Podcasts and maybe some other stuff.

I wasn't sure what I would write about today and then my out west friend, Mr. Chair wrote me an email asking me what the Podcast things were about and when I was done answering his email, I realized I had some good bloggin material.

First off, let me save you a little time should you want to forgo my guessing and just go to the people who know. AFTER I wrote Mr. Chair, it occurred there was probably one or two people out on the internet superhighway that had a clue about these podcasts. idiotvox was the first one I found and they seem to have an amazing grasp on the whole thing. What follows is my take on the whole thing.

A podcast is like a radio newscast except unlike a real news broadcast, podcasts are not bound to the typical broadcast rules like fact checking, interesting topics, or talented broadcasters. Now, ok...that makes it sound kinda bad. That's actually the worst case scenario. What I mean to say is that anything is possible on a podcast. It's as is if the common man was stealing the airwaves.

What's cool is that a lot of people are getting in on this. In addition to people you've never heard of having podcasts, there are also people like Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh and news organizations like ABC news and ESPN who have gotten in on the podcasting.

Now podcasting has been around for a while. My friend Tim told me about it over a year ago and how awesome he thought it was. What's changed is that if you download iTunes 4.9, podcasts are now integrated into their music store as well as the software and they've even updated the iPod firmware to make podcasts part of the menu structure. If this is the first time you're hearing about the podcast, I can tell you that thanx to Apple (aren't they just awesome), you'll be hearing so much more about podcasts in the future. You can even create your own podcast and have it accessed through Apple's Music Store.

Few more things about the podcast. I don't know how the term got coined but podcasts are not limited to your iPod. As I understand it, they are just mp3 files that you can play just about anywhere, inluding your iPod and your computer. iTunes offers full previews of a podcast. I didn't keep it going but it appeared I could have listened to the entire podcast just by previewing it.

When getting a podcast, you have a choice of either downloading the on show or subscribing. If you subscribe, any time there is a new show on that podcast, it will automatically download onto your computer and into iTunes, and depending on how you have your preferences set it, it will be automatically transfered to your iPod.

Whew! I'm always amazed at how much more you learn about something when you try and teach it. My head is spinning. Lets talk about the podcasts I've heard.

Podfinder: This one's great because it's a monthly preview of a bunch of different podcasts available on iTunes. It's hosted by MTV's Adam Curry.

Cinecast: Here's two regular kinda guys with a movie review show. So far, I'm digging it.

5 Minutes with Wichita: This redneck hick kinda guy interviews people. I get the biggest kick out of this one.

KCRW's The Treatment: OK. This one gets a little bit of a story on why these things are cool. This is a celebrity interview show that's podcast from a radio station. So, I started listening to the one with Tim Robbins who is a very good actor and very left wing political. Now, I'm not really an extreme anything but I get the feeling I could hang with this guy.

So immediately, they start talking about a play Tim wrote and directed called Embedded. Sounded interesting. It has to do with the war and whatnot. They start talking about how Tim shot the play so it could be released on dvd. They don't have a distributor yet so the only way to see it is if you have Netflix or if you buy the dvd off the webpage. It took some creative googling but I found the page embeddedlive.com.

So while I was there, I clicked on the we recommend link to take a look at all the websites Tim was into. The second link from the top was FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). That caught my eye as I'm a man about fairness so I clicked on it. The lead story was pretty cool as it was about Rumsfeld talking about how the media never reports on the great things about Iraq. The same day, The Pentagon put out a travel advisory basically saying to stay the hell away from Iraq. In case it's not the top story when you get there, you can read it here.

So that's why podcasts can be really cool. You get some information that you might not have otherwise received.

Well, it would appear that I'm not going to get to the other stuff. My love and I are leaving for Mohegan Sun soon and I must pack as we are staying the night. Have a great weekend and I'll talk to you soon.

Dave