Instacast and Podcasts
20 April 2011, mid-morning
Podcasts have been around for a million years, but I never really got into them. iTunes has support for downloading and subscribing to podcasts, but like many parts of iTunes I found the support awkward. You can sync podcasts to your iPod (or iPhone in my case) and there they sit till you sync again. Because I have MobileMe syncing my contacts and calendar items I rarely actually plug my phone into my computer. I would never have up to date podcasts on my phone. A long time ago I stopped bothering with them. Ideally podcasts should arrive on your phone while you are on the go and remove themselves from your iPod after you’ve listened to them. It’s 2011 after all.
I read about the solution to my problems with podcasts in a pretty extensive review of a new iPhone application called Instacast. I think the sign of a well done application is that it solves a need you didn’t even think you had. Because I found my workflow around podcasts so messy I really wasn’t interested in listening to them at all. I didn’t feel like I was missing out. Now I listen to podcasts a fair bit.
I’ve been listening to two podcasts on my way to and from work: WNYC’s Radiolab and NPR’s Planet Money. They are both superlative. Radiolab in particular is so well produced and I can’t say anything bad about it whatsoever. This episode about cities is a good introduction to the podcast and what it’s like. 5by5 is producing a ton of podcasts that look like they would be right up my alley, but they are all so rambling I can’t get into them. I feel like there might be good stuff there, if only they were better edited. Are there other podcasts I should be listening to?
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