Podcast.com News

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a good article about poets — both larger media companies (Jim Lehrer of PBS’ NewsHour) and poets making podcasts in their bedrooms — using podcasting to promote their poetry and to give poetry lovers another great source for poetic work.  Here’s what Thom Ingram of the podcast Poet Guru says:
“I can write a poem, have it up and get some feedback in a matter of days. What I used to do was to write something and run down the hall, in college, into one of my friends’ rooms and say, Here, read this.  . . .  I would rather be writing, and then moving onto the next poem.”

The news: it’s a tricky thing. To understand all the facts related to national and international news stories, you have to have a fairly large body of knowledge — or an Internet connection equipped with Google search. Even then you/I might be confused, and right when you start to furrow your brow Slate comes in to save the day with the Slate Explainer podcasts. Slate takes one underlying question from the big news story of the day and fleshes it out as an audio podcast, such as: Do soldiers have free speech rights? How come pieces of foam always fall off the space shuttle? How do they measure SPF? Slate makes the news less tricky and only takes a few minutes out of your day to do that. A little time = more smarts = good stuff.

Apple today announced a new iPod called the Touch, which gives you Internet access through Wi-Fi. That means you can download podcasts straight to your iPod, without having to manually sync your iPod to your computer and if you can access a Wi-Fi connection. How fast you can download those podcasts depends on how fast that Internet connection is. But it’s a good step for people who like iPods. Expect a special version of the Podcast.com site for people who use this iPod Touch, and also for the iPhone (which at $399 are now $200 cheaper than they were when they first came out).

This just in: if you tuned in here just over a month ago, we mentioned a new version of our site almost ready for prime time.  And yes, that’s still true.  In fact, we’re making plans to coincide this new site launch with the Podcast and New Media Expo at the end of September.  You heard it here first.

And if you’re still wondering or are just now wondering, you can send a blank email to register [at] podcast [dot] com to be notified when we’re ready for you to come in.

Now back to your regularly scheduled podcasting / programming …