Confessions of a Podcast Junkie

Hi, my name is Walt Quandt and I'm addicted to podcasts. It's getting to a point where I am losing touch with current events because I never listen to the broadcast news anymore. Part of my morning routine is to update my MP3 player with any new updates to my podcast subscription list, and that is mostly what I listen to as I'm driving between client sites on a daily basis.

If you don't know what a podcast is, it is a recorded show of some sort that you load onto your iPod or other MP3 player so you can listen to it whenever you want. These podcasts are produced by a wide variety of people from media professionals with full production studios to 15 year old teenagers recording into his or her computer with a $5 microphone. These "shows" are usually themed and the producers of these things are usually just people who are passionate about what they are podcasting about. In my case, I focus on tech stuff (of course), cycling, triathlon and business related topics (go to the end of this post for links). Whatever you are into, there are bound to be several podcasts available that focus on your interests as well.

Most Podcasters come out with a new show on a weekly basis but some offer new shows daily. Other podcasters have a less frequent publishing schedule. Did I mention that these things are free? I have been amazed at the quality of information that some of these podcasts provide about the subjects that I am interested in. I say "some" because like anything else, you have to sort through many of these until you find the gems that you want to listen to on a regular basis.

If you want to experiment with these things, here is the general process on how to find them, and get them on your player, ready to listen to.

If you have some sort of flavor of Apple iPod, you are in luck. Launch iTunes, go to the Podcast link, and then you can search for some podcasts by name, subject, author etc. Once you find the one(s) that look interesting, you can click on their subscribe button. This will cause iTunes to load the most current podcast from that source and store the "feed" for that podcast so that whenever a new one is published, it will automatically load on your iPod when you sync it up to your computer.

If you have another type of player, it can be a little more work, but still fairly straightforward. You can still use iTunes to find and subscribe to the podcasts, but since you do not have an iPod, it will not automatically transfer to your player. If you decide to go with iTunes anyway, you will have to manually perform the last step of getting the MP3 to your player. You can usually just use Windows Explorer to drag and drop them to the drive that is assigned to your MP3 player.
By default, the MP3 files will reside in My Documents/My Music/Itunes/Itunes Music/Podcasts.

You can also experiment with other podcast software such as Juice or Doppler. I think that these podcatchers allow you to specify a path to automatically copy the downloaded podcasts to. This will allow you to get some of the automatic update functionality of iTunes. There are also other Web sites that are devoted to podcasts such as Podcast Alley. You can search for and subscribe to the podcasts that you might be interested in on these sites as well.

Here are just a few of my favorite podcasts:

Cranky Geeks (Tech)
Security Now (Tech)
This Week in Tech (yep!)
In the Trenches (Tech)
Simply Stu (Triathlon)
Zen and the Art of Triathlon (Triathlon duh!)
Get Your Geek On (Triathlon)
The Fredcast (Cycling)
The Spokesman (Cycling)
Phedippidations (Running)
Burning 20 (Running / Travel)
The Strengthcast (Fitness)

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please email me at quandtster@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading and happy podcast listening!