Resources of the Week: For Your Listening Pleasure

For Your Listening Pleasure: Podcast Roundup
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

So someone gave you a new iPod this holiday season…or you gathered all those gift cards together and bought one for yourself. You’ve probably already started loading it with music via the iTunes Store or perhaps by ripping your favorite CDs from your own collection.

But iPods are not just for music. You can also entertain yourself — and even educate yourself — thanks to the magic of podcasting. I have to admit that when podcasting first came along, I was somewhat skeptical. Who has the time to look for these, download them and listen to them? Somewhere along the line — clued in by number one son, a technology high school graduate who is usually on the cutting edge of anything interesting when it comes to online media — it occurred to me that iPods were not for music only. Duh.

The best and easiest place to start looking for interesting podcasts is the iTunes store. Everything I’ve seen there is free for the downloading, and you’ll find quality content from familiar media outlets such as NPR, BusinessWeek, Slate, etc., as well as plenty of esoteric stuff from “free range” podcasters. Although you can usually locate these podcasts on the individual website for these sources, it is much, much easier to do your one-stop shopping at the iTunes Store. You can download individual segments or subscribe, so that the latest segment is automatically downloaded to your computer whenever you open iTunes…and can be synched with your iPod for convenient listening later. Personally, I enjoy Science Friday and Marketplace, but am almost never able to listen when those programs are broadcast on my local public radio station. By subscribing to the podcasts, I can keep up while talking a walk through the neighborhood at night, folding laundry or doing some other mindless task.

A comprehensive directory of public radio podcasts is available at one of Gary’s favorite sites, PublicRadioFan.com. Last month, the open culture weblog posted a nicely organized A to Z Complete Podcast Collection, which links you to quality audio content of all types:

Some other fishing holes:
+ iPodder.org
+ Podcast.net
+ PodcastDirectory.com
+ Yahoo! Podcasts

Bonus: For Your Viewing Pleasure
If you have a video iPod, you can grab clips from YouTube and similar hubs and import them into iTunes to transfer to your player, for later enjoyment. Special software is needed, but there is no shortage of tools to help you. (Highly recommended for both Mac and Windows users — PodTube. I installed it on my MacBook Pro and…it just worked, immediately. No fooling around required.)

Alternately, you could try VideoRonk, a beta video metasearch service which easily allows you to download clips to your computer. Gary reviewed it last week.

And for a look into the future, see Gary’s post from last November, when he wrote: “Itâ€™s likely only a matter of time that many users will be able remove the step of downloading audio/video content and then playing it on an iPod/MP3 player. Already happening and we think likely to increase in usage will have users simply streaming (and then saving the content it they like) material to their mobile device or laptop/desktop computer.” If you already have or are considering a device that enables mobile web access, you’ll want to have a look at some of the services mentioned here.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 and is filed under Resource of the Week, Webcasts and Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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