Technology and computing podcasts

So as a spin off of a project I'm doing on my other blog I've started listening to technology and computing podcasts which I've been reviewing there.

So some brief notes/reviews of what I've listened to so far, all of which are free podcasts:

GRC has the Security Now podcast which is produced in collaboration with This Week in Tech, this is a regular weekly show with approximately half as Q&A episodes and the others discussing various topics about security and IT. There is a lot of interesting content that is not purely security based in there and it is worthwhile listening. I recommend this podcast highly.

SE Radio is a well established podcast on Software Engineering and development, that covers a wide range of ground including different languages, methodologies and approaches and usually takes the form of interviews with a subject matter expert or a discussion between some of the regular hosts. Each podcast has a useful set of links provided in the show notes and this is a good site for someone looking to stay in touch with a broad range of technologies.

This Week in Tech has the eponymous podcast which features a discussion between Leo Laporte and a number of different technology journalists each week, the contributors tend to reappear fairly often and though biased towards the North American media there are British and other contributors appearing. There are a huge number of specifically targeted podcasts at TWiT, but I only really listen to Security Now, TWiT and Triangulation. Triangulation is an interview show with Leo and Tom Merrit speaking to a figure from technology history like Dan Bricklin, John Draper and so on which is interesting for someone like me who has a certain fascination with the development of technology.

The BBC Podcasts include Click (or Digital Planet as it was called) which is a weekly magazine show presented by Gareth Mitchell with Bill Thompson as the usual technology expert. It is a features based show so covers a broad range of content but lacks the depth of dedicated podcasts like SE Radio or Security Now. It is an entertaining listen and does cover some things that do not get picked up by the more in depth podcasts.

Tech Weekly at the Grauniad* is a regular weekly podcast with Aleks Krotoski as the main presenter, but most of the other regular journalists from the technology section appear regularly. This is pretty useful on a regular basis with a mixture of content, but like most magazine style shows can't provide in depth coverage of topics.

*Normal British joke about theGuardian's notorious spelling errors in the past.

In the future I'll return to this topic as there are large numbers that I have ignored but there is a limited amount of hours in the day

An essential book for UML users

 I find that my copy of the O'Reilly UML pocket reference is one of my most used IT books as it has the huge advantages of being convenient to carry and light while still containing a lot of information. I do usually have more detail with me in the shape of OMG downloads and examples on a USB thumbdrive but they are not as accessible as this useful little guide. 

It covers the basics for a dozen types of commonly used UML diagrams including use cases, class, sequence and package diagrams and statecharts. Clear text and examples make it very usable though the small format puts some constraints on the illustrations. 

Strongly recommended

Bringing this back to life

After a long while of this blog being dormat I've decided to revive it as my career in IT has taken a number of interesting turns now I am a contractor and exposed to greater variety of businesses and technologies.

I'm on a project where the client has opted for a number of very new versions of software adding some familiarisation issues to the existing ones of getting the system to do what is required. Specifically we are using MS Dynamics CRM 2011, Sharepoint 2010 and Metastorm 9 which are good tools but particularly CRM 2011 is very new and has additional features which seem useful.

More about the specifics later as my role as a BA is more of a coordination one rather than hands on. I've also had to get used to using Scrum for the first time which has been interesting.