Question

I listen to a silly number of technical podcasts. I listen to enough of them that it is literally impossible to keep up. I nearly gave up and started dropping feeds from my subscription list when I heard Craig Shoemaker talk about his Polymorphic Podcast fast feed.

The idea is he provides the same content at a higher speed so you can listen to his complete show in 3/4th the time. I tried it out with his recent jQuery Secrets with Dave Ward interview and I was shocked with the feed quality. It was a super clear, understandable conversation which only took a fraction of the time commitment. I experimented a bit and played the normal recording at 2x speed on my iPhone and the quality was once again just fine. But now I'm saving half of the time.

I'm curious as to how you might manage your podcast subscriptions. Can you offer any tips or advice on how to get the best bang for your buck when it comes to technical podcast listening?

Answer 1

Listening to a crazy amount of technical podcasts is not a bad thing! And something I identify with. I have a 75 mile drive each way almost every day (err, days I go to work).

I spend this time learning by way of podcasts. The way I manage it is simply through iTunes. I set iTunes to simply synchronise the top 5 or 10 unplayed podcasts to my iPod. I listen to them all and get more every day. I have almost caught up to all of Hanselminutes and I just started listening a month ago! (I also love Polymorphic Podcast!!!).

As far as listening faster the latest OS (3.0) for your iPod/iPhone allows fast forwarding which is very clear among other UI/feature improvements. I am not sure there is any better way to manage this, but I am not sure that there is a need.

Answer 2

Playlists and x2 listing on iPod Touch. Also, if I don't find much value in a show, I unsubscribe.