Podcasting : An Introduction

Over the last couple of years, I’ve listened to over 1000 hours of audio on my ipod, but fewer than 10% of it has been spent on listening to music. The bulk of it has gone into listening to various podcasts. Podcasts are essentially audio files that are delivered to the listener through RSS feeds. They can be on any topic, ranging from movies to technology to news. There is nothing very technical about podcasting, the actual audio file, it is a plain mp3 file that can be played almost anywhere. However, you need a “podcatcher” program that can parse the RSS feed, make sense of the content and download the audio file for your listening pleasure. The best podcatcher software by far is iTunes. In my view, there are three different elements of podcasting that Apple has really nailed

Subscribing to content: The itunes store is the most comprehensive repository for finding podcasts. It is neatly categorized and subscribing to a podcast is a single click process. In the rare event that you have a podcast that is not present in the itunes directory, Apple allows you to enter the URL of the RSS feed

Tracking episodes: Most podcatchers offer this, but none work as elegantly as iTunes. You can set it to automatically download all new episodes, it keeps track of episodes that have been played and can clean up older episodes automatically. If you are like me and want to control the entire process, you can set everything to manual mode and take care of it yourself.

Integration with portable devices: This is the area where itunes+ipod pulls ahead and leaves everything far behind. You can control how many episodes are downloaded to your ipod, once you hear something on the ipod, it automatically shows up as played content on itunes. If you have heard part of an episode on the ipod, once you sync back to itunes, it even resumes playback at the same place!!!

There is a veritable treasure trove of content out there and most of it is free. Some of the podcast feeds that I listen to are

CNN-IBN : This is the feed from CNN-IBN. They mainly feature programs like Devil’s Advocate with Karan Thapar (I hate his interview style, but I still listen to him) and some interviews with prominent personalities from the film and arts world. They like to throw in their news bulletins, which is one of the main reasons why I resort to manual control of downloads.

TWIT: twit.tv is a podcasting network started by Leo Laporte, a prominent tech journalist for many years. He produces over 20 shows a week and I listen to a few of them like This week in tech, Windows Weekly and Macbreak Weekly

Buzz out loud: My favourite source for tech news is cnet.com, this is their daily podcast that presents tech news in a light hearted manner. They are up to episode 780 now, I’ve been listening since episode 380, which means that I’ve devoted almost 300 hours of my life listening to BOL.

NPR Science Friday: I believe this is a very popular science program in the US, the podcast is just another distribution medium for them. I have learnt more things about more subjects in the two years that I have been listening to this podcast than in the previous 15 years since I left college.

The one caveat to keep in mind with podcasting is the bandwidth. Each episode is usually around 10 MB, so you could easily use up over 1 Gig a month just keeping up with your favourite shows. That’s one of the reasons why I always prefer an unlimited slower connection over a faster metered one.

Sadly, there is very little quality Indian content, I wish other networks like NDTV, Times now etc start putting some of their content on the Net soon.

Video podcasting is an offshoot of podcasting with video files (usually MPEG4) instead of mp3s. They haven’t taken off because they are extremely bandwidth intensive (a typical episode is > 100 MB) and unlike audio files which you can listen to while doing your other tasks, you need to be actively watching the video. I’ve usually given up on most video podcasts after a couple of episodes and switched to the audio version.

Bangalore bomb attack

9 bombs went off in Bangalore yesterday. They were of really low intensity, in fact looking at the TV pictures, you could mistake it for a firecracker that went off. Due to the limited damage, people have written it off a little too easily and it has almost become a joke. But, that's not the point, we should not forget that the terrorists could have easily used a more powerful explosive and the damage could have been a lot worse. We got off easy this time, but will we be as lucky the next time?

Vista hate - Part 1

Contrary to the major negative press that Vista gets, my experience with the OS has been generally positive. I have used Vista on two machines, a HP laptop and my custom built desktop. I have faced some issues with wireless networking on the HP laptop where it would lose the network settings and force me to manually connect every single time. However, that problem went away after some driver updates and it is working great. On the desktop, my experience has been fantastic, so far. The thing that people don’t realize is Vista is extremely resource intensive and needs a fast processor and lots of memory. Most people who face problems are trying to run it on older slower hardware.

