Podcasting

If you’re like me, you’ll be fed up with the trash that commercial TV serves up, and too cheap to pay for Pay-TV (it’s still just TV, right?)  An alternative, albeit audio-only, is available through your personal music device.  Thanks to iTunes 4.9, I’ve discovered the marvel of “podcasting”.  For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, think of a cross between Internet radio and your VCR (or PVR).  Podcasts are audio programs (like radio shows) that you download over the ‘net.  For programs that are podcast at regular intervals you can subscribe, and your podcast client will automatically pick up the new edition when it’s available.  Then you just sync-up your iPod, and listen to the program when you want.  Very cool!

I’m a bit embarassed that it took until iTunes supported podacsts for me to discover them.  Turns out that podcasts have been around for months, thanks in part to great podcasting clients like iPodderx.

Despite the name, podcasts don’t just work with iPods!  The iTunes podcast support basiclaly just adds the podcast files as music tracks to your library, so if iTunes supports your music player you are set to go.  I don’t know about other podcast clients, so check out the support on your music device.

Australian podasts don’t seem to be too plentiful at this stage.  The ABC seems to have a pretty good selection of programs (including The Science Show), and the Triple M radio network is podcasting some programs.  At the moment I’m working my way through the back-catalogue of This Week in Tech (TWiT), a weekly US tech-talk program, before moving on to Skepticality.

Finally, a way to use more than about 10% of the capacity of my iPod!  🙂