Podcasting

Finally got an iPod Mini. Neither myself or my wife commute by public transport, so an iPod would have rapidly found its way to the back of a drawer. However my wife has started going to the gym, so I seized the opportunity to spend some cash. I am impressed by its design, though I am surprised no one has made one better (in the public's perception). The wheel interface has a nice look, but can be quite confusing when the menus get deep.

iTunes is the typical GlobalMegaCorp machine take over I expected. Why is it companies feel that their apps are so important they must be resident in memory the whole time? If I want to update my iPod, I'll run a program. I don't really need 10+ megs of service running all the time on my laptop. TSRs should be banned by the Geneva convention...

I have just been playing with the Pod casting stuff. Most of it is free, and the BBC stuff is advert free. The iTunes interface made it very easy to pull out a bunch of casts (though the categories are a little confusing if searching for Blighty based stuff) and update them automatically. I was always a huge fan of Avant GO - an offline webreader for the Palm. Much of the time you do not want to be connected to the net, but would like something to read. Podcasts are the sort of auto equivalent of that.

I await with interest the iPhone. I might be persuaded to shell out again...