After noting
yet another great hint over at Mac OS X Hints, I stumbled upon the great little tool called iPodder.
To save you following too far through the links, let me summarise what it is all about. With a view to pushing the boundaries of traditional media, some people around the world, including
Adam Curry the author of iPodder and one-time MTV Video Jockey, are posting to their blogs in mp3 format. As a radio DJ by trade, he is interesting to listen to, and as usual I'm keen to listen to anything not pushed out by large media companies, in any new format I can discover.
What his software (and other, improved versions I'm yet to try) does is parse RSS feeds of various websites, find any mp3s contained within, download said mp3s, put them in a playlist in iTunes, which is then automatically copied to my iPod. Very neat. So, all I have to do in the mornings is disconnect my iPod and there is some interesting radio by himself, and some new IT Conversations (I've listened to Tim
O'Reilly thus far).
If you aren't sure what blog and blogging is all about, It's probably time you found out. What you are reading right now is a blog. Not a very good or actively maintained one, but a blog none the less. The idea is that the little guys around the world just tap out what is of interest to them, and if someone else happens to be interested also, that's great.
iPodder and friends are taking this to a new level, where the content is automatically available on the output device of your choice, and in a format you can listen to in the background while you are doing something else.
I think I have a hard enough time putting text on here to consider audio at this point in time, but it is interesting to see where stuff like this is going to end up.