Thing 21 - Podcasts

I looked at all 3 podcasting resources, Podcast.net, Podcastalley.com, and Yahoo Podcasts. Not surprisingly, I found Yahoo's offering to be the easiest to use with the slickest layout. It did find my podcast of choice, NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and did so with great speed. The other services also found the podcast, with Podcastalley being the next easiest and Podcast.net the hardest. Podcast.net was harder only because its pulldown tool next to the search bar offers the widest selection of options for searching, so you have to be careful how you do your search. Looking for the Wait, Wait podcast under "Keyword" returned no hits, but it came right up searching under "Titles". In all three I left out the NPR portion, which is how NPR lists this show (as "NPR: Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me").

All three shows a ton of available episodes. Yahoo's offering gives the option to listen immediately or download, as well as offering the feed for your aggregator. The other two seemed content to offer the feeds first. In any case, the simple availability of these audio (and in some cases video) feeds opens up the same possibilities as "books on demand" offers for out-of-print books. You don't have to miss information from sources like radio because they're kept as audio files and are searchable. That's why I chose "Wait, Wait...", because I never seem to be near my radio at 11 am on Saturdays to catch the broadcast live, but I can always go back to my computer and relive the fun. It's now got a spot on my Bloglines feeds.