I'd like to do some professional development during my commute, but I find that reading programming texts on the bus and train cause nausia because of how much I have to focus on them. I'd like to find some good technical programming audio books, either free or for purchase/download and some good technical podcasts.
What are the best programming audio books or podcasts out there, and where can they be found?
One site I just found is IT Conversations. http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/
Actual technical texts might be hard to find in an audio format because code is a little bit too visual and hands on.
However, there are some awesome audio resources that operate at a slightly higher level. I listen to them constantly while I'm commuting. Here are the ones I like, and keep in mind that I'm a .Net developer.
DotNetRocks http://www.dotnetrocks.com/
If you want to get your head around what's going on in the .Net space, which is vast and vertiginous, this is the way to do it. The field is so wide that you can't learn everything, however with this podcast you can at least build a solid understanding of what's out there, and it's often right from the source. They've had all the top .Net personalities on there as guests including a bunch of my heroes.
Hanselminutes http://www.hanselminutes.com/
This one is good too, and it also has a heavy .Net slant since Scott Hanselman is an actual Microsoft employee. Hanselman tends to be a bit more serious, but he's a very smart guy and this is another good podcast.
One thing I like about this one is that Hanselman asks the tough, potentially embarassing questions. Sometimes with DotNetRocks I can read between the lines that there's maybe a problem with a certain technology, but they're gracious enough not to rip into it. Sometimes Hanselman says what I'm thinking.
StackOverflow http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/
Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky do a great weekly podcast. This is the most entertaning of the bunch in my opinion. It's usually a bit lighter on the technical side, but they do sometimes delve into substantial technical topics, and they talk a lot about the challenges involved in running a large-scale site like StackOverflow. I definitely feel like I'm smarter for listening to it.
Although Joel's rather narrow opinion about what a developer should be sometimes makes me feel a little small. :)
The Java Posse is the most popular Java podcast I know of. Very entertaining and informative. However, it is oriented towards discussing new developments rather than offering tutorials on how to write hello world.
The best educational technical podcast I listen too is probably Software Engineering Radio. It covers lots of interesting topics, and is not platform specific. The hosts are very knowledgeable.
Here is a list of a bunch of technical podcasts that I can recommend:
Platform Independent
.NET
If you're looking for UI-related web items, check out the JQeury Podcast or YayQuery for some good jQuery-related info. I just spent a 12 hour drive listening to a number of them and a lot of information is hidden within.