Podcasts

Despite being generally an early adopter when it comes to technology, I’ve been a little bit behind on the whole podcasting phenoma. While I’ve been listening to LUGRadio for ages now, I’ve never taken advantage of a podcatching client to grab it (mainly because I operate a mirror, and so need to grab it a little early….) But now I’ve lept in with both feet

For the unitiated, podcasting is a way of grabbing audio files (although you could include other files instead, if you so desired) of the ‘net automagically. Usually it refers to what are basically radio shows, recorded as MP3s. To grab them you get a podcasting client (or ‘podcatcher’) – Juice is a good one – and it will check periodically for new ‘shows’ and will download them for your listening pleasure. (Of course, you could grab them off the website manually, but that wouldn’t be podcasting…..)

There are thousands of podcasts out there, covering all sorts of different topics – everything you could possibly be interested in already has a podcast. I’ve seen some Christian devotional stuff, some for book writing, and loads of tech-related stuff.

Currently I am listening to LUGRadio (as mention), and also a couple of Serenity/Firefly related podcasts, The Signal, and Firefly Talk. There are lots of poor quality podcasts out there, but these two have completely surprised me by having really good audio and edit quality. The Signal, in particular, combines audio from all over the world into a very slick show. (FT also has presenters from all over the world – it’s amazing how they manage to get it together every week)

Anyway – if you have an MP3 player (and who hasn’t?), then check out some podcasts.

mrBen