So I went out and got one of those iTrip antennas for my iPod which lets me play all of my podcasts through my car radio. The good news is it’s made listening more enjoyable. The bad news is that my normal 20-minute commute to work just isn’t long enough consume a full show which means there are plenty of times I start but never end up finishing a particular show.
But the other day as I was cruising down I-70 in my really stylin’ white mini-van rental from Indianapolis to Greencastle, I was in pod radio heaven. (Lawrence Lessig on open source.) And the van even had satellite radio. And on the flight back is was the return of the Gillmor Gang (which was great despite the presence of Adam “I Can’t Stop Talking About Myself” Curry…Jon Udell makes much more sense…) and Jerry Yang from Yahoo. I really started to think about this whole time-shifted business and how powerful it really might be for those people who have the time. I just don’t, at least regularly.
Hmmm…maybe I’ll go out for a long run today…
I’m finding the same thing. In addition to the stuff coming from IT Conversations (like the Gillmor Gang), I use Audio Hijack (or take advantage of pre-made podcasts) to grab shows from NPR like On the Media, Studio 360, and my beloved Schickele Mix. At about an hour each, even my 45 minute commute (Hillsborough to Boonton for the NJ locals listening in), there’s not enough time to finish the shows in the morning (and I need music to decompress on the way home).
Yesterday, there were enough delays and slowdowns on 287 in the rain to make the commute closer to an hour. Hence, sitting in the parking lot listing to the last of Professor Peter Schickele’s show on the Trio. Glad I did. Otherwise I probably would have forgotten about the last few minutes and missed an old tidbit of Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore and Ella Fitzgerald singing Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Three Little Maids from School”.
What’s a “run?” Is that something like that “exercise” thing my doctor keeps mentioning?
I was doing 3 plus hours of commuting a day for several months. I listened to just about every podcast I was remotely interested in, some several times (yet I still can’t speak Mohawk). On some days I would run out of podcasts because of traffic jams. It was cool to be able to listen to all that but not worth the chunk of my life it took away. It did make things much more pleasant than radio. I forgot my shuffle once— once.
I’m now down to a reasonable hour and twenty minutes a day which has left me having to skip some podcasts but I’m saving some serious gas money. Maybe I’ll have to start running.