One of the things working and publishing online has as far as benefits goes it the ability to work online and always be learning. I personally have a list of a few podcasts I regularly listen to, ebooks that inspire me, and blogs I read on a daily basis.

College Crunch has put together a list called 15 Podcats That Will Make You Smarter.

Personally I found some of these already on my listening list, and found a few new finds. As a media publisher I crave more content aimed at the online publisher, and webmaster crowd.

Do you have any suggestions for a resource aimed at improving the intelligence of the average webmaster of online publisher ?

The family guide to video games What They Play announced the launch of a weekly podcast series. The What They Play Podcast, available through the What They Play website and iTunes, focuses on helping parents better understand the video games their kids are playing or asking to play. Hosted by John Davison, What They Play co-founder, respected video-gaming expert and father of two, the hour-long podcast features lively discussion and commentary on today’s most popular games and the impact they have on the family. The podcasts include special video-game industry guests, and mothers who share their experiences with video gaming in the home.

Lifestyle podcasts and blogs publisher Personal Life Media announced that four new shows have debuted the self-empowerment free pdcast network.

The latest programming installments include: “Philosophers Notes: Get Your Wisdom On,” “Business Success Tips: Entertaining Insights in Management, Finance, Marketing and Revenue,” “The North Bay: Rock and Roll Music | Blues | Progressive Rock | Folk | Alternative,” and “ Learning Digital Photography: Digital SLR | Great Shots | Easy Techniques | Cool Accessories | Creative Ideas from the Canon Blogger.”

In addition, two existing shows celebrate achieving over 1 million cumulative downloads: “Inside Out Weight Loss: Aligning Mind, Body and Spirit for Lasting Change” and “Expanded Lovemaking: Sensuality, Love and Consciousness” podcasts.

Further, the company announces adoption of the podcast advertising unit standards and audience measurement guidelines of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) for their free podcasts. Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media is a founder of the Association and serves as Vice Chairman. The organization facilitates the monetization of episodic consumer-downloaded content (aka podcasts and vidcasts). Now marketers can run ads in all Personal Life Media online audio shows (podcasts) with standard ad formats that are also accepted by more than 30 additional podcast networks and publishers.

Personal Life Media announced that 10 shows have debuted on or joined the self-empowerment podcast network bringing the total to 35 weekly audio shows and one daily vidcast along with their companion blogs.

The content of the new shows range from hobby-related digital photography, literature and genealogy to conversations about lifestyle design and holistic health to indie music discovery. There is also a motivational show for sales professionals in the business empowerment category.

· Camera Dojo: Digital Photography Enthusiasts

· Dear Zanny: Relationship Advice from a Family Therapist

· Digital Photography Life: Make Every Shot Count

· Family History: Genealogy Made Easy

· Life Zero: Adventures in Zen and Lifestyle Design

· Modern Immortal

· Music For Midnight

· Sales Magic: Motivations, Meditations and Visualizations to Kick Your Assets Into Action!

· TheDivaCast

· Words to Mouth: Women’s Novels & Non-Fiction

Since its launch 18 months ago, PLM has continued to grow key performance indicators. In addition to more than doubling the content offering since launch, web traffic has increased 128% for the year. (Compete.com) 1,000 episodes have been produced with nearly 600 guests resulting in more than six million downloads. Its free multi-show podcast player widget launched September 2008 received nearly 500,000 page views in its first month and is utilized by myriad podcasters on and off the PLM network.

Podcasting came in like a lion, but whether or not it will leave like a lamb is yet to be determined. However Podtech, a video podcast network with $7 million+ in venture funding has quietly been sold for a lowly $500k.

After Podtech was left for dead by the Fake Steve Jobs last year, I guess they should be thankful the sale generated anything.

The new owner is ViewPartner. No plans have been announced for what will happen the Web site.

The wheels started to come off the bus once all of their high profile players (Robert Scoble) jumped shipped. I’d like to know how the heck the company burned through so much cash.

A weak economy coupled with an influx of mainstream content certainly didn’t help Podtech’s cause – or any podcaster for that matter. In fact most podcasters have been unable to sustain their initial growth.

Podcast.com is now providing an opportunity for companies to get their own Corporate Podcast Channel to provide businesses a way to aggregate the growing number of corporate podcasts that provide branding, awareness and educational experiences to customers and prospects of corporations. Additionally, the company announced its first Corporate Podcast Channel customer as PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The PWC Corporate Podcast Channel can be found at pwc.podcast.com.

A Corporate Channel is a dedicated channel on Podcast.com that allows businesses to leverage the built-in Podcast.com search engine optimization and gain access to the rapidly growing base of podcast consuming visitors to Podcast.com. Podcast.com Corporate Podcast Channels also provide companies with access to distribution of their content to hundreds of millions of Internet-connected devices including cell phones, portable Wifi devices and Internet radios. The combination is an unsurpassed “hyper-distribution” of the company’s content. Corporate Podcast Channels on Podcast.com also provide an opportunity to take many discreet corporate podcasts and provide one central aggregated portal to maximize company branding and educational efforts.

Wake up with reporter James Barron reading you the front page of The New York Times as Chumby Network offers a large selection of The New York Times podcasts and photos, as well as customized widgets for the newspaper’s coverage of business, sports, culture, fashion, world news, technology, politics and other top stories.

Enhancements to the Chumby network include:

• New York Times podcasts that offer the latest news in the world of music, books, politics, health and science, among other topics; podcasts can be set as an alarm each morning or played back throughout the day.
• The New York Times’s news in pictures widget continuously updated with photos illustrating breaking news from around the world.
• Eight additional widgets designed specifically for Times content that showcase articles in specific topic areas such as top stories, culture, business, fashion, world news, sports, technology and politics. Each topic widget will contain photos, headlines and full stories, providing users with the capability to e-mail the articles directly from their chumby device.

Podcast.com, the podcast portal, announced the debut of its twice-monthly podcast called Flipping Channels. Produced by Podcast.com, Flipping Channels is an audio program that samples a range of podcasts that can be found on the Podcast.com site.

Every two weeks Flipping Channels will highlight some of the best, yet lesser known, programming found on a different Podcast.com channel page. The podcast can be found at flippingchannels.podcast.com.

Flipping Channels will be:

• Focusing on a different content category every other week
• Excerpting episodes from three different podcasts per show
• Spotlighting podcasts outside of traditional media
• Highlighting podcasts that may not be known by the masses

RadioTime, Inc., developer of the RadioGuide technology for finding and listening to more than 50,000 AM/FM radio stations online, announced that Cox Radio has licensed program information for distribution over computers and other devices that connect to the RadioTime guide. The RadioTime-Cox Radio partnership enables listeners using their computers or New Radio devices to find real-time information about what’s airing on all Cox Radio stations nationwide.

RadioTime’s unique online RadioGuide provides listeners with a quick and easy way to find radio content from 50,000 stations and 100,000 local and syndicated shows airing around the world. Listeners can search for a specific station or program or browse by genre or location and no longer need to browse through dozens of web sites to find their favorite local shows online or download multiple media players.

Partnering with Cox Radio will enable RadioTime to display more accurate information about programs airing on all Cox Radio stations including show names, hosts, and songs on New Radio devices such as the Logitech Squeezebox.

ubroadcast, Inc. has successfully launched “ubroadcast Comedy”, the first in a series of content specific web sites currently under development.

The company has designated channel 200 as its new Comedy Channel, which in conjunction with the new comedy specific web site, will feature Independent comedy broadcasters, as well as showcase professional scheduled broadcasts.

The first regularly scheduled show on the new ubroadcast Comedy Channel is the Lunatic Radio show and airs every Sunday at 5PM EST. Lunatic Radio is a live and interactive “Vulgar, awkward, and sometimes funny” broadcast that interviews a wide range of guests, including comedians Dane Cook, Jamie Kennedy, Michael Ian Black, and musician Richard Patrick, most notably from the band, Filter.