Dylan Greene dot com

I listen to a few podcast, and since I'm going to Gnomedex in a couple days, I figure I should load up a bunch on my cell phone (which doubles as a kick-ass mp3 player) to listen to on the plane ride. The trouble is that I haven't found a software package for downloading the mp3 files that works the want I want it to.

First I tried the Smartphone program Skookum, formally known as iPodderSP. It got good reviews and people seemed to like it. There was no demo but it only cost $9.99 so I bought it. I hate it! It's useless to me!

Problems with Skookum/iPodderSP:

• There's no way to set it to download just the newest files. I don't want the last six months of podcasts on my phone, just today's and maybe yesterday's.
• There's no desktop component - I really thought it would download the files on my desktop and then transfer them to my phone via ActiveSync. Instead it uses the internet connection on the phone, which is about modem speed and I can't wait 30 minutes for each podcast to download.
• It uses Windows Media Player to play the files, which is okay, but I prefer BetaPlayer, which saves your spot when you exit or turn the phone off so you can continue from where you left off, and is much easier to use. BetaPlayer is a better media player for the Smartphone than Windows Media Player and it's free, there's no reason not to use it.
• You can't see the titles or descriptions of the podcasts, just the filename. Maybe this is deficicy in the technology/standard?
• It crashed. A lot. It's 2005. Programs shouldn't crash anymore. Catch those errors and return some kind of error message. This is unacceptable.

Next I tried Doppler, a Windows program. I should have been warned when I noticed that they sell t-shirts for their software, but they don't even have screenshots or their documentation online. Doppler downloaded most of the files I wanted, but it has no feature for syncing them with my cell phone. Well, drag-and-drop works fine, and Windows Media Player can be used to sync files too, but what files to sync? Again, I only want the latest and greatest broadcasts, but there's no way to sort by "air" date. There's no searching of the content within the files (I want all of the podcasts that mention Gnomedex!), or even to see who the guest speakers are without going to the web site, but there's no link to the web site.

Bah.... So there's some issues with podcasting still.. I'm not totally turned off by the concept, but it's a rough start, even for someone who's very tech-savvy.

This reminds me of another blog entry I wrote about 17 months ago - 10 Reasons why RSS is not Ready for Prime Time. Like RSS, I believe it's just matter of the tools becoming more mature, and a few kinks get worked out.

In the meantime, I'll be listening to some great audiobooks.