I was listening to what i think is the newest “This week in google”, and for those you who not in the know, this week in google (Or twig) is a show made by the twit podcast network where they go into various google news and related.
It’s pretty good for the most part, but on this particular episode (129), they decided to go into what’s rude, social norms and what not. They brought up that it shouldn’t be considered rude if they don’t reply to their emails. Which i can agree with to an extent. After all, they probably get tons of them, and couldn’t possibly answer them all. So when you send to people you know have a huge audience, you shouldn’t expect an answer..

However.. They decided to take it a step further and make it so that people sending them emails is rude. I’m not kidding! The two people in the panel of the show, Leo Laporte, and Jeff Jarvis (Gina Trapani wasn’t present) actually believes that.
Their argument was that they don’t want noise and sending them noise is rude. I get the spam argument. I mean, that’s pretty rude.. But someone giving you positive feedback is rude? Come on now! I’m sure it was just the way it came out. How the phrased it. Because it seems ungreatful if they actually think like this.
Then they went into how dishing out the cellphone while in the middle of a real life conversation shouldn’t be considered rude either. But at that point, it just dawned on me that they’re just nerds, and they probably don’t socialize with non-nerds all that much.

Don’t get me wrong. Them being super nerdy just makes it all that better when they talk about tech (Which is what twit is all about), but it becomes a little funny when they start talking about social norms and stuff. Not saying they’re completely wrong with everything they said. Just those two things i mentioned that caught my attention.
And i love Twit.. It’s a great network of high quality and high diversity tech related podcasts. Be it about tech and law, tech and social, tech and microsoft.. Or what have you. They do a really good job, and i don’t find myself disagreeing all that much with them. Especially not lately with Leo’s speil on court judges, SOPA and all that. I think he’s spot on and i love the rage.

So anyway! Check out TWIT! Highly recommended: http://twit.tv/

There’s this podcast called Diggnation out there. You may have heard of it. It’s a pretty popular podcast.
When i started looking for more podcasts outside of my gateway podcast, i stumbled upon diggnation. I remember reading the description where “One is a PC guy who bla blal and one’s a mac guy who bla bla”, and thought to myself “Hey! Maybe this’ll be good. A lot of great silly nerd arguments to be had by all”, and hey(!), they bring up augmented media, which is always a good thing. Oooh, how wrong i was.

For those of you not in the know. Diggnation is a podcast where they’re supposed to bring up what’s hot right now on the site, digg.com, and discuss them. Simple enough, right? Well.. No.. There are three major flaws. It’s not funny, ad-heaven and.. Was this an audio/video podcast or just video?
*It’s not funny I find the constant laughter and lack of context to the stories they bring up, very annoying. How anyone can find that funny, i don’t know.
*Ad-heaven I’m just going to assume i must have been on drugs, or that i was mistaken when i actually counted, but this show is about 66% sponsor messages. I have nothing against sponsoring your show. It’s a good way to get money, and it’s not too distracting for the most part. I mean, twit does it all the time, and it doesn’t annoy me that much. But 66% is just too much.
*Video, audio or both? I checked if it was an audio podcast or video podcast, and it turned out they had both video links and audio links. So that means they respect the audio listeners when visuals are happening, right? Well.. No.. There was an ipad thing they did where they threw an ipod case or something out a building(?). I have no idea what the fuck was going on, because NO ONE cared to explain it! It was just a bunch of grunts, laughs and stupid comments.

So all i can really think is that: When the hell did the bomb drop on this podcast? At what point did they jump the shark?

Can someone explain to me, the appeal of Diggnation (I’d love to hear some differing opinions on that podcast, and why it’s considered good by so many)?

This has been cropping up from two videogame sources i like, and i feel like addressing it.
The two sources in question is Chuggaaconroy and Jumping the shark. Chuggaaconroy will say that he’s amazed that NCS (Nintendocaprisun) isn’t good at super smash brother for the N64 because he saw him kick ass at Contra. Jumping the shark generally mentions it, without really thinking about the logic of what they’re saying.

Are you surprised when you see a hokey player suck at football? Are you surprised when a math teacher suck at teaching gym class? I’m just asking, because even though sporting (For example) has similarities among each sub-category, that still makes hokey and football very different.
All i’m saying is that “being good at games” is a very broad term. I’ve seen professional starcraft 2 players suck at games like Mario World. I’m personally very good at Mario World. I’m better at Mario world than TLO, even though in terms of sitting down with a game, he’s probably spent far more hours than i have. It’s just that we’ve played different games a different amount of time.

Sorry for pointing out the obvious. I’m confident that both the JTS panel and Chugga understands this, and that they just said something pretty stupid because it was on the spot. You know, sometimes, you just don’t have the time to think.
Also, i guess it’s worth mentioning that of course you can be naturally good at playing games because maybe you love playing games, so you’ll learn them naturally faster or whatever. But i think that’s a different topic all together.

