P.S. Scobleizer, always uses very high quality videos for his interviews. Although they look great it also means they are a bit on the slow side to load if you don’t have FiOS running to your door! However, his site also has a pretty big pipe and the vids below are hosted there so you hopefully wont have a problem. 

Part 1

Part 2

Or you can get to the vids on the following pages. Part 1 – http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/part-i-king-tech-talk and Part 2 – http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/leo-laporte-part-ii-king-tech-talk

I don’t know where people who are interested in technology get the time to keep abreast of all the developments that happen in this industry. Unfortunately for me, my interests cover a huge swath of categories so I’m constantly hearing about stuff about 2 weeks after it happens and by then its old news! Also since there is a huge number of people and websites aiming to keep me informed, its hard to know who to listen to for good quality stuff. So where do I get my news? And who from? Being a hilariously busy Sysadmin and with my long commute in and out of work it makes sense for me to use podcasts as my tech news medium of choice, especially here in Ireland where no radio channel would dare touch on a subject that didn’t involve mainstream music, and or celebrities news! I jest, but still there is no technology news on the radio in Ireland so I get it all pretty much from the US. So what podcasts do I listen to and who in particular do I pay attention to?

Leo Laporte

The undisputed but sadly uncrowned king of technology news and chat has to be the great Leo Laporte and his amazing setup that he has over at twit.tv. I know I’ve joked about paying for stuff before but this time I really mean it when I say it. I would pay to listen and or watch his shows. So much so that I actually kind of went through with it and have a monthly donation setup through PayPal! The shows/netcasts/podcasts that run over at twit.tv really are some of the best technology broadcasts out there. The tag line of twit.tv is “netcasts you love from people you trust” and its true! In fact if Leo came out and told me on a show that the sky was green and the grass was blue, I would have to check! Anyway, enough of my idol worshipping… Leo has introduced some amazing people to me through the podcasts over the time I’ve been listening and always enlightens me on any subject that the shows happen to be covering. My RSS feed is full of blogs and websites from people that Leo has introduced me to from John C. Dvorak, all the way over to Molly Wood and Wil Harris, to name but a very few! Every week has me waiting for the next instalment of “This week in Tech” or “Windows Weekly“. He also blogs semi-regularly over at leoville.com and is a regular twitter..er. If you head over to twit.tv there are are some really interesting podcasts but, in particular, check out how twit was founded! Although a regular listener, I haven’t yet made the leap over to watching the shows live, as my schedule doesn’t allow for it, or watching the video podcasts because the battery life on my iPod touch doesn’t really allow for it! On a final note – although I really know that he’s not the only person talking about tech and gathering great minds together, he is the best at it.

John C. Dvorak

Where would twit be without John C. Dvorak? Who knows but it wouldn’t be where it is today. A legend in his own right, I look forward to the shows that he participates in. Although at the start I didn’t like him at all! I found him rude, brash and patronising but I have grown to respect and enjoy what he has to say – because he’s normally right! As a regular on twit he really does bring his considerable insight to the tech news world and always has something to say so it shows his considerable knowledge on the world of technology. Apart from twit, John also has a number of other projects like cranky geeks, which is another show that I religiously download and enjoy every time I can. You can also check out his personal blog at http://www.dvorak.org/blog/ which covers a huge broad spectrum of subjects… check out http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31819, http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31765 for example!

Paul Thurotte

A legend that I really discovered through Leo’s netcasts, I catch all my MS news from this man. It can’t be easy being the sole pro-Microsoft person (or so its seems from time to time) in the tech news industry, but I believe he always explains his arguments well and always gets to the point. However he would also be the first screaming when Microsoft gets it wrong so you can be sure he is quite… well I wont say unbiased but pretty close all the same. Insightful and funny, he really does make the shows with Leo really interesting and I find him very easy to listen to. His very low tone of voice helps a lot too! Aside from the podcasts, Paul is the news editor at Windows ITPro magazine, and runs the supersite for Windows. As work get the former, I get a chance to read some of the stuff, and the latter has to be, in my opinion, the greatest windows resource out there – bar none(although I don’t like the site re-design…)! I have used it for many things from finding out the latest Windows Vista news to learning how to create a slipstreamed XP disk! Paul has an inside line to the good stuff at Microsoft so he’s really worth listening to if you want to keep up to date with all that’s going on at the minute over at Redmond.

Conclusion

So there you have it, not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination but hopefully enough to get anyone started. The above people really are who I go to first for all of my tech news and analysis as they’re trustworthy and intelligent, funny and witty, and always keep my morning commute entertained. My hat comes off to Leo Laporte especially for bringing all these great people together at Twit.tv.

