fl0blog

Recently, I started listening to podcasts. I had high expectations and they were not completely matched, at first.

I started by manually downloading some podcasts, like the first issue of the Pro PHP podcast. It was not very enlightening (more of a ToDo list), but it did warn in advance . Too bad the second issue had awful audio quality as well.

After a while I discovered the Gillmor gang, which — even though discontinued — is absolutely top.

Just as good, even funnier, and a lot more ‘musical’ is the Fab Four Chronicles podcast.

It’s amazing how much good content is available for free, and I’m very grateful to the people who publish it. However, the ‘user experience’ was not as good as it could have been.

For example, nobody seems to care about the metadata. Why do people type in no ID3 tags, or make up a different ‘author’ for every issue? Why don’t they follow a standard scheme for filenames? Why call issue 7 ‘week 7′ and issue 14 ‘Chapter 14′, while other issues are named after their content? Stuff like that really deteriorates the browsing on mobile music players. Since the metadata is the interface to the content, a little polish would make a huge difference. I guess a good podcast client could work around issues like this, but the only ‘right’ way to solve them is by the authors themselves.

Looking for a client to automate the downloading, I installed iPodder. This was another disappointment; I just don’t seem to understand how this app works (most of the time it doesn’t want to download anything, I don’t know how to manually force it to start downloading, and the buttons and menu items have confusing names).

So I waited for iTunes with podcast support or Thunderbird 1.1 to come out. And so now I’m running the latest iTunes, and it’s quite all right (but not perfect).

And now the content is coming in nicely. Steve Gillmor is at it again, with Gillmor Daily and even a renewed Gillmor gang . The chaps from LugRadio produce a very nice show, with good humor and a fuzzy chaotic attitude. Thanks for all of this!

Too bad Chaos Radio is in German. May be a nice time to work on my Deutsche sprache — and why not start with that edition about user interfaces.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 at 10:47 and is filed under English, Web stuff. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.