Atleast that’s what I thought, because yesterday I had my first hair-tearing experience with Vista. I had got a couple of 8 GB SDHC cards and wanted to transfer some videos to them. I hooked them up through my card reader and began the transfer process. It was a simple file copy procedure, open the folder on my local hard drive in one window, select the files and drag it to the window where the memory card’s drive was mapped. That’s when Vista’s problems reared its ugly head. Initially, I got the file copy dialog, where it just got stuck at the message “Discovered 0 items”. I then tried doing it one file at a time, it worked for files smaller than 100 MB, but just wouldn’t start for larger files. I googled for “Vista slow file copy” and discovered a setting for “Remote Differential Compression”, which is meant to optimize bandwidth but ends up killing file copy speeds. My experience improved after turning it off, but it was still a hit and miss affair.

Disgusted, I gave up and tried to do the same with a 2 GB standard SD card. This time, the files copied without problem. Thinking that it may be a problem with the 8 GB card, I tried using it with my laptop and this time, the file copy went through without problem regardless of the size. So, now I have got two versions of Vista that behave in totally different ways with the same hardware. No wonder, so many people feel that Vista sucks.

N800 vs ipod touch

I’ve now had an ipod touch for a couple of weeks. Here is my comparision of the ipod touch with the N800. Rather than compare the two feature for feature, I have attempted to compare their capabilities for some common usage patterns.

Music Player: The ipod touch is so far ahead that there is no comparision here. The ability to organize music on a PC through itunes and sync automatically has no parallel on the N800, where you need to manually manage your music. Most of my listening involved podcasts and there is no better solution than the ipod for podcast management. Period. Verdict: ipod touch

Video Player: Viewing video on a portable player is a much more involved exercise due to the plethora of formats and limited horsepower of these devices. The first thing is to get videos onto the device. The ipod has more capable hardware and can handle higher resolution/bitrate/framerate videos than the N800. However, its support for video codecs is limited with only H.264 and mp4 support. This means that most videos need to be transcoded, just like on the N800. The N800 has an extremely slick free transcoding solution provided by Nokia (Internet tablet video converter), I’ve found that to be a better solution than the various third party solutions for the touch (I use a program called Videora). Once the files are on the device, I find the experience to be comparable with the N800 having a slight edge due to the larger screen and built in speaker. I also like the fact that it has a stand, this makes for a more pleasurable experience. Verdict: Nokia N800

Browsing: The ipod touch has a Safari browser while the N800 has a Firefox based browser. Both are full fledged browsers and can display web pages just like on a desktop rather than the modified mobile phone version. In terms of performance, the touch Safari browser feels snappier and more responsive than the Firefox browser on the N800. However, I’ve not found a huge difference in the overall time taken to render the pages. The N800 can play flash content which the touch lacks. On the other hand, a lot of websites have iphone/touch optimized versions which makes the overall experience better for those sites. On the whole, I think the experience is comparable and I’d rate both devices equal for browsing. Verdict: tie

Youtube: The ipod touch has a dedicated youtube player, while the N800 can play youtube videos through the web interface. Youtube videos on the N800 were jerky and took much longer to load. I found the performance of the touch youtube player to be far superior and the experience to be much better. It is without doubt, an ideal youtube player. Verdict: ipod touch

Email: The ipod touch client offers support for Gmail, Yahoo and a number of other email services. In addition, with the 2.0 firmware, it offers support for Exchange. The N800 on the other hand, has a plain IMAP/POP3 email client. I’ve never bothered to use this, but I’m hooked to email on the ipod touch. Verdict: ipod touch

Applications: The App Store is one of the most important developments for the iphone/ipod touch family of devices. The store opened just 3 days back and the number of apps already greatly outnumbers the N800. With the number of iphones sold approaching 10 million and probably an equally large number of ipod touches, the gap is only going to get wider. Nokia has a good platform and an extremely competent device, but it has never moved beyond niche status, hence the apps available for it will continue to be limited. On the other hand, due to the open nature of the device, there are applications available on the N800 that will never make it to the touch (e.g. VOIP, GPS apps like Maemo mapper). Still, this doesn't affect the healthy lead that the touch has Verdict: ipod touch.

