Podcasting - who cares?

I just wish people would stop calling them podcasts. They are not being broadcast by an ipod. They are being listened to on an ipod, and many times, not even an ipod is playing them.

For them to be truly podcasts, you would have broadcast them from your ipod to somewhere else, such as with a FM transmitter.

And I think podcasts (silly name aside) are a fad and will die. imho.
 
was it adam curry who coined the phrase 'podcast'? its a bit like the mp3 player market - 'ipod' has simply become the defacto term for all players amongst a generation... podcast seems like a fair enough term to me... and it seems that all the makers of them from the bedroom dj's to the majors are happy to call them such...

...another example would be coca cola / coke - everything of its ilk is generally called 'coke'...

also - there have been over one million subscriptions of podcasts since the launch of itunes 4.9 - thats subscriptions - not the 'get episode' method...

http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/06/30/podcast.subscriptions/
 
Does anyone know how to remove 'Podcasts' from the menu on the left on iTunes? and 'Radio' too come to think of it, I don't care for either.

Update:
parb.johal@ante: I did that and found the quality of content poor and uninteresting, the thread was about whether podcasting is worth getting excited over or a load of wooby-jooby about