Daily podcast pain
Published by on February 2nd, 2007
It is only recently with my now common commute into the London office, that I’ve started using the iPod as it was designed to be used: sync and go. Problem is, it is yet another thing I have to think about during my morning zombie stupor prior to leaving home*.
This morning was typical. Just before leaving… Ah! iPod. Damn! Needs to sync. Bugger! Powerbook already wrapped in bag. Sod it! Got to go.
This is less of a problem with irregular or weekly (or less frequent) shows, in such cases getting to hear the most recent show a day or two after release is just fine. But for the daily shows this is a pain to keep properly up to date, particularly when there is time sensitive stuff in there. Skip a couple of days on the trot and the backlog of daily shows becomes too great to wade through in an already squeezed schedule, and you are speeding along the road of manual deletion before iTunes decides to stop the downloads because you haven’t listened to any recently.
To be honest, I think if I did not have to listen to a lot of podcasts - and using my commute is the most ideal time to focus on the content - then likely I wouldn’t use an off-line device (iPod in my case); I would join the majority and tune in directly online.
Along with the often cited confusion over ’subscriptions’, requiring iPods, RSS, etc., could this added day-to-day hassle be another reason why the majority of us still tune in online..? Or maybe it’s just me.
* This may mislead you to the assumtion that the afore mentioned zombie stupor leaves me once I leave home, but as anyone who has seen me trudge down to the station in the morning, this can be very much NOT the case.
[tags]iPod, iTunes, sync, podcast, rss[/tags]
2 Responses to “Daily podcast pain”
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Wouldn’t it be great if MP3 players of all types had bluetooth and could sync themselves automatically.
That would be something.
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Bluetooth is soooo sloooow…. I usually sync around a gig each time, so would need something fast.
What we need is something akin to those charging pads where you’d just rest your mobile phone and it would charge the battery up right there. So no plugging, no making of a connection other than placing the device onto an area on your desk, for example. Ticks a lot of usability and hassle-reduction boxes.