Unless you’ve been under a rock, Podcasting is a trend that’s been going over the Internet for about a year now. My brother Brian did a couple for his (now defunct) comedy web site plus ex-MTV VJ Adam Curry embraced this new idea.
Long story short though, because I’m not going to re-interate the whole history of Podcasting nor explain it, Apple’s new iTunes 4.9 which was released several weeks ago now has the ability to subscribe to numerous podcasts. Sure Apple is behind the trend as it was with CD-R drives being built-in, music software for playing and ripping MP3s and a dedicated PPP client. When Apple makes subscribing to your favorites shows really easy, especially when iPodder X and other predecessor applications totally sucked, you can forgive the company for not “getting it.”
I’m personally enjoying the new feature and talking it up to everyone I know, especially all those people I cajoled, bullied or tricked into buying iPods. Thankfully, not all the podcasts I’ve found are just audible versions of people’s blogs with the ranting. Most of what I have listed are NPR shows I can’t receive in Austin, Al Franken bits that are funny and science-based programs. The only DIY show I have enjoyed in general is Coverville which is a 30-minute show hosted by Brian Ibbot. He shares my interest in collecting and playing covers. His show isn’t as polished as the NPR productions or some other DIY’ers but he has me sold on his material.
Other than that, on to 500 million songs sold!