GrumbleDook Posted February 16, 2007 Posted February 16, 2007 If people hadn't already seen the post from Geoff I would like to point members to IT Idiots as a fantastic site for those looking for podcast based training materials. Here is their FAQ with more information. Who is behind ITidiots.com? There are three people behind ITidiots.com. Nicky (Technical Consultant), Nick (Developer) and Shabih (Pharmacist). Nicky has been working in the field for over ten years and has delivered Microsoft Official Curriculam training as well as Microsoft Technet seminars. Nick used to work in the City (London) as a delveloper working in the financial field. Shabih is a pharmacist with minimal IT experience, so if we can teach him IT, anyone can learn! What is the idea of ITidiots.com? The basic idea of ITidiots.com is to cover topics related to real life corporate networking, embedded in what some people beleive to be an entertaining show, Much of the content is just as applicable to the home user and is bound to be of interest to any IT enthusiast. In the podcast you can watch us build up the network as we discuss it, we are currently using VMWare technology to host the servers all on a laptop! Oh yeah, best of all it is 100% free, you don't even need to register! Who is the ITidiots podcast aimed at? Anyone really! We have had positive comments from across the board. An IT Manager has recommended it to his staff. People studying towards their Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) qualification have also left good comments. Somebody actually mailed in to say "I have no idea what a domain is, but I am going to follow you guys because it looks fun". What Technologies are covered? At present we are building the Active Directory infrastructure, so we are using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 as a base. So far we have added DHCP and DNS services to the network. Once the network has been built up we will choose a relevant vendors mail server, sql server and management server. How can I get hold of the episodes? There are many ways to get hold of the episodes. by far the simplest way is to subsctibe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast client, for me this is definetely iTunes. Incidently you can also find us in the Technology section of the podcast directory on iTunes, just search for "IT idiots". You can also download the episodes individualy from 'The Episodes' link on the front page. Oh yeah, the current episode is also available in steaminig format so you can watch via our website. I have swapped emails with Nicky/Nick and they are happy for us to suggest future podcasts and as each podcast is released it will be announced in here. So far they have 37 episodes ... and cover a wide variety of subjects, from Group Policy to Joomla, from Mac Minis to Ubuntu. Happy watching.
webman Posted February 16, 2007 Posted February 16, 2007 I'm afraid I spent half the time thinking "Get on with it" and looking for my virtual rotten tomato; but I do appreciate the work gone in to them.
GrumbleDook Posted February 17, 2007 Author Posted February 17, 2007 Perhaps a few that are more concise and aimed at the higher levels of experience?
Lee_K_81 Posted February 17, 2007 Posted February 17, 2007 Perhaps a few that are more concise and aimed at the higher levels of experience? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? ITIdiots? Unless they set up a site for professionals / advanced hobiests, even better if it was focused towards those in the education sector..... Wait, isnt that edugeek? I see what you are suggesting but they are trying to cater for the basics and using Shabih as a guinea pig. The advanced stuff may be difficult to test out. Maybe a ITidiots / edugeek partnership to provide the more advanced things.
Geoff Posted February 17, 2007 Posted February 17, 2007 I don't know about anyone else, but my media player is furnished with a 'fast forward' button. Allowing me to skip through the sections I find tedious or irrelevant.
webman Posted February 17, 2007 Posted February 17, 2007 I must have the same media player Geoff, mine does that too The pace just seems very slow and they spend too much time messing about in my opinion.
invasive Posted February 17, 2007 Posted February 17, 2007 Perhaps a few that are more concise and aimed at the higher levels of experience? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? ITIdiots? Unless they set up a site for professionals / advanced hobiests, even better if it was focused towards those in the education sector..... Wait, isnt that edugeek? I see what you are suggesting but they are trying to cater for the basics and using Shabih as a guinea pig. The advanced stuff may be difficult to test out. Maybe a ITidiots / edugeek partnership to provide the more advanced things. If I were the "ITidiots" I would get very insulted by some of the suggestions on here today. I have watched the casts from the beginning, and to be honest think they fill an extremely good niche market. But to say that if they were to come into some kind of partnership with Edugeek (as though that had any pulling power whatsoever) is to make a mockery of what they have already done. Edugeek is Edugeek. And don't be fooled about the status of this site. It's good, but it isn't that good. In the corridors beyond people talk you know Itidiots is a podcast for people on their way to MCSE who want a bit of light-hearted education with their beer. Keep the two separate for someone's sake. At least for our sanity if nothing else. No offence intended- both are good resources IN THEIR NICHE. Peter Still working at this late hour plotting things for schools somewhere near you
GrumbleDook Posted February 17, 2007 Author Posted February 17, 2007 Nicky and Nick are interested in seeing if there is anything that we would like them to include. The podcasts were not created for us, but have many things that might be of use to us, especially if you are like me and have student placements or if you have junior techies with little experience. Yes, it would be ideal if we could do our own version specific to EduGeek members ... but with limited time and resources this has not been possible on a regular basis (or even an irregular basis!) Considering that the podcasts are done free of charge and in a light-hearted manner, I think they are good value for money ... let's face it, they don't have the financial backing of a large multi-national software company or the backing of major educational establishements to help them with this (Technet Webcasts and MacEnterprise Webcasts respectively).
