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Geekery: Podcasts and Mobile Media ..(or, What Is This Infernal Racket?)
Thu, 26 May 2005

I'm sure many of you are like me and have heard the term "podcast" but didn't really catch on to what they were until relatively recently. (Well, I knew what they were but didn't fiddle around until a few weeks ago. Like blogs, they just snuck up on me..) In a way, they're like an audio blog -- where a blog allows any old body to post articles or news to a site for others to read, a podcast allows anyone to post an audio clip. But like many things, it is more than just this simple fact (face it, people have been posting audio clips to the net and BBS's for decades) that adds intrigue -- podcasts have a simple yet relatively formalized distribution method, and have caught on, which makes them great. So, before going on, let me summarize bystealing a line from the all-new CBC Podcast page. (Note that since the CBC is on top of podcasts, either its a well established technology or CBC is really hip, and I think its more the latter.. podcasts have been around awhile, but not all that long.)

So yeah, I think podcast's are a neat thing.. but why post about them on my blog? Well, right now I'm at the honeymoon stage and having a lot of fun still. They're not earth shattering like so many people would have you believe, but they're handy and neat. See, although I commute for at least an hour and a half each day like a lot of people, I do it driving and thus have no need for all the mobile media that others are so hopelessly addicted to. Unless you fly a lot, or take the subway/train a lot, I always figured you didn't need mobile TV or videos....

Video
Mobile video just isn't there as far as I'm concerned -- the player technology is coming along pretty well with every PDA being able to play video pretty well now, and many cellphones even able to do it (but of couse who wants to watch Episode II on a 1 inch screen?.) Certainly dedicated mobile video devices exist but are generally priced out of range for the average joe. But to me, the limiting factor is the content ... a video player of some sort is useless without videos, and getting video content is pretty hard. You can of course download Bit Torrent, a fabulous technology for quickly downloading popular files, but due to the inherent legal questions about copyright the sites that keep the torrent master yellow pages tend not to last long too. Really, it takes an enormous amount of time to constantly download video files .. I'd guess (without having done it much) that the amount of time to find and download and re-size quality videos for your media player is about the same amount of time as watching them unless you're hardcore. To be successful, it has to be easy and fast .. automatic even. Like the television -- you turn it on and theres your content (although it is easier if you watch the conrent on your PC or laptop without having to rescale it all the time.)

Audio
Mobile audio is in pretty good shape these days -- you can very easily rip your CDs to mp3 files (it takes only 5 minutes per CD on a average PC) or buy them straight online. For instance, I will buy a CD and take it home and rip it to mp3 files without ever listening to the CD itself (and if the CD doesn't rip due to some lame protection, I return it to the store. I have no interest in carrying around a stack of CD platters .. this isn't the 90s!) You can head over to the iTunes store or AllOfMp3 or the like and buy an entire album for less than 50% its cost at the music store most of the time, then just wait for the downloads to complete by going to bed. So we have a pretty efficient system -- its cheaper and very convenient -- a clear victory for the consumer, and hence why mp3s have virtually exploded over the last 5 or 8 years.

Podcasting
So what has this all got to do with podcasting? Easy my friends -- audio clips have existed forever as I mentioned above, but now we've got the key components needed to succeed. With tools like iPodder, you can put in a "podcast feed" address (an "RSS xml link") and it will simply and automatically download new audio clips automatically for you in the background, at whatever time you choose. Furthermore, there are networks of these 'feeds' around, so you can use your web browser or iPodder or the like to browse these feeds by category or origin or download speed or any number of things you care about. So here you go, something like a radio station that is both cheap (free!), open (so anyone can make a podcast), and convenient (you pick a few podcasts and they download in background). What is not to like? Oh, sure.. the content :) But you can listen at work...

So of course it comes down to content, and like the Web proper the main problem is finding the podcasts you want (if you want any at all), and finding out which are good in name but are total crap otherwise. I'm sure rating systems will pop up soon if they haven't already and soon the download tools will be smart enough to show you the ratings or allow you to vote yourself. I tend to stumble across peoples recommended podcasts so finding quality ones isn't too hard (they just accrue over time), but finding the ones of interest is harder... and finding the time to listen is hardest of all :)

So every few days my laptop has a few more podcasts sitting on the hard drive. I just copy them over to my PDA's storage card once a week and voila -- new listening material (be they news, music or geekery) for my daily commute. I keep headphones in the car or listen via speaker.. my poor PDA is good enough that I don't need anything fancier.

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