Eric Meyer

I’m pretty certain it would be impossible to exclude Eric Meyer from any list on CSS. Any list at all, because he is probably the best, most world renowned CSS expert there is. Having practically eaten two of his many books on CSS (“Eric Meyer on CSS” and “More Eric Meyer on CSS“) I can’t recommend them enough. Presumably does not suffer from stage fright as he speaks regularly (indeed founded) a travelling web design conference called “An Event Apart“ and most recently at this event in San Francisco and Chicago, along side a number of other names on this list. You can find Eric blogging at http://meyerweb.com/ and otherwise dolling out his genius in the form or amazing tips and helpful hints there too.

Andy Budd

I first found Andy Budd when I bought CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. It quickly became one of my favourite books on CSS and has become a excellent and well used reference. His website has also become an excellent resource – especially his extensive bookmarks at http://www.andybudd.com/links/. He can also be found blogging at http://www.andybudd.com/ too, a popular weblog where he writes about his personal hobbies and also about web design and web standards. Another branch in Andy’s CSS work is also his efforts at http://clearleft.com/ (btw they also have a ridiculous trademarked tag line – “We make Websites Better™”). Clearleft have a good few web applications and web sites under their belt and one very interesting project that they have is http://www.silverbackapp.com/.

Dan Cederholm

from http://www.simplebits.com/ – One of the books I’m reading right now, “Bulletproof Web Design” was written by Dan Cederholm, and from what I’ve read – he uses techniques and has a style of code that I really admire and now aim for myself with my projects. He is a big proponent of lean markup and CSS, and apparently in every project looks to “minimize markup and embrace the flexibility of CSS”. This is something that I’d like to be able to do and his book seemed like the obvious place to start. Having said that, “Transcending CSS” is also pointing me in this direction as its mantra of content being king is helping me see the benefits of avoiding unnessary divs, and other markup that adds nothing to the semantic value of the page.

Jonathan Snook

at http://snook.ca/jonathan/ – Having heard of Jonathan over the years and having read a couple of his articles and things, when I first found out that he’d written a book, I pretty much had to buy it. The book was “The Art and Science of CSS“, and what a book it was. It was a book that really made me turn a corner, that made me realise how much I could do with CSS and good markup. I enjoyed this book immensely and learnt a great many things from it. He does the big web and development conferences too and has graced SXSW, Webmaster Jam Sessions, and Future of WebDesign. His personal website http://snook.ca/jonathan/ is where he shares his “tips, tricks and bookmarks on web development” and I often venture there for inspiration ideas and excellent ideas. One of the handiest tools on his website is also one of my favorites – The Colour Contrast Checker at http://snook.ca/archives/accessibility_and_usability/colour_color_co/. His list of accomplishments is long and they are many, check at the about section on his website to find out more.

Andy Clarke

from http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ – Another recent addition to my list of really really good people is Andy Clarke. In fact I hadn’t really heard of him properly until I read Transcending CSS – A book that has literally changed how I look at new projects, and really got me thinking about the way I design websites. And although I only found him recently, it would appear that the man is a bit of a legend! He also speaks at the big conferences (like An event apart this year in Chicago…) and runs his own business from a studio in North Wales. But his book is becoming my most read book on web design(over and over again ). I really enjoyed reading it and appreciate all the work that went into it. Hopefully, I get to put many of the techniques and things learnt from this book to good use in the future.

Dave Shea

at http://mezzoblue.com/ – I first started to read Dave Shea’s website a good while ago after it was brought to my attention as a really good example of a website design, and although its changed quite a bit since then, it still holds true as a really good example of professional website design. Good use of changing themes/colours, great layout and interesting content. Also the creator of CSS Zen Garden, arguable one of the best known places for web designers to show off excellent CSS designs. Not always my cup of tea (I prefer less graphics intensive designs personally), its hard to ignore some of the really excellent things that sometimes appear here. As for Dave himself, I think he says it best himself(from the about section of http://mezzoblue.com/) – “If you’re looking for the professional bio it’s over here. In short, I do a bit of speaking, a bit of writing, but mostly it’s about the design.” He links to a differen site here and its one you should take a look at as its really excellent – http://brightcreative.com/.

Conclusions

In reality while writing this piece I could have listed about 50 more people. In fact I started off with three and it grew after looking at the books on my shelves. However I feel like these are the people that I really look to for CSS stuff and think most people will find it useful. At the very least your should be adding these people’s websites to your RSS feeds, however, then you lose one of the most important aspects of going to these websites and that’s for the great work that they’ve done on their own websites!

The next article should come soon enough on the same topic of voices that matter to me… but with a slightly different subject.