Yesterday, i got done listening to the engadget main podcast. The last one with the full crew. I thought it was a lot of fun though. They were talking about the last 3 weeks of tech news, while making this hilarious band name, staring themselves. I made a picture of what the front and back cover could look like:

Anyhow. Funny things aside. This was the last one with the 2nd generation crew (I guess you could call it), and a 3rd generation of Engadget main people will be forthcoming. I can’t say i’m not a little sadden by it. Not sadden as in i’m going to cry, but rather, the things i’m going to miss about them. Nostalgia.
That being said though, it will be interesting to see what the new crew will be like. Joshua will be staying with us for about 2 to 3 more podcasts if i understood it correctly (Cause he doesn’t leave Engadget as an editor-in-chief until the end of the month, or something like that). I’m sure it’ll still be great though. I still got quite a few in the back catalog to check out, so it’ll be loads of fun to do that.

They’re also, you know, not DEAD! In case you can’t get enough of your Engadget podcast fix, here are their twitter links:
@joshuatopolsky, @futurepaul, @reckless

Oh, and for those of you who wonder why i haven’t been posting in a while. I was busy with a job interview and i didn’t feel good (Stomach flu going around at home right now).

Engadget is one of the biggest tech news outlets on the web, so they’re very big; and with that hugeness comes the obligatory selection of podcasts that they all tend to have.
Either way! I’m here to shortly write about them, and give some extra information on them as well

How i started
I found Engadget around the time when i had just started using RSS for my internet surfing needs. Back then, i just used it to check on some tech news and what is going on in the tech world.
But as my interest in podcasts was growing, so did my need to listen to more of them. Naturally, since i had grown attatched to the writers of Engadget, i instantly checked out all of their podcasts. There’s three of them (Excluding the Engadget show), i only listen to two. But they’re all unique and very good in their own way.
That’s basically it. So let’s get into the meat of things, shall we!

Engadget mobile

Just as the name suggest, the mobile section of their podcast lineup deals with tech news centered around the mobile world.
It might sound like a very specific, niche and arbitrary thing. But the truth of the matter is that mobile is pretty much most of the tech industry these days. They make sure to deliver the most up to date and well analyzed reviews, speculations and thoughts on the mobile tech world, and send it right to your preferred audio player.
It stars Chris Ziegler, Myriam Joire (tnkgrl), and Vlad Savov, and the occasional guest(s) they bring on quite frequently. Together, they nerd out on various details of the industry at large, different key functions of either software or hardware, reviews and what have you.
Out of all of them, i find that Myriam is the most interesting one of them. That is not to say the others aren’t interesting (Far from it), but i find she’s the most interesting of the bunch.

Myraim, from what i can remember her saying in one of the many podcasts they’ve made, used to work in the gaming industry at some point, and i thought it was such an interesting thing to hear, about how that was, where it took her after that, and the things she’s been doing; and i think that the experience she’s had, working in the industry for such a long time, really shows in the podcast. Cause she tends to say a lot of very insightful things and accurate predictions. She’s also multilingual.
Her personal blog: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/
Recommend checking it out.

They’re a nerdy bunch, and i recommend them only if you’re hardcore into tech: http://mobile.engadget.com/podcast/
@tnkgrl, @vladsavov, @zpower

Engadget HD

I’ve given these guys a chance on multiple occasions, and i’ve tried to like them. But i just can’t seem to find the interest that they have in high quality tech. I don’t particularly like when they talk about how much the tiniest of quality changes matter to them. But i think that’s just a matter of taste, really.
What i think isn’t a matter of taste, is the fact that they go so slow, and stop talking at certain points. Like you’ll listen to them talk about something, and then get big pauses at points. It happens too frequently for my taste. But hey! Maybe some of you could still find it interesting. Personally, i can’t say too much about them since i’ve only listened to maybe 4 episodes.

You can check them out here if you’re curious though: http://hd.engadget.com/podcast/

Engadget main

And the best for last (depending on how you see it). It’s the most accessible of the three. They nerd out the least, has a LOT of humor involved, and takes things with a grain of Joshua Topolsky. Which is, incidentally, the main guy of engadget.. I wish i could still say. As of a few days ago, he decided to step away from the throne in order to pursue a dream beyond the realms of engadget. The only thing he has to do with them now is being an “editor-at-large” (Aka: Whatever you want it to be) and being the host for their Engadget show (At least from what i understand).
But that still leaves two more that was the group of the main podcast team, right? No..

At their prime, they used to consist of Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller. But all of them have since just a few days ago left Engadget. That means the podcast won’t go on, i do believe. At least not in the same manner as it has the past few years.
They did announce that they will make one more podcast for us, under the Engadget main name. So i’ll be looking forward to that one. Hopefully, they’ll be shedding some more light on what they plan to do next and what not.

I won’t add a link to it, since they’re quitting. I encourage you to listen to their back catalog. I also think that maybe later, someone else will take over the podcast in their stead. I will make a whole post about their last episode when i’ve listened to it.
Link to the podcast: http://www.engadget.com/podcast/
here are their twitter handles: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @reckless

To conclude
All this being said though. Engadget is not the best place if you want very specific stuff to listen to. Twit is a much better example of that. But it is a very wonderful landscape of well-thought-of podcasts that covers the entire spectrum of tech. Give them all a shot, i’m sure you’d like at least one of them.

Further details on the Engadget main podcast and a little more on Engadget as a whole will be posted as the last podcast with Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel and Paul Miller is posted.