My podcast listening routine has been fixed for quite a while now, but there's not much of it anymore. Since Murphy's gone I don't take many walks, and since I work at home that leaves trips to the grocery store and errands for podcasts. Still, I continue to catch each week's roundtable segment of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" (usually skipping the headliner), a couple of Marketplace broadcasts each week and Real Time with Bill Maher when I can fit it in. I don't listen to IT Conversations regularly, but I do manage my queue very closely, which I save to listen to on vacations, like our April 2009 Vacation to Newport, Rhode Island last week.
- I'll start with a podcast I didn't think I'd like but ended-up enjoying quite a bit. Jim Cramer: Blogs, Boo-yah, and the Future of Financial Media. I don't watch Cramer on CNBC and I agree with George Will regarding Cramer who said, "Don't take financial advice from a man who shouts," but this was a fun podcast. Cramer captured what the web was like back in the early 90's when he was getting started with TheStreet.com.
- James Hughes: Waiting for the Great Leap…Forward? One of several presentations from the 2007 Singularity Summit. I don't know how it popped into my queue only a month ago, but it was an interesting listen none-the-less. A very circumspect view of both the exciting and scary possibilities ahead as technologies converge. Was simultaneously a realistic and fantastic image of what's in store.
- Moira Gunn's interview with Van Jones about his book The Green Collar Economy was full of common sense wisdom on how we can move from current energy technologies to renewable technologies. Van Jones' enthusiasm was infectious.
- I saved the most interesting podcast for last, an O'Reilly Media Graphing Social Patterns presentation by Charlene Li titled The Future of Social Networks. I listened to this three times, each time getting new ideas on features that would make more effective online communities. I particularly liked how Li said the main service she sees missing in social networking is the same service which drove people to the web in the first place: shopping. Good stuff about social influence as it relates to commerce. Interesting images of the future of social networks being ubiquitous and "like air."
My next vacation is in July. We'll pick this up then!