Technical and Developer Podcasts Worth Listening To

A fellow member of the IE .Net User Group asked me what podcasts I listened to.  He expressed taht there are so many it’s hard to sift through what is actually good quality, both in content and actual production.  Some podcasts are great sound quality, however have very little content that is worth while.  In contrast, some podcasts have great content, but are so hard to hear or are of such poor audio quality that it is really frustrating to ferret out what they are actually talking about.

Here’s the list I usually listen from:

The two I listen to the most and are of very high quality (both in production and content) are .Net Rocks (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/) and Hansel Minutes (http://www.hanselminutes.com/).  Both can be subscribed to via iTunes.

ASP.Net Podcast (http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/) is another one I will listen to if they have a good topic but the quality is pretty lousy so they have to have someone really good for me to bother.

If you’re interested in good podcasts that aren’t necessarily just .Net development, but all around technology check out TWIT: http://twit.tv/.  I haven’t listened to them in a while but they are all very high quality (Leo Laporte, the main host, has been in radio for 30 years) and they have a lot of very good content.  Almost anything technical you’d want, other than .Net development, is covered by one show or another.  Here are just a few that I’ve listened to (not in any particular order):

• net@night is a good all around what’s happening in tech this week.  A little more of a social bent but a lot of good info and a very open topic of conversation.
• The Tech Guy is Leo’s actual call-in radio show helping users.  Lots of good general information on anything tech, but probably more for the general consumer.
• Security Now is a good in depth security podcast.  I think that Steve Gibson is a little too proud of himself but the actual knowledge and explanations of complicated subjects are quite good.
• MacBreak Weekly is a really great podcast if you are a Mac guy or have Mac friends.  It’s funny and has wonderful content. 
• TWiT (This Week in Tech) is a very good open discussion podcast with a few regular experts.  Really interesting with the different viewpoints given.  Very good listening.
• FLOSS Weekly is an complete open source driven podcast.  Usually on things Linux and such but on fairly broad open source projects that do appear in the Windows world.  Very good interviews, however, despite the name it is not weekly.

I don’t listen to every edition of these podcasts, only those that are actually interesting.

If you come across any others that you like let me know!