Thoughts on podcasting

Having listened and worked with podcasting for a couple of weeks now I have to echo Adam Curry's call for content management. I don't have an iPod, rather a vintage iRiver 256 meg device that requires special software to load files. I have worked with iTunes on the PC and iPodder. I think to get this to work well there still needs to be a few changes in the whole process.

1) First off all players, whether HD or memory based, needs to be able to work like a drive OR the software needs to allow adding files from other programs. Podcasting may have gotten its name from iPods, but I'm sure a few of us will not be using Apple products for this, therefore no iTunes.

2) iTunes has a lot of the stuff we need to do content mangement. It would be nice if iTunes would work with ANY player, but realisticly that will never happen. Not having an iPod to work with, but my guess is that the play count and last played date in iTunes is updated from the iPod. That would be the key to content management.

3) The aggregator, or the playlist builder, needs a way of allowing for building the playlist in whatever order. Right now things get added to the iTunes library from iPodder in the order they files are acquired unless some other sorting is applied. Right now things end up in the order in which you added the feeds to iPodder, however I typically like to listen to the shorter podcasts and then the longer ones. I would imagine I could edit some of the files that iPodder use to shift the order, but that would be better done in iPodder itself.

4) Adam Curry already mentioned the need for a vacation button.

5) A REALLY cool idea would be some way to sync up different computers. I have iPodder running at work & home, and it would be nice to coordinate them. Frankly I don't necessarily load everything onto a player to listen to, especially at work.

6) iPoder also needs a skip button while it is downloading. Sometimes I might want to skip a feed, particularly since I cannot coordinate my iPodders from work & home. There are some feeds that are weekly feeds that I can easily skip if I know I have listened to it at home.

7) It would be cool if the show notes could be easily aggregated along with the MP3s, but not as big deal as the need for tighter integration between the player and the computer.

Granted doing the content management thing is not too big for me given I only follow a dozen or so podcasts, but for those who listen to more I can see where this is a pain.