I never thought podcasts would take off really. But I've started listening to two regularly which are great. And iTunes just syncs them quite nicely onto the ipod, which makes it really easy to listen to.
If you want to pop your cherry, you could do no worse than
- The Ricky Gervais Show. Seriously the funniest thing I have every heard. If you missed him on XFM, this is your chance to hear it. Word of warning, do not push weights in the gym while listening to this, as laughing and pumping iron do nor work well together and you run the risk of an injury.
- New Scientist Podcast. I enjoy reading New Scientist, but it's a weekly periodical and I just don't have the time to read them. This is a nice 20min (quickie) that's just a bit of science stuff, which is interesting and nice to keep up with the world at large (and small, and microscopic). I know science seems dull but trust me, it's really not.
- The Destruct\hour. My first podcast. Dan is music mad, and aside from one sweet sucking incident, and one ruining my favourite band incident by talking over the tracks (Dan takes criticism and turns it against you) these are really good. Far better than the Chris Evans and Chris Moyle's podcasts, trust me.
iTunes support coming this year (when I get round to it)iTunes Support now available with http://www.znaddanz.com/destructhour.xml [read about how to do this with Movable Type yourself with my howto article.]
1. Destructor
UNfortunately the destruct\hour can never go onto iTunes because it’s totally, utterly illegal.
However if you can start working out how to podcast stuff to iTunes that would be very useful as I’m going to start podcasting the audio version of The Trusted Professions fairly soon. Thanks!
2. Adrian
It doesn’t go on iTunes, it just uses iTunes to sync it. So it’s only the iTunes on the client PC that knows about it, not iTunes servers.
3. Destructor
Oh- I thought I saw a ‘report a concern’ button on iTunes specifically for targeting illegal content casters like myself. But I suppose if it’s limited to a single address and not distributed through the iTunes search engine, that’s okay.
4. Adrian
The only way people would find your podcast is via your site, so your risk is about the same. I will do more investigation when I take the Destruct\hour to iTunes.
Note you are the top search result for destruct hour.
5. Destructor
Just listened to Show 2 of Gervais. Absolute genius.
However I think you’ll really only listen to that kind of podcast (where people just talk) one time, wheras the d\h is designed for repeated listens. If I was going to do something like that, which was only designed for one listen, it would involve you, me, Craig, Ross and Andy all sitting around after a couple of beers. It’d be hilarious.
6. Adrian
Hmm. I’ve only listened to the d\h once.
I think it’s only that we have had a couple of beers that we sound funny, not that we actually are funny.
7. Destructor
Well I think d\h bears up to multiple listens, where people just talking probably doesn’t.
I think if we had a few beers to loosen up and then just told amusing stories that had happened over the course of the week that would be uh, that would be like audioblogging, really.
8. Adrian
But if something funny enough happens I’ll just blog it normally. I’m not big on audio blogging. I can’t hear blogs at work but I can read web sites.
9. annie
I worked at New Scientist once. They all had brains the size of a planet.
10. Chris
New Scientist is awesome. It’s their 50th year and they’re re-running a bunch of old articles from 50 years ago. Some of it is very funny, and some of it is kind of worrying - looking at just how wrong they were about the implications of some of the technology makes you wonder just what sort of world-ending technology we’re going to make out of today’s seemingly innocuous science.
11. Stuart
I kind of want to steet clear of the utterly, completely illegal side of things, really. Although putting music in would be cool if allowed.
12. Rob
I love The Ricky Gervais Show. I was getting really strange looks on my flight a couple of nights ago because I couldn’t keep from bursting out laughing.
13. razorhead
The new scientist podcast is awful. I tried with it, I really did, but that terrible intro really fecked me off — nearly as much as the horribly populist presentation style.
FT.com have an interesting ‘cast and the Melvyn Bragg In Our Time is more than worth d/l-ing.
14. Adrian
I know their has been a bit of criticism of the style of the NS podcast, but I quite like it. Maybe an hour like that would be a bit much. but 20 mins is fine. And I just FFW past the intro.
I’ll have a look at the FT one.
15. Adrian
Ok I had a look at “In our Time”. After 20 minutes of hearing about where oaths came from, I was totally bored. Podcasts have to be more entertaining than listening to music for me to listen to them and that fell flat.
The FT.com one isn’t bad. Mainly because it’s only 6mins long and that’s not a bad way of getting some financial news.
However the “Lucy Kellaway” were quite annoying. Hearing about how “happy holidays is stupid” has been done to death. I expect columnists to either make me laugh or think and she did neither.
16. Andrew
Tongcast is quite good.