin.com does not condone the abuse of mixing alcohol and podcasts…

Not that I’m an expert on the topic of podcasting, but I got this interesting email from Apple today with some how-to’s/best practices and figured that I’d put it up here so I didn’t lose track of it for the day that I kick my ass in gear and producing some content! :)

Greetings from the iTunes Podcasting Team:

The Apple TV “Take Two” software upgrade has been released, making it easier than ever for people to enjoy your podcasts wherever there is a TV. A whole new audience will understand the benefits of podcasts as soon as they experience them this way.

Recommendations to help you create the best possible experience for users:

1. Apple TV viewers are immediately aware of video quality. If you encode your video podcast at 320×240, we strongly encourage you to increase the resolution to 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). When encoded well, video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still play on iPhone and video-compatible iPods. To ensure compatibility, we recommend that you encode using QuickTime’s “Movie to iPod” preset or Compressor’s “Apple > Apple Devices > H.264 for iPod video and iPhone 640×480″ preset.

2. When you perform the final encode on your video, enable fast starting. Most recent versions of QuickTime enable this setting automatically. But it’s easy to undo the setting by making changes to the file after the encode. If you do make a change after the encode, be sure to “Save As” again.

3. Apple TV displays a large version of the podcast art (the file referenced in the tag). We recommend that you use a 600×600 square JPG or PNG file.

4. Several new introductory video tutorials have been developed for iTunes, including one for podcasts. If your web site offers how-to information for new podcast users, please consider linking to it.

For those hosting podcasts on their own servers, consider the following recommendations:

5. To reduce wait times, iTunes and Apple TV use byte-range requests in some circumstances. For example, Apple TV 2.0 employs this functionality when the user accesses the podcast directly over the Internet. We recommend hosting episode files on HTTP/1.1 servers that correctly support the HTTP byte-range request specification.

6. Please ensure that your HTTP servers return the correct MIME types in the Content-Type header. Failing to do so can create errors. A list of MIME types can be found in the iTunes podcast technical spec.

Useful links:

1. Installing the free upgrade on an existing Apple TV
2. iTunes Store Podcast Technical Specification
3. iTunes Video Tutorials: Get Free Podcasts

Many thanks for listing your podcast on iTunes.

Best regards,

The iTunes Podcasting Team

Good stuff!

More information is available over at Croncast.com and you can order tickets directly from Eventbrite…

As I have mentioned to Kris in the past, I will be turning the show into a mini Grateful Dead-like event by bootlegging my own recording with a 17 foot tall mic-stand in the back of the venue and selling soggy grilled cheese sandwiches after the show in the parking lot. :)

My friend, Kris Smith, invited Evan Brown and I onto the podcast to talk about all things RSS, SEO, Moderated Media and web (with a little law on the side for Evan)… It’s my first time appearing on a “produced” podcast (compared to the ramblings that are released around here) and Kris made me sound about as good as I can. Yes I have a nasily voice and interupt people alot, but at least Kris took out the “ums”, “uhs” and other bad-habit phrases that I tend to use. :)

Go give it a listen and let me know what you think. I was a little nervous being in a “studio-setting” (meaning fancy microphones and sound-absorbing foam on the walls), but had a great time “talking shop”. Who knows if Kris will ever have us back, though. I know how much editing he had to do to make it somewhat tolerable! :)

Check out CTC Podcast #2- Say it legally and Moderated Media RSS over at CaptureTheConversation.com

If you’re not listening, there’s no better time to start than now. What’s in it for you, you ask? How about a brand new iPod (along with one for me)?  Click the image below and enter yourself in a contest.

Even if you don’t win, you can thank me later for the hours of (free) entertainment that Kris and Betsy will provide…

You know you secretly love hearing me blabber about all things unimportant. I know it. I see the three downloads whenever I post one (ok, two since I should take myself out of the equation). I’ll admit that I unintentionally have made it difficult to subscribe to the podcast in the past. With that said, it can’t get much easier than this.

If you use iTunes, all you need to do is click the link below.

I’m officially part of the iTunes podcasting section. How easy is that?
If you don’t use iTunes, then all you need to do is plug the following URL into your favorite podcatcher: http://feeds.feedburner.com/marusinpodcast

After you subscribe, you’ll never have to worry about missing another one of my podcasts. Now everyone is a winner.

“Gillmor Gang: Until that thing is ten well-trimmed minutes, forget it. In fact, a fan-edited copy of this — like by those kids who make Full Metal Jacket emo music videos — would rock. Or Steve and company could do the show drunk.”

One of the shows that I enjoy listening to regularly is the Drunk and Retired Podcast. While the show’s core revolves around the premise of software development, it also goes in interesting directions discussing things such as culture, life and lots of other stuff. The show is recorded by two software programmers, Cote’ and Charles who are both pretty smart and humorous.

With all of that explanation behind me, Cote’ decided to do something different with the shownotes for today’s show which I thought was quite interesting. Basically, he tagged links to websites that they were talking about/referencing in the show in del.icio.us with the tag, “d&r_23″ (for Drunk & Retired Episode 23). They are going to go forward tagging things in future shows with the show’s corresponding number.

Pretty clever idea of automatically “building” shownotes for a podcast. That’s all, just my observation of the day… :)

That is until I actually looked at the descriptions of some of them.

I’ll admit, the nerd in me enjoys listening to Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?”. I got really excited when I saw the podcast for this show. What changed my enthusiasm was that it is not the actual show, but a 5 minutes synopsis? I don’t know if you can trim down two hours of a variety show into five minutes?

For now, I’ll continue to stick with using all of my timers in Audio Hijack Pro. I record “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me“, “Whad’Ya Know?” and “Prairie Home Companion” off of NPR every Saturday and listen to them throughout the week on my iPod. I guess my recording schedule is not going away anytime soon.