Enhanced Podcasts

I like the new Apple iPhone -- although not as much as Dianne who absolutely LOVES her iPhone. Rather than move my music from my iPod over to the phone and suck up all the phone memory, I decided to leave my music and photos where there were and use the phone for podcasts. I never have been much of a podcast listener. It seemed like too much effort to subscribe and download the latest and greatest (even though it is really simple). Since I'm connecting the phone to the computer a lot, that barrier goes away. The podcasts also give me something to listen to if I have some down time while waiting somewhere.

I enjoy the standard audio podcasts. I listen to several science podcasts, the news from Lake Woebegon, etc. But it wasn't until I started poking around for other podcasts to get some variety that I appreciated the value of an enhanced podcast. The enhancement is that the creator can display images and synchronize them with the podcast audio. You can view them on-line or mobile if you have an iPod capable of displaying video.

The two podcasts that really drove that home for me are both from Jeff Curto, a photography professor at the College of DuPage. One is called Camera Position and consists of fairly short commentaries on one or a small handful of photos. Jeff uses the enhanced podcast very well to show the whole photo he is talking about or to zoom in on a region of the photo to make a point. I'd highly recommend this series if you're in to the history and the creative side of photography.

The other podcast Jeff does is called the History of Photography. These can be longer podcasts from his college lectures, but again he uses the video iPod images very well to enhance his presentation. The summer series of podcasts was a bit more condensed. I wish I would have had something like this when taking art history in college!

With my new found appreciation for enhanced podcasts, a recent post on the Swissmiss site about a video podcast on origami sounded pretty cool. Has anyone been following this series?

What to do on a Plane?

While flying, I looked at what people were doing with their time. Quite a few were snoozing. A lot of people were reading paper - either paperback books (very popular), magazines, or newspapers. Close behind paperback books was various sudoku books. That’s the traveler’s puzzle of choice. A few people, like me, were using their laptops. Most of the laptop use wasn’t for entertainment though. Must be the Tuesday business traveler. A lot of people combined one of these activities with some music player like an iPod.

What people weren’t doing was watching the movies –OK, there were a few, but not many. Maybe it was the movie choices (X-Men and Poseidon), but it seems like that would be a potential place to cut cost and save a lot of weight in the plane. The MD-90 I was on had monitors above the seats every couple of rows.

There must be a better way to cater to these activities. Electronic books and news just hasn’t caught fire. If the equipment is good and it is easy to load content, it seems like a good solution for the readers. I’d rather have an electronic device with a variety of books, magazines, and news to reduce what I carry. It seems that would be a greener solution too. But such a device should go further and include a music player and some input device for crossword or sudoku puzzles. You could use it for an individualized movie choice. Sounds like a cross between a Sony reader, an iPod, and a Nintendo DS. Wouldn’t it be cool to fill in entertainment choices when booking your ticket that would be handed to you on a memory card when you check in? Plug it in your device and go. Might as well put my baggage claim checks and boarding pass on there too.

Let’s see, I’d like some easy sudoku, USA Today, Newsweek, the in-flight magazine and Sky Mall along with some guitar blues and classic rock.

Oh, and make sure the devices are shielded so they don’t interfere with navigation. I don’t want some goofball trying to finish his sudoku puzzle to put us below the approach path so we crash short of the runway.