So, ipod touch wins the comparision 4.5 to 1.5. The margin is unfair to the N800, which is a very comptetent device in its own right. If I had to make a decision on which of the two to buy today, the choice would be clear, it is the ipod touch. But, since I already own both these devices, I will continue to be a happy user of both the platforms.

ipod touch 2.0 software

I was really looking forward to the iphone 3G launch last Friday, mainly for the added functionality it would bring to the ipod touch. Like the millions of Mac faithful, I started checking sites on Friday morning for pointers to when the software would be released. I soon discovered that Apple had launched the itunes store in India and was able to create an Itunes account by entering my credit card details. But, there was still no sign of the new ipod touch software. It finally became available on Friday evening, coinciding with the launch of the iphone 3G in the US. However, the update experience was anything but smooth. Over the next few hours, I encountered a variety of errors, ranging from “Itunes store is unavailable” to “Your version of ipod software (1.1.4) is the latest”. Disappointed, I gave up and decided to try again the next day.

The experience was completely different on Saturday morning when I tried again. This time, I got the notification about the update and quickly got through the payment formalities and started the download. The update was 223 MB in size and downloaded in just over 20 minutes at an average speed of almost 1.5 Mb/s. The entire process of updation was completely automated with no interaction required from my side. The longest part was the backup and restore, which seemed to take forever. I guess transferring over 20 gigs over a slow USB connection to a flash based device will always be slow.

The biggest change and the most expected feature of the 2.0 software was the App Store. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed with the app store, as most of the good apps were paid ones. I wanted to wait for a few days before purchasing any software as I am not sure how it will work for India (exchange rate etc). There are quite a few free apps but very few of them are any good. Though I installed quite a few, I don’t see myself using them on a sustained basis. So, for me atleast, the biggest feature of the update was a bit of a letdown.

The other feature that I was really looking forward to was the Exchange support. I had a few issues setting this up, mainly because I did not have the required information to set up the VPN to my company’s network. But once I got that, it was extremely straightforward. Checking my official email has now become a quick and simple exercise. The mail client is not very full featured and this is mainly useful for monitoring email and sending out quick replies rather than lengthy emails.

Other than these two features, I didn’t see anything else of note. There’s the Mobileme, but I’m not going to pay 4000 rupees a year for that functionality. There are still quite a few features that I didn’t find. Here is my top 3 wishlist

- Itunes store: I stopped buying CD’s a while ago because I found it to be a complete waste of resources, as I was just using them once, to rip them to my computer. I would love to have the ability to download legal mp3 at Rs 10 per song. I can do it today through Soundbuzz or mobile companies stores, but they are completely locked down with DRM. I understand our music companies reasoning that it will lead to widespread piracy. However, I don’t think they should worry about piracy, as pirated mp3’s of their songs are available everywhere on the Internet and on every street corner. If they only opened up their closed thinking, they will find this to be a very good revenue stream

- Ability to download podcasts over the air. As the touch has a wifi connection, I should be able to manage my podcasts from the device rather than from my computer

- Enhanced video file support (esp .avi files and the xvid codec): I was initially very thrilled about the video viewing experience on the touch, but I’ve cooled down a bit. The first problem is the restriction on the video format and codec support. This means that I have to transcode most of my videos before I can watch them. The second issue is my Nokia N800. Quite frankly, I find the video viewing experience to be better there as it has a bigger screen and a comfortable stand to seat the device. The one advantage that the touch had over the n800 was the higher capacity, but I’m getting a couple of 8 GB SD cards, which should make it a non issue. For now, I think the N800 is going to be my primary video device.