Uraken Posted February 19, 2007 Posted February 19, 2007 is there a way that i can make the podcast larger on screen?i'm having a look at some back episodes and want to be able to skip .forward/backwards and make the picture larger (i have limited bandwith so can't download to watch so am viewing online.
OutToLunch Posted February 20, 2007 Posted February 20, 2007 Not knocking the material as I haven't had time to check it out yet, but a warning that the main banner on the site might be a little NSFW would be good! Last thing I need is to open up a site with a whacking great AdultCakes advert at the top of it... :S
Geoff Posted February 20, 2007 Posted February 20, 2007 is there a way that i can make the podcast larger on screen?i'm having a look at some back episodes and want to be able to skip .forward/backwards and make the picture larger (i have limited bandwith so can't download to watch so am viewing online. No, you need to download the episode and view it in a traditional media player.
Mr_T Posted February 20, 2007 Posted February 20, 2007 I have to say I enjoyed their POD casts. It remindes me of a sort of fantasy football for geeks crossed with the ITcrowd(how much do the hosts look like badiel and skinner) It would be great if they could get famous IT people in for chats. At times the technical content can be a bit thin on the ground but I would certainly tune in if it was on TV.
danIT Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 does anyone know of similar sites covering similar topics? would love to see a video tutorial on microsoft learning gateway ideally, sharepoint on IT idiots was a great eye opener!
GrumbleDook Posted February 22, 2007 Author Posted February 22, 2007 Because fo the change in MSLG to using Sharepoint 2007 and SLK (amongst other changes) it will be another few moths before the really good resources come out for that. I would keep your eye out on the uk Technet site for training sessions in Reading, or seeing if there are any spaces left on the Technet tour.
Geoff Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 There's a couple of audio podcasts that I listen to that cover similar ground to ITidiots. Casting from the Server Room In the Trenches
jumpinjamez Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 Not knocking the material as I haven't had time to check it out yet, but a warning that the main banner on the site might be a little NSFW would be good! Last thing I need is to open up a site with a whacking great AdultCakes advert at the top of it... :S The cakes were better than the podcast
openhgs Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 When I accessed the site I was presented with some nudie rudie pics - they should be more careful as to who they have as sponsors.
Geoff Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 I don't see them, but our web filter kills ads.
invasive Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 I think if we filter properly at local level (i.e. schools' level) then this shouldn't be much of an issue. Problem is there aren't many schools that actually do have this kind of filtering and they instead rely on local authority filtering. Nothing wrong with that, except it isn't idiot proof (pun intended). I will look into this one. Peter
Geoff Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 Problem is there aren't many schools that actually do have this kind of filtering and they instead rely on local authority filtering. Actually I think a lot of schools have no choice but to accept filtering at LEA/RBC level.
PageZ Posted February 22, 2007 Posted February 22, 2007 I put some of the Google adsense text adverts on my site. This type of advertising is 'context sensitive' suggesting that the text ads (or banner ads if you wish) that are displayed on your site will be related to the topic of the page itself..... When I first put the adsense stuff on , I got numerous adult dating and afro caribean dating site adverts. I immediately panicked, logged into my google account and blocked all of the sites etc. On searching through my meta tags and content, I could find no reference to anything that may have caused this. Sometimes it seems, google just gets it wrong... Do give IT Idiots the benefit of the doubt regarding their adverts, it may not be their choice, just a case of blocking inappropriate ads under a competetive ad filter... Cheers N
OutToLunch Posted February 23, 2007 Posted February 23, 2007 Do give IT Idiots the benefit of the doubt regarding their adverts, it may not be their choice, just a case of blocking inappropriate ads under a competetive ad filter... I got the impression from the text above the advert "Help Sponsor The Show Buy A Cake" that the banner was a static one from a chosen advertiser - it's certainly the only one I've seen on the site in the few times I've been back to it, and it's most definitely NSFW...
PageZ Posted February 23, 2007 Posted February 23, 2007 I will happily stand corrected, I do understand that people have affiliates to their sites. I mainly use the google sevice however and was pointing out that it can be flawed and needs careful checking if you are running a family friendly site. Cheers Mr B
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