1 post tagged “podcatching”

On This Week in Tech episode 134, Leo and his guests talked about RSS feeds and podcasting.

At the 41:30 mark, Dave Winer talked about how the iPod and iTunes is an "epic fail" at podcasting.  They were designed for music, not podcasts.  You have to tether to iTunes to get podcasts off.  Then he made 3 points about the optimum podcasting device:

1. The device should have a podcatcher built in.  It should work over wifi.  It should work without being tethered to a computer.  They mentioned this won't happen on an iPhone even with the upcoming SDK, since Apple will never let this happen.  They want you tethered.
2. The device should be able to put your own software on it.
3. You should be able to record your own podcasts and broadcast it.

Dvorak says a pda serves this purpose and he's almost right.  One of the guests doesn't think such a device will exist until 5 years from now.  S60 phones, like the Nokia N95, do all this and more.

1. S60 has a great podcasting app that can do scheduled downloads over wifi.  You can delete files when you're done.  You can search by genre or add the RSS feed manually.  It's so much better than iTunes, but hardly anyone knows about it. 
   
2. S60 is open to new features.  The SDK is already here.
3. You can record up to an hour with the built in sound recorder on the n95.  With 3rd party software, you can record in mp3 or other formats.
   

You can listen to TwiT 134 here:
http://twit.tv/134