Podcast Crazy!

I'm warning you ahead of time that this will be a rambling post...

So for a while now I haven't understood the deal with podcasts, even though I hear about them all the time. I mean, I understand that it's cool for people to be able to broadcast their opinions and whatnot over the internet, but I never understood why anybody else would choose to listen to it. I've never had much patience for talking heads and "irreverent" opinions, although apparently that is a selling point these days.

I've also never been an "NPR person". I've known plenty of people who do listen to NPR, but droning announcers mostly put me to sleep. Also, I think much of what is considered "humorous" on NPR is very far from it. Kirsten is an NPR person, so I've had an opportunity to listen to a lot of it in the mornings, and there is one show that I do find myself intrigued by...This American Life. I've been thinking about what makes This American Life compelling, and I wonder if it is the stories rather than news or opinions.

So that got me thinking again about podcasts. Maybe I would enjoy a podcast or two if it was a narrative tale rather than some internet blowhard. This American Life offers a podcast of its episodes (just the most recent--past episodes require payment). The New Yorker publishes short stories and offers a podcast of readings of olders stories. There's also a number of online short fiction podcasts for various genres (1 2 3 4). I've been testing out these sources this week, but haven't come to any conclusions yet regarding my enjoyment of them.

Of course, listening to podcasts requires appropriate software to aggregate and manage them. It doesn't help that I use three different computers regularly with three different operating systems (Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Windows Vista). Most people use iTunes for managing podcasts, but that's not a solution for me since I have a linux computer and I only have it installed (begrudgingly) on my XP laptop. Besides, iTunes doesn't even recognize my mp3 player when I plug it in! It also turns out that since iTunes is apparently so great, no one is working on developing podcasting software! This causes a problem because there aren't any software solutions that work reliably on Vista (they all were developed when XP was the current Windows operating system) and Vista doesn't have any native podcasting software. Juice works reasonably well on Vista using compatability mode, but it's not perfect. As for linux, gPodder does everything one could want, and is quite user friendly.

But there is an inherant problem with these solutions. I would have to pick one single computer on which to manage podcasts. However, just the other day I found an interesting option: myPodder. This is a piece of software that sits on your mp3 player and runs when you plug it into your computer (only if it installs as a USB drive like mine does). Then you use the computer's internet connection to download podcasts directly to the player without having to manage them on the computer. I installed the version that has Windows, Linux, and Mac executables, so I can use it on all of my computers and even Kirsten's if need be. I think it's the right solution for what I want to do. You can manage poscast feeds directly with the myPodder software or on the PodcastReady website, which is an added convenience.