Podcast Review #1Diggnation

I've mentioned several times in the past that I've quite recently got into podcasts in a big way. Now podcasts come in two forms, audio only and video podcasts. Audio podcasts have been a great help on my lengthy commute to and from work, and the video podcasts offer an alternative to TV, and some (not all, unfortunately) are often just as, if not more entertaining than their counterpart shows. The real beauty with podcasts is that it's all free content! If you were sitting on the fence on whether to try these out then that should really sell it to you. I should be more vocal to appreciate the time and effort that goes into producing them.
An obvious place to start would be with the first few podcasts, the ones that got me hooked and enticed me to check out others. Looking back I'm tempted to say the first one would be Extra Life Radio, thanks to being a fan of Scott Johnson's comics and curiosity making me check the other stuff he's produced. I'll review that one later, but the first video podcast was of course Diggnation.

Again, it seems while visiting a site, curiosity tempted me to check out what else is going on around the site, so the question(s) should be: What is the Diggnation podcast all about?


It's probably best to start with a quick mention of Digg.com. For those not in the know, it's a site comprised of user-submitted stories where members will "digg" a story to increase it's value or rank (whichever makes more sense to you) and the highly valued stories make the frontpage. It's beginnings were based mainly with tech stories, but now pretty much anything will appear on the site. I have a Digg widget as part of the blog and I can be found on Digg at digg.com/users/Jimiminar. Anyways, it's a cool site and checking out the Podcast category of the site for highly rated podcasts and Diggnation pretty much tops the list. Now, Diggnation is a look at some of the week's highly rated user-submitted stories on the site Digg.com (that's D, i, double g, dot com). Now that's either an exact quote of the introduction at the top of every show or a very close para phrasal (is that a word?). It shows how much of the show I've watched.

Yeah, so what the show ultimately boils down to a video podcast of Kevin Rose (co-founder of Digg) and Alex Albrecht (Dude! What a legend) sitting on a couch with their laptops, having a chat over some stories they've picked from the last week, while usually having a beer or three. While that doesn't sound like much on the surface it just works in my opinion. At first, it's quite cool checking out what are predominantly tech and/or offbeat news, the banter the Alex and Kevin have are almost always funny and entertaining. What's even better is when they go off-topic and we get an insight into their lives, chatting about girls, online products/services or cool places to live/visit/go eat in the San Francisco area.

Now, I'm probably not doing the show justice but it's something I thoroughly enjoy and like all revision3 shows it is available in HD. The show clocks in at approximately an hour, so it's pretty cool to stick it on when I get back in from work. The duo go through a handful of stories, usually in the order of 5 or 6, and wrap up the show with a couple of emails. They usually feature one picture email (i.e. an email with a picture attached). Now the requirement to have the picture featured on the show is to either be a hot/cute laydee or be wearing a Diggnation tee (which I still need to sort out), or for the ultimate picture be a hot laydee wearing a Diggnation tee woah!

To sum up, Diggnation is a video podcast (available in HD) with an obvious tech/geek leaning. Now, the quality of the shows is pretty much dependent on the stories which are selected, so some shows can be better than others, but a high quality is maintained. I think the show hinges on the hosts as it is basically two guys sitting on a couch for an hour. Thankfully both Kevin and Alex are genuinely funny and entertaining, which ensures the show is the success it is. It's become as popular as it has for those very reasons. It's quite difficult to convince someone to go watch something and really enjoy it. I've given a gist of what the podcast is all about, although seeing is really believing and if the above sounds interesting, then check it out.