I was just getting my groove on with Odeo podcasts when iTunes 4.9 showed up and got me going with that. By building strong podcatching into iTunes, Apple cut out the middlemen.
I'm glad Apple is putting their weight behind the podcasting phenomenon. They can call lots of shots on day 1 because they can offer any podcaster an enormous potential audience. The equivalent of foot traffic in retail. Podcasting is the latest thing in portable music players and iPods need a new thing to keep the mania going.
The convenience of searching for, selecting and grabbing the podcasts you want from iTunes store and then synching with your iPod is going to trump the competition. What competition?
So, right now, I'm using iTunes 4.9 on my Powerbook and synching that with both my aging, monochrome, 3rd gen 15 gig iPod and my 1 gig shuffle. I really want the color screen 60 gig just so I don't have to try to read that mono screen one more time. In sunlight, forget it. But now there's another player on the field that I'm playing around with.
Yes, that would be my Treo 650 as listening station. Today, I ordered a Seidio 2 in 1 retractable earbuds headset for $34.95 from Treo Addicts -- my favorite Treo site. I like to buy from the sites that provide the best authenticity and information -- you know -- voting with my dollars.
This little Seidio headset plugs directly into the 2.5 headphone jack and provides stereo with 2 buds plus a microphone and button that lets you hear when your phone rings and switch seamlessly to the phone and back to your favorite podcast/music when done with the call. Cool!
So, this morning, here's what I did to prep for my morning exercise walk. I went to my Music folder and found the iTunes Music/Podcasts folder. I easily found the podcasts I wanted and dragged them into the AUDIO folder on the 1 gig SD card that I use with my Treo.
I unmounted the SD card and put it back in my Treo. Then fired up RealAudio -- I haven't bought a 3rd party app yet -- and there were my podcasts ready to go. The sound was just fine over the single-bud headset that comes with the Treo. The nice thing here is I can see what I'm listening to and I can (1) bookmark if I want and (2) can drag the slider and skip over stuff I don't want to hear like a song or the standard intro spiel on IT Conversations which gets mind-numbingly old after a while.
My favorite podcast at the moment, perhaps because I've been into mobility a lot lately, is Tinypodcast with Josh Bancroft. It's low key and low budget, but I like Josh's easy style and he is a smart gadget freak whose opinion I respect. I also listen to Engadget and Adam Curry when I'm in the mood.
One more comment on the Treo. I'm finding a dearth of information about key Treo subjects like how to maximize its paltry 23 megs of useable RAM. I really don't want to do tons of homework to discover best practices. I've been grazing mostly on tiny tidbits, subscribing to Treo in NetNewsWire and Techorati. The signal to noise ratio is iffy.
Just now, though, I found The Treo Knowledge Base, a wiki sort of FAQ over at mytreo.net, another site that I like. I've been looking for a good wiki with independent/community compilation of Treo information and I'm hoping this is it.
Anyone can contribute and comment. They suggest you start on the intro page which I'm doing. From what I've read so far, though, it's better than nothing, but could be so much better. The last comment on memory management was "Best tip for users is: experiment :)." Just what I didn't want to hear.
I already checked the Wikipedia Treo and Treo 650 entries which don't amount to much, but the external links were helpful.
If this knowledge base thing doesn't pan out, I'm stuck with the Treo manual and two little books (The Treo Fan Book and Now You Know Treo) which have some good things here and there but not enough depth on key subjects like memory management.
So far, it looks like I can run many apps on my SD card by just copying the apps over to the card with the Treo's copy command.
Today while I was down at Peet's having a nice Friday afternoon coffee and reading my Treo books, a guy started asking me about my Treo. He had one too. It was fun sharing tips and tricks. I got him up and running with beaming.
Technorati Tags: cellphone, knowledgesharing, mobilephone, mobility, PDA, podcasting, smartphone, treo, treo650
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