A couple of days ago, I started to wonder about this whole Podcasting that Dave Winer has been talking about. Then I went to find the Fritz Onion DotNetRocks episode, and noticed they had a Podcast feed. So I started to wonder, how can I do podcasts? Not make my own - no one wants to listen to me blab on and on. I'm still surprised anyone wants to read what I write! No, I wanted to know how I could listen to them.

So I searched - podcasting on windows. And I found a set of great posts from Jake Ludington, which starts here. Basically, download iPodder, make an auto playlist in Windows Media Player, and there you go. I didn't go as far as having it automatically copied to a device - I only have a Pocket PC with limited memory. So I lsten to them while I code. So far I've listened to two episodes of Adam Curry's Daily Source Code (by the way Adam, my thoughts are with you and your family in this difficult time - listen to the Wednesday October 20th episode if you don't know what this refers to), An episode of Trade Secrets with Dave Winer and Adam Curry, and a couple of the DNR episodes. And an episode of GeekNewsCentral's podcast. I still have one in the queue from Engadget.

It looks like today's Daily Source Code is coming down as I write this, so add one more.

Here's the problem with Podcasts, which others have touched on. I can read 300 feeds (I'm 7 feeds away from 300 right now) in a day (producing probably an average of 1000+ posts), but there's no way I could listen to more than 10 podcasts a day. I just don't have the time. With WMP, there's a way to help - you can turn up the speed of the playback. I'm not sure how much faster it is, but the guys don't sound like Mickey Mouse, so it's still understandable.

I'm not sure how many more podcasts I'll go after. If I were to find too many more, I'll need a way to listen to them in the car - I tried with my Pocket PC, but the volume isn't loud enough. I don't have a radio that can accept inputs, so that's not an option either. I can burn CDs, but that could get tedious after a while. Plus (no offense to Adam or Dave or other podcasters), what do I do with the old CDs? I'm not keeping them around. I'll have to try one more thing - can I use a rewritable CD in my car? Will the CD player read it? If so, then I may have some hope. Of course, it'll be difficult to give up Bob and Tom in the morning, but the afternoon commute could be used for podcasts.

Or - this would be way better. The next killer app? Who knows. What about using Microsoft's speech server for taking a podcast, and producing a transcript of the show? I know there are some issues with that, but the main complaint about podcasting is that I can read a blog entry much faster than I can listen to a podcast - this way, I get the best of both worlds. Listen to the ones I want to, and read the others.

Some day, maybe. Some day.