So my brother-in-law wanted us to buy him an iPod off Ebay;
which we did, so I took the opportunity to play around a bit with it before passing
it on to him. I haven’t had any chance to try out any hacks
or mods; however I did dip my toe into the podcasting arena.
I had downloaded and listened to a few podcasts before, however I was pleasantly surprised
at how slick tools like iPodder and iTunes make
the whole process. Once it’s all set up, all you need to do is plug your iPod into
your USB port for a few seconds and it’s all
done.
This is what I’ve enjoyed listening to so far (in no particular order):
I’ve found it quite useful to listen to stuff at times which are otherwise unproductive,
like walking to work or sitting on the plane. My main frustration however was caused
by the linear nature of listening to what is effectively a serial stream of consciousness.
If you’re reading a book or flicking through a magazine, it’s quite easy to jump ahead
if you’re not particularly interested in the item before you. Listening to a podcast
is more restrictive in that skipping ahead isn’t really all that easy as you have
no idea what you’re jumping to or what has lead up to that point.
All in all, I think it may be something I’ll invest in soon; as it did prove to be
quite useful. But with the price of these devices dropping all the time, the question
is: Which
MP3 is the best around ?