The Best Podcasts
January 5th, 2005
I am a bit late to the game, but after owning an iPod mini for a few months I have finally caught up with Podcasting. I just installed the iPodder software and started subscribing to podcasts. But what is a podcast anyway?
A podcast is an online radio show which you can automatically download to your computer and sync up to your mp3 player. The iPodder software automates all of the work which makes it so easy. Think of it as a Tivo for online radio. Anybody can produce their own show and publish it on the internet. And think of what you can do when you have no time constraints or the FCC monitoring it.
Another great feature of podcasts is that you can listen to them anytime you like. If you have a couple of favorite TV shows which are on at the same time you may have to choose which one you will watch, but with podcasts you do not have to choose and you can listen to a show when you are driving into work or while you are cooking yourself dinner.
[ Eight Legs Podcast ]
Podcasts would be worthless if the content was not any good. There is a lot of great stuff out there and traditional radio shows are starting to catch on to podcasting. To get a good taste of what is out there you really should start out with Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. Adam is given credit for making podcasting popular and his show reviews lots of other podcasts which are becoming popular so it gives a heads up on what other podcasts are well worth sampling. His show acts as a sort of hub for the podcast community, and the way he is able to pull all the podcasts together really makes it a community. (When was the Television Industry last described as a community?)
Obviously it is best to use your iPod to listen to music but after you have loaded it up with the music you own you may find you get bored with the same old songs and would like to keep it fresh. The podcast Coverville plays several cover songs which you can download for free and download to your iPod. I do not like everything I hear on that show but occasionally they have some pretty great stuff. It should keep your iPod loaded with fresh music.
But primarily podcasts are made up of great talk shows. Today I listened to The Dawn and Drew Show for the first time and while they did not seem to have a point to their discussion it was still very entertaining. I cannot wait to hear more shows! This show is an example of what would never make it to broadcast radio or past FCC regulators without enourmous fines. It is a refreshing change from the mindless morning radio shows I am so sick of in this city.
For traditional radio I found that I can get the Al Franken Show which is on Air America Radio as a podcast. I wish I had known about this prior to the US elections a few months back when I first got my iPod. I would also like to get the O'Reilly Factor as a podcast but that is not available. It would be great to get CNN Headline News as a podcast. Perhaps that is already in the works.
I also have started to sample several other podcasts based on my personal interests. To find them I have used the Podcast Directory and the iPodderX Directory to find the popular podcasts. I think my current subscriptions will be the same for a while but over time I hope to find some new ones which give me something new all the time. I highly recommend that you try podcasting right now.
January 6th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
Does it work with othe mp3 players or only ipods?
January 6th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
You can just have it download the mp3 files and do what you like with it. I have also seen some feeds which have Windows Media files instead of mp3. If you wanted to you could just listen to them right on your computer or copy the files to a Rio or another music player. But I think the way it integrates well with the iTunes playlists and how it syncs up easily with the iPod makes it trivial to keep up to date. I need to plug into my computer to recharge the battery anyway, so this way I get new show updates as well.