iWTF? My Podcast Woes

April 7, 2006 · 11 Comments

I have to confess that I have been pretty lame about listening to podcasts. My basic excuse is that I haven't had time and that ought to be a good excuse but I feel really guilty telling people that. I've tried listening to podcasts at work but that just doesn't work: I'm too easily distracted by work to actually listen. For a while I just resigned myself to missing out on the podcasts mushrooming around me. Then I got an iPod shuffle and figured I'd get around to listening to podcasts as I walked to BART (30 minutes in the morning) or, more recently, drove down to San Jose (30-60 minutes). After autofilling my iPod several times, I began to get suspicious that it was 'avoiding' the podcasts. Not one podcast turned up in the random selection. So I created a new playlist: all the files I'd added in the last four months but not played. Lots of podcasts in that. Ran the autofill... not one podcast. Odd. So I made a playlist of podcasts alone. Autofill selected no files. OK, so that confirms that iTunes' autofill ignores podcasts. Not to be deterred, I simple used brute force and dragged several podcasts into the iPod shuffle in iTunes. Great! Now I have a bunch of podcasts in my pocket. First walk down to BART, lots of music, no podcasts. Next day I drive to San Jose (I use a cassette adapter to listen to the iPod in the car through the cassette player). Lots of music, no podcasts. Drive home... still no podcasts. Walk to BART the next day... no podcasts. By this point, the random song selection on the iPod was beginning to repeat the few non-podcast items. OK, one final test: empty the iPod and drag in just a few podcasts only. Try to play the iPod - nothing. Add a song and try again - the song plays. WTF? The iPod won't play podcasts even tho' they're just plain ol' MP3 files. Weird. No podcasts on the move for me then :( And then I was given an iRiver U10. It's an impressive piece of technology: very small and light, an FM radio and a music / video player that can also record (voice and radio) as well as a few other things. But it only works with Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10. Well, that sucks. But, hey, I have Virtual PC so I can run Windows XP in emulation. I won't recount my experiences with multiple installations of Windows XP and the problems I've had with them (come on, you know how I feel about Windows!). Anyway, first off I converted a bunch of videos to the (proprietary) U10 video format and transferred those across and watched / listened to them in the car, driving home from San Jose. By positioning the iRiver on the dashboard, facing away from me, it acted as a "heads-up display" on the windshield, allowing me to watch (loosely) a video while driving without taking my eyes off the road. However, I didn't feel entirely comfortable doing that and couldn't imagine using the video capabilities of the U10 much. Well, it plays MP3 files so I moved all my podcasts onto it and now I can listen to them in the car. It's not as slick as iTunes: I have to fire up Windows XP under Virtual PC and copy files to / from a network share (actually my Mac) and then sync files to the U10 using Windows Media Player. But the net result is that it works. So tonight, driving home, I finally go to listen to some podcasts. I listened to all of ColdFusion Weekly 1.0 alpha and most of 1.1 beta and I have to say I'm very impressed. Matt and Pete have a good rapport and are generally well-informed and their show has very little "fluff" (although they need to tone down that cheesy organ music!). I enjoyed the interview with Jared about cf.Objective() in 1.0 and I was just starting Jeff Coughlin's interview on FarCry when I arrived home tonight. I'm in San Jose on Monday so I'll get to listen to the rest of 1.1 and probably 1.2 as well so I'll have some more comments then. After that, I'll start going through the ColdFusion Podcast and I'll write those up too (I've listened to one or two early episode but wasn't terribly impressed - I'll bet they've gotten into their grove now that they've done over twenty episodes. And then I'll be catching up on Helms' and Peters' Out Loud series (which I love, based on the two or three episodes I've listened to parts of!). What are your thoughts on podcasts?

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Tags: blogging

11 responses so far ↓

1 Nathan Dintenfass // Apr 8, 2006 at 12:01 AM

Most of my podcast listening is from ITConversations.com -- a great way to keep up with the best speeches of the tech conferences.
2 Mike // Apr 8, 2006 at 12:09 AM

I listen to Podcasts using my iPod shuffle on non-random (play all) mode.
3 Kay Smoljak // Apr 8, 2006 at 2:49 AM

I like the idea, but I don't have the time. It's good when transcripts are provided - usually for accessibility reasons, but good for the impatient too.

I'm in the process of transcribing some recorded presentations for the Perth Web Standards Group at the moment, although we'r thinking of using the castingwords.com service (US $0.42 per minute). They even provide an RSS feed of their progress with your job!
4 Jeff Houser // Apr 8, 2006 at 5:05 AM

As one of those rare people who almost always work from home, I don't know when I'd spend time to listen to them. I guess they are are great for those who travel ~1 hour a day on the way to or from work. But, i don't often have that 'wasted' time. They are not something you can use as backgroumd music; they need your listening attention.

I listened to one or two, and decided that they weren't for me.

That said, if I could re-vive my habit of walking on a daily basis, I think that would be the ideal time for listening to pod-casts. ( I'd just need to buy some form of mp3 player )
5 Roger Lancefield // Apr 8, 2006 at 5:23 AM

Sean wrote:

'By positioning the iRiver on the dashboard, facing away from me, it acted as a 'heads-up display' on the windshield, allowing me to watch (loosely) a video while driving without taking my eyes off the road'

I like it! Brilliant!
6 Matt Woodward // Apr 8, 2006 at 6:28 AM

Glad you enjoy the podcast Sean. If you have (or anyone else has) any ideas for future versions we're all ears.
7 Peter J. Farrell // Apr 8, 2006 at 10:46 AM

Kay,
Although it is not perfect, you might try searching podcasts with PodZinger (podzinger dot com). They run all podcasts with voice recognition and create automated transcripts. You can search all feeds or you can zero in one feed (like our for instance). It's not always the greatest - it comes up with some pretty funny transcripts at moments - but it actually does work.
8 Dave Carabetta // Apr 10, 2006 at 8:17 AM

I downloaded a pod cast a few months from Rolling Stone magazine, which was an amazing interview with Bono (PS -- if you're a Bono or U2 fan, you absolutlely have to listen to it...I was blown away). The problem is that, commuting in New York City, my attention is almost immediately diverted once I leave my apartment and head for work (a combo of walking and taking the subway)! I found myself too often realizing that I had just missed a chunk of audio and had to rewind it. So I've given up on them for now. Maybe I'll revisit them in the future.
9 Aaron West // Apr 14, 2006 at 11:28 AM

I've not gotten into the ColdFusion specific podcasts (perhaps I should give them another listen) but I am totally hooked on Leo Laporte and friends TWiT. You can check it out on iTunes or download episodes from twit DOT tv.
10 chris // Oct 1, 2007 at 4:50 AM

>> OK, so that confirms that iTunes' autofill ignores podcasts.

The iTunes Autofill feature ignores any track that has the "Skip when shuffling" feature enabled, and this is enabled by default with podcasts. Set this to false on your podcasts, and then try the Autofill feature again.
11 Patrick Rushton // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:10 AM

Unfortunately the workaround suggested by Chris above has stopped working in iTunes 8.1 :-(

Back to old iTunes 8.02 for me.

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