tech ronin

Treo 650: 3 Podcasts for starters

Probably the most knowledgeable Palm user who is podcasting is Jeff Kirvin, who is doing the 1src.com podcast. He's all over the Palm forums and runs some too. Anyway, he's got a podcast and has done a whole bunch of them. I've only heard one so far, but plan to back fill them in over the next few weeks because I'm sure there's lots of good information in there that I want to know. They are listed in the podcast directory on iTunes if you have iTunes 4.9. Find out about Apple and podcasting on their dedicated podcasting page. (Although a little rough around the edges, I think iTunes is the easiest way to capture and manage your podcasts at the moment.)

Another main source podcast which is only going to tangentially inform on Treo 650, is the Engadget podcast. Peter Rojas is a Treo 650 owner. I just listened to the June 21 cast and it has a nice little chunk on the Treo 650. These guys are in a position to talk about things I want to know. So, put them on your list to try out. They are listed in iTunes.

Then, there's the reason I wrote this post. Something you probably have not found on your own: The Palmloyal podcast. So far, Carl Brooks has only done 2 of them since he started in mid-June. I'm hoping there will be many more. These are not fancy or even very entertaining. What makes them great for me, at least, is that they cover key pieces of information that I wanted to know. Very information/experience-rich.

I especially liked the second podcast which is 27 minutes long - not too much of a time sink. The best parts are (1) Using your own custom ROM. By rolling your own, you can delete out some of the standard Palm stuff that you've replaced with better third party versions. That's what Carl does and he tells you what he's got on there. This means you don't have to (a) use up RAM with your replacements or (b) put your replacements on your SD card which slows them down. Shadowmite's Treo Tricks, Hacks and Patches is a site not to be missed if you want or need to maximize your Treo and you are willing to venture into more geeky stuff. (2) What's on my Palm?. Which tells you 5 pieces of third-party software that Carl Brook's has on his Treo 650 and what he likes about them.

There's lots more to tell, so I'll be pumping out more Treo posts in the near future.

Technorati Tags: cellphone, handhelds, mobilephone, mobility, Palm, PalmOne, podcasts, smartphone, treo, treo650, wireless

iTunes 4.9, Podcasts, Odeo and Treo 650

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

Podwatch would work well with the new tiny drive

Remember that nickel-sized 4 gig drive in the last post? Well, how about putting one of those in here? This is just a concept from Pentagram Design, but I want one. I'm already wearing a large Nike watch now. Why not get some use out of all that space with some decent computing power and storage and a color screen, headphone jack or preferably wireless. Maybe a little smaller than this one. Nice. [via Gadgets Blog, News.com]

Technorati Tags: podcasting, iPod, miniaturization, hard drives, personal technology

Free Podcast Guided Tours Starting Up

PodGuides.net is starting up a podcasting site featuring free spoken tour guides. Here's what they say:

You can enjoy detailed spoken descriptions of what you see while visiting the city (museum, ...) of your choice. A PodGuide is basically like a downloadable audio tour.

OK, so there is only one podcast so far. Still. This is a great new venue for wannabe podcasters. You know, citizen podcasters. You take a trip and record some audio about the places you see.

The site has a great little free tool called PodGuide Generator - a metal app, so you better take your iBook or Powerbook (or hopefully soon an iBook mini) with you while you travel (there's a version for Windows too). Record on your iPod or cell phone and write a few notes in your moleskine or sidekick while you travel and put it all together with the PodGuide Generator. Yay!

This is clearly a hybrid podcasting app. It helps a lot if there's a map, photos, addresses AND an audio track. Apparently iTunes can show the photos or the iPod photo. Great idea! At minimum, I look forward to downloading some fun tour guides. Make it easy enough and even I'll do one. Better bookmark these folks.

Oh, and if you are one of the many tour guides. How cool would it be to sell mini podcasts of your tours as loss leaders or as souvenirs for your tour participants?

Technorati Tags: podcasting, annotation, guides, maps, community, location, city, tours, tour guides

Podcasts need lots of bookmarks

This is the most important thing. It is typical for a podcast be composed of a series of topics, pieces or bits. All I ask is that each piece have a bookmark at the front so that when I hear a song I don't like or a piece that doesn't interest me, I can skip it. Remember skipping? Otherwise, podcasting is two steps forward and one step back.

I've been getting more and more into listening to podcasts in the last 30 days. But my listening process needs work. There are many more podcast listeners than podcasters. So far, the only single word I've seen for podcast listening is *podcatching* which will do as long as everyone uses it. But they don't. Probably because it is kind of lame and very lame compared to podcasting which has a certain ring to it.

Technorati Tag stats:

• Podcast: 1,263 in 277 blogs
• Podcasting: 2,791 in 328 blogs
• Podcasts: 1,357 in 219 blogs
• Podcatching: 0
• Podcast listening: 1 in 1 blog

Right now, I have more podcasts on my iPod shuffle than I do songs. That ratio works great for listening in shuffle mode - as long as I eliminate *old* - already listened to - podcasts.

I'm looking for the ultimate podcast listening app. I'm using a mix of NetNewsWire 2 beta and iPodderX. I'm thinking maybe a dedicated app like iPodderX is better but right now it's a mess trying to use both. I've eliminated a lot of the podcast feeds from NNW2 but iPodder seems to not be set correctly, because it's not getting the podcasts over to iTunes consistently. As usual, there are a few trials and tribulations when using new technology. If I weren't such an infogeek, I would probably give up on it. I don't even commute so I don't have as much motivation as some to get this stuff working right.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, podcast listening, iPod shuffle