One of the easiest ways to enhance my knowledge of my trade craft is listening to podcasts. Certain podcasts help keep me informed about what is happening in the industry. These are some of my personal favorites. There are many podcasts that cover similar topics, but these are of a high quality, and have stayed consistent over multiple years. My iTunes is littered with podcasts from cancelled shows. Below is what I listen to the most. Most of these podcasts can be found on iTunes as well as their sites included below.
General Web Development
- Boagworld – Hosted by Paul Boag and Marcus Lillington of Headscape Design. By far this is the podcast I listen to the most. I stumbled upon this one when it was the UK .net magazine’s podcast a few years ago. This podcast covers the latest industry news, a wide range of web development and design topics, and can be quite humorous. If you are a web dev or designer and don’t listen to this you’re missing out!
- Web Design TV – From the makers of .net magazine, one of the best web dev mags out there, is this video cast covering all aspects of our trade.
.NET Development
- .NET Rocks! - This show is for anyone who develops in the .NET world. This weekly podcast talks to the developers who are making things happen in the .NET world and building the tools you’re using. There are other .NET specific podcasts but this one is the most consistent and of the best quality.
- Polymorphic – This is another high quality .NET podcast. Recent topics include jQuery secrets and ASP.NET MVC.
Java Development
- The Java Posse – Java specific show that does both a news segment and Java knowledge segment. Covers all aspects of Java and industry news.
RIA
- The Flex Show – By far the best video and audio cast about Flex and RIAs. Adobe doesn’t have anything that compares to these guys. The show is broken into two segments, the podcast which covers interviews with industry Flex developers, and a video cast “15 minutes of Flex”, which are brief tutorials in Flex. If you’re interested in what’s possible with Flex, the interviews are priceless. Besides Boagworld this is the show I listen to the most.
- TV.Adobe.com – Not a podcast technically, but a video site for everything Adobe. The Designer and Developer channels are extremely useful for Adobe users. The 360 Flex sessions and Ajax sessions are awesome. After using some of the Adobe/Macromedia products for over 15 years now I still pick up tips I didn’t know about.
JavaScript / Ajax
- Audible Ajax – Although this show seems to have ended it is still worth mentioning. Definitely the best podcast about everything JavaScript.
- Ajaxian – Don’t know if Ajaxian (great Ajax news site) has it’s own podcast, but they have a page dedicated to listing recent podcasts covering the subject.