Tips for Podcast Easy Listening

Hey all! Sorry I didn't get around to posting this in the second half of last week as planned. See, there was a holiday thing, and then another, and then there was this woman. Don't get the wrong idea, she and my wife are very close. (Okay, REALLY don't get the wrong idea now. :)

She's a great woman, let me tell you. I'd drop anything for her, and that hasn't changed in 10 (plus now) years. All this writing/blogging/stuff I do? She's totally into it. In fact, she encourages it. (Probably so I'll leave her alone.) There really isn't much I do that she doesn't support.

No, we aren't a perfect match or anything. We're a little competitive with one another. Don't ever ask one of us who loves the other more. She'll say I'm better at showing and saying it, and I'll say she's better at simply doing it.

Also, she's a dessert person and I favor a second helping. Plus there's the civil war we had over oaked wine. She loves a heavy oaking, while I tend to like to drink my wine, not chew on it.

Still, I'd say we do a fine job of living and loving together. And we keep the knife fights to a minimum.

Anyway, wedding anniversaries are always special, but I had to make the big 10 something we'd remember. That devoured my blogging (and anything, really) time. Mia culpas all around.

As for what I promised, last week I recommended a couple of writing podcasts for your listening pleasure. I also promised some quick tips for listening, as I found out it can be somewhat cumbersome if you simply want to listen to several in a sitting (or working). Useful for the short casts (which I favor). So here goes:

1) Download iTunes

A lot of folks responded to my last post lamenting their less-than-awesome Internet speeds. Pocasts are typically very minimal in terms of size--a one hour cast is somewhere around 25 mb. For the sake of comparison, the song Rolling in the Deep by Adele is 7.7 mb. Still, if your Information Superhighway is congested there are some ways to avoid the inevitable forehead bruises induced by buffering-face-desk episodes.

The first thing to do is download iTunes. Virtually every significant podcast is available through the iTunes store. Better still, they're all F.R.E.E. Better, better still you can search for what you're looking for.

Once you click on the 'PODCAST' tab in the store it'll take you to the podcast storefront. There's a little empty box in the upper righthand corner. Type "writing" (for instance) in that little box and watch every writing related podcast pop up. Easy peasy.

Once you find your cast, click the subscribe option and iTunes will keep it in a list of your favorite podcasts. Here's the 411 on listening to podcasts in iTunes.

How is all of this going to help with your slow Internet connections? You see, iTunes doesn't just download all eleven billion Cat Tips podcasts at once. It let's you pick and choose when and what you want to listen to. 

So here's the solution: Before you go to bed, select the podcasts you want to listen to on the morrow, click "GET" and let the Web fairies do their magic while you slumber. Now you can play Farmville and listen at the same time.

2) Create a Playlist

So you've gotten iTunes installed on your death machine (AKA computer of choice), now what? Start listening of course! Problem: iTunes doesn't jump to the next podcast in the list once one has finished. Meaning you have to get back to your machine and click play again. 

Yes, you have to actually click stuff to keep 'em coming. Not a big deal if you're listening to hour-long podcasts, but many of my faves are less than 20 minutes. And if I'm cleaning, exercising or whatnot I don't want to stop and go find the next one.

Seriously, did George Orwell design this thing for future people who can replicate themselves or are the living supposed to use it? And yes, future me would totally create a replica just to sit in front of the computer and click play. It's maddening! Anyway, there's a workaround. Create a playlist.

Here's a detailed walkthrough. Basically, you make it like you would any music playlists. You give it a clever name, like "EJ's Anti-Roadrage Mix" or "Podcasts" then start dragging and dropping podcasts into the list. Simple. 

If you're listening on an iPod, etc. make sure your podcast playlist is set to sync or you're going to be running to Billy Joel again and not Car Talk. 

3) You Want to Listen on Shuffle 

(i.e. You Aren't a Boring Fun-Eating Troll)

Trolls!!! Told you.

You've loaded down your podcast playlist with enough podcasts to get you through the impending apocalypse. Good job! What, you don't want to listen to 400 consecutive episodes of green energy tips? 

George Orwell rears his ugly head again! Podcasts in iTunes are automatically set to 'skip' in shuffle mode. Speaking of Orwellian, can we reanimate Steve Jobs already? He'd get this worked out ...

Thankfully, we won't need to wait on science--or zombies--to get around this. In your created podcast playlist:

• Highlight the podcasts you'd like to be included in the shuffling. 

• Right click on your mouse-pointer-thingy.

• You'll see the options list pop out. Now click "Get Info". 

• Another pop out box! *confetti* Click the "Options" tab. 

• Under "Options" make sure the box next to "Skip when shuffling" is checked and that the drop down list next to that says "NO"

Now you're golden! Click play and the voices in your head will have some company.

What say you? Have any great tips for podcast listening? Do you use something other than the direct site or iTunes? If you checked out any of my previous recs, did you enjoy them? Why/Why not? 

Also, a warning: My next post is going to be a serious discussion. (I know, dad's got another lecture, right?) Been reading a lot about Internet thievery and plagiarism, and I think it's a growing concern for authors. Both as would-be criminals and victims. 

Until then, via con a story on your mind and a song in your heart.

~EJW~

Hands-on with the iPad AND vacation photos!

Hello, all! I wasn’t able to post last week due to being out of town on vacation. (Yes, there ARE still places without internet service in the world, and I was in one of them.) Now I have an iPhone, and I could have finagled a way to post from it, but to be honest my brain took a little vacation as well.


At any rate, I’m back, and I did manage to do one productive (hey, I’m calling it productive!) writerly oriented thing: I GOT MY PAWS ON AN iPAD. Here’s what I think:

First, let me say that I approached my hands-on time with the intent of examining the iPad as an eReader. I’m definitely in the market for a reader of some kind as too many people have told me how much they love their Nooks, Kindles, etc., and I’m way beyond the point of running out of bookshelf space.

You library denizens out there, just simmer down. I know they exist, but I try to purchase as many books as I can to support authors. That’s another reason why I’ve decided to purchase a reader; I can help authors AND not destroy a rainforest.

Back to the task at hand. The first thing you’ll notice about the iPad is how bright and beautiful the screen is. The outward appearance is very streamlined with only a few buttons, so when you see the bright blue (or whatever color background the screen is displaying) with the little application icons, it’s quite visually arresting. When I’ve looked at/played with other eReaders, I’ve been underwhelmed by presentation. I know these ‘toys’ are for reading, but I’d like to see a little more in the way of eye candy on the dashboard/screen.

Regardless of how cool you look holding it, I know most people (myself included) are primarily interested in functionality. If you’ve picked up an iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll instantly acclimate to the iPad. It functions exactly the same way, so you’ll be able to finger swipe, pinch, and tap your way through features in no time. If you’ve never used either of the before mentioned gadgets, have no fear, because I can easily count them as some of the most accessible bits of technology to ever be created. I’m totally convinced that a blind monkey could use an iPhone to order pizza within five minutes of touching it.

The iPad in the store had several pre-loaded apps (think of them as programs on a computer), and I played with each of them. I can say that this thing plays games, music, and movies with the best of them. But how does it read, you ask?

The reader interface, cleverly dubbed iBook by those Apple geniuses, is very cool. When you open the iBook/reader app, you’ll see a virtual bookshelf (assuming you didn’t close the reader mid-read, in which case you’ll be brought back to the page you closed) with the cover of all of the books you’ve downloaded. Simply touch the cover of the book you want to read, and it opens. You can turn the iPad either horizontally or vertically. I preferred the horizontal (sideways) alignment as it read more like a physical book, displaying two pages at a time. You’ll find many handy reading features, such as bookmarks, dictionary lookup for words in the text, and you even have the ability to adjust the lighting of the screen.

That brings me to the real drawback as a reader: the iPad uses a backlit screen, not the passive screen technology used by the other dedicated eReaders. The good side of this is that unlike other readers, you could read the iPad in the dark without the presence of any external lighting. The down side is that this can sometimes cause eyestrain (think staring at a computer monitor all day). I had no problems reading on the device, and in fact, I would say I even enjoyed how vivid and crisp the text appeared. However, I only read for a few minutes, so we’ll just have to wait for some extended use reviews to surface on the web to learn just how bad the eyestrain problem will be.

In the end, I found it to be very high on my list in terms of readers. The interface is great, the selection is top notch (both Barnes & Noble and Amazon already have apps for purchasing content, and that’s in addition to the iBook store), and it does so much more than any reader currently on the market can do (fast web access, music, games, on and on …).

However, at this point I think the price is far too high to purchase just as a reader (starting @ $499). Although it does a bunch of other cool stuff, it has no built in camera (for the bloggers, Facebook crowd, etc.), you can’t multi-task (work multiple applications at the same time) as you would expect to be able to do for something that cost as much or more than many laptops, and it won’t play many web videos thanks to Apple’s reluctance to allow Java on its platforms.

Was it cool? Yes, and frankly it blew me away. Will I wait for the price to drop and for Apple to fix a few of the nagging issues before purchasing? Absolutely, but I think the key is that I do see myself buying one eventually.



Hope you enjoy the photos!