As much as I love music, I simply can’t deal with morning radio. 

There are only so many commercials for alarm systems, vacation getaways, and “once-in-a-lifetime” mattress sales that any man can take.  As a result, I’ve turned to listening to audio books and podcasts to pass the time during the commute.

Since a number of people have asked for recommendations, here are some of my favourites:

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Rav Ahuja has been posting video interviews with DB2 Viper 2 architects on YouTube.   This is part of his “Voice of the DB2 Community” podcast series. 

You can find all the videos on YouTube’s Channel DB2.  The videos are also available at the Channel DB2 social network.

WebbAlert – If you’re hankering for a tech news fix and you only have 5 minutes, check out Morgan Webb’s new video project, WebbAlert.

Slacker – A few months ago my favourite Internet radio application, Pandora, closed the box to non-US listeners. I suppose their partners didn’t believe all those users claiming their snail mail was delivered to the 90210 zip code.

Since then I’ve been experimenting with Slacker. Although persistent personalized radio stations are not available outside the US, the service is free and the default stations can be customized. 

According to CNET’s Crave blog, Slacker intends to differentiate itself from Pandora and LastFM by selling a portable device that will stream your personalized radio stations via Wi-Fi.

If you broke the bank buying an iPod during the “boxing week” sales or are looking for something other than Justin Timberlake to load onto your MP3 player, you may want to check out LibriVox.

LibriVox is a great service for anyone that enjoys audiobooks, especially classics.  Here’s the description from the website:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

I noticed that iTunes lists Joseph Conrad’s unabridged Heart of Darkness audiobook for over CAD$ 20.  You can download it for free from LibriVox.

The horror, the horror, the horror…