IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
Internet friend Ted Severson made one gem of an audio clip.
On a recent 5by5 AD, Dan and Merlin were throwing around the idea of a 5by5 Morning Zoo. Here’s what I think should be the first promo for said show. If like me you are a huge fan of 5by5.tv, and specifically Dan and Merlin's riffs on a hypothetical morning zoo show, you need to go listen to this.
The best description I've heard, in years, about the differences and difficulties in developing open standards oriented web applications on a Macintosh vs a PC platform. You need to listen to the 5by5 Special #4: Kindacritial which aired yesterday.
If you enjoyed John Siracusa's epic OS X 10.7 Lion review, then you should be aware that he does a weekly podcasts on Dan Benjamin's 5by5 podcasting network called "Hypercritical".
The most recent episode of Hypercritical, called "Nakedly Optimistic", serves as the first episode in what will probably be a couple episodes that covers his review in more depth (if that's even possible). John covers the details he wasn't able to get to, due to the uncertain deadline he was under depending on when Lion was released to the public. He covers a few mistakes he made, and provides a bit of follow-up to some of the comments he's seen regarding the review. I highly recommend you listen if this sort of thing excites you.
While I am not a podcaster (I don't think anyone would find me interesting to listen to for periods greater than 5 minutes) I do use microphones a lot. I Facetime with friends & family, use Skype or WebEx to participate in conference calls when I'm working from home, I use Teamspeak or Ventrilo when gaming online..many varied uses. I've used many headsets over the years and grown increasingly frustrated in being able to find a 1. high quality sounding, 2. durable headset that is still 3. comfortable to wear. It has been my experience that you may only pick two of the three, as no headset that (admitted subjectively) I've used has met all requirements. Please, do not comment or email with suggestions. I'm past that now.
Instead my new method is to not restrict myself to just headsets, but instead acquire a very nice microphone and which will allow me to expand my choices to any and all headphones out there. I've found that the ratio of headsets to headphones available is about 100 to 1. I'm confident I can find a headphone I will like. That being said, I recently took Dan Benjamin's recommendations to heart and purchased a Rode Podcaster Dynamic Mic, Rode PSM 1 Shockmount, and a Heil Sound PL-2T Overhead Broadcast Boom.
I've been using this new setup, pictured below, for about 3 days now. I love it. This is much more comfortable than having to keep a headset on all day. For the first time I'm also appreciating the direct feedback you can get by plugging your headset directly into the mic. I may do a more in-depth review in the future, but for now, just know that I highly recommend this. If you find yourself using a mic a lot but also hating the existing choices that are available for headsets, consider a setup like this.
