Podcasting is about one year old now. Pretty mature for a technology what started as a hype. It raised the question with me; ‘What would you like to see in the next generation of Podcasting’.
How do I listen to Podcasts
I started listening to Podcasts on my PC, simple because I didn’t have a MP3 player. That was alright but I didn’t like the fact that I always needed my PC. I have WiFi, I have a laptop but it didn’t give me enough flexibility.
The next step for me was to buy a player. The result was that I could walk around the house listening to a Podcast. I tried using it in the car but most of the time I’m at work in the car. I’m either busy driving it or talking on the phone. Bottom-line, I was alright but I didn’t think it was a 100% success.
The third step was when I bought a Philips Streamium SL400i. This is a device that I can connect to my audio equipment and I can play and stream audio files from the internet or from a server in the house. This is the configuration which works for me at the moment. I’ve setup a server on which I have iPodder installed which downloads the Podcasts I want al day. When I get home I switch on the streamium, look at what Podcasts have come in, select the one I want and listen to it while I do other stuff.
So what would I like to see as a next step:
– First of all Podcasting should support chapters. You should be able to skip to the section in the Podcast you want instead of FF. Linked to content of the OPML file would be great.
– Podcast should be a multimedia experience. It should be possible that in the middle of a Podcast a picture is shown of either the artist which is being played, the Senseo Adam Curry is using or just something to explain something which is talked about in the Podcast. That would be great on the Streamiun because it is linked to the TV as well.
– iPodder should have an auto clean up function. Everything older than e.g. 3 weeks should be deleted.
Maybe somebody will make this possible.