First, the facts: We've introduced Podcasts at JBoss, and they can be found at our community development web site, JBoss Labs. JBoss Podcasts will cover video and audio training for open source software as well as interviews with professional open source developers.

Click here if you aren't familiar with podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast cut and paste the URL to the feed into your iTunes podcasts subscriptions. It's a video, so you will need the latest iTunes 6.0.1. You can also view the video with your browser. You just need to make sure that you have the latest version of Quicktime installed. Future podcasts will be just audio in addition to more video entries.

Like many computer geeks, I've a voracious appetite for science fiction. On a recent trip to do a J2EE training, I decided I'd try out this trend called podcasting. Well, I'd tried it before, but I'd never really taken the time to peruse the iTunes podcast library and spend a few minutes concentrating on choosing and subscribing to podcasts which sound interesting. I read the blog BoingBoing quite frequently, and one of their primary contributors is a keen sci-fi author, Cory Doctorow. He's been talking about doing a series of spoken-word podcasts of his in-progress short fiction. So, I clicked to his site, craphound.com (named as such due to his constant collecting of junk), and found his link to the podcast feed. I snarfed up the link and jammed it into iTunes, along with several other podcasts that looked interesting: A few on Dr. Who, a couple on developing SOA, and a few public radio news feeds.

On that trip, I only listened to maybe two podcasts, but three weeks later the video iPod came out. I checked again. I looked into my podcasts subscription and found that I'd been downloading all the sci-fi and others for three weeks now. I added a couple movies, and clicked "Get".

Now, another plane ride, I slipped on the ear-buds and clicked on "After the Siege" and "When SysAdmins Ruled the Earth" by Doctorow. Fifteen episodes later, I was hooked. Now I'm listening all the time, and I can't wait to get into the videos. There are hundreds of podcast feeds that are being published by individuals as well as corporations, all discussing what interests them the most. It's a great way to find out what people are talking about, outside of blogs, and with time-shifting built in. Since I never watch TV and spend my time with the wife and kids when I get home, this is the only way to catch up with forms of media other than written word. And I can do it on the road.

At JBoss Labs, our focus is enhancing community open source communication. We want to help professional open source developers get the recognition they deserve and help them communicate their ideas. The podcasts I've been listening to are primarily created by the community for the community. They are developers talking about their ideas and they are forward thinkers speaking their minds about how they believe technology will affect us. The first episode of JBoss Labs Podcasts embodies the type of information that we want to communicate: What it means to be a Professional Open Source Developer.

We are going to add at least three more channels in addition to the current video feed:

1. Video Podcast Training: Learn how to use a piece of open source software from the people who created it.
2. Audio Interviews: For those who don't have one of those fancy new video iPods yet, we'll still provide the interviews.
3. An aggregated feed which contains all feeds in one

Any project on Labs can publish a podcast; however, the Labs Team will do what we can to get every Labs project's lead interviewed and some personalized training podcasts for their work. After all, most of them are putting everything they have into their project. Let's find out who they are and make it easy for all those other professional open sourcers on the move to learn about their work.

To that point:

Thanks to Adam Warski of the Shotoku project for all his hard work, and to Pawel Wrzeszcz, the latest member of JBoss Labs.