When will listening to and accessing podcasts be transparent

Hopefully very soon.  Songbird promises to be a new kind of media player.  Bloggers have called it “The Firefox of media players”.  Songbird themselves say this,

Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins (feathers). Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source.

It is currently in public beta, and has been for around 12 months.  It’s meant to be out of beta sometime in 2007, and it won’t be a moment too soon.

At Audemos, we want to offer our clients the easiest way for their users to listen to their podcasts.  And when we say easy, we mean pretty and easy.  Right now, there is no easy way for everyone to access podcasts on every platform, it just doesn’t exist.  Songbird goes a long way to sort this problem.

Songbird works on Windows, Mac and Linux.  It works with iPods and most other MP3 players.  It can sync with iTunes and can also play music you have bought from the iTunes music store.  But, the best bit for me is the browser that allows you to search for podcasts using google/yahoo/search engine.  You can browse to pages that have podcast feeds, and Songbird searches out all media on that page and allows you to download them to add to your iPod or stream them.

Listening to podcasts needs to become as easy as switching a radio on or playing a CD, and Songbird is a small wingflap in the right direction.

Croncasts review says it best

I haven’t been this excited about a technology or piece of software since I first found out about podcasting.

So go check it out.

Highlights from Blue Peter, one of the longest running childrens TV shows from the BBC

and

The University Channel debate on Iran’s Nuclear ambitions

“In 1995, Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz published their seminal work, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.” They staked out opposite ends of the theoretical spectrum with Waltz arguing that “more [nuclear armed states] could be better” and Sagan responding that “more will be worse.”

Thanks to Open Culture for this one.

There’s a great story on the New York Times website about authors podcasting their own works.

Several times a week Mr. Sigler, 37, steps into a walk-in closet in his San Francisco home. He reads into a microphone that connects to his computer via a sound mixer. Hanging shirts envelop him, masking ambient sound.

Our creative director Simon has been involved in a similar project called Welcome to mars.  Here’s the blurb:

Ken Hollings presents a live twelve-part series of unscripted reflections on the fantasy of science in the early years of the American Century

With electronic sound production by Simon James

Between 1947 and 1959, the future was written about, discussed and analysed with such confidence that it became a tangible presence. This is a story of weird science, strange events and even stranger beliefs, set in an age when the possibilities for human development seemed almost limitless.

Each show was produced live and broadcast on Resonance FM in London.  The recordings were later turned into a podcast series.  The main difference with Welcome to mars is that the shows came first, and the book is coming out hopefully this year.

You can subscribe to Welcome to mars here.

If your an author that would like some help creating rich audio versions of your work, get in touch with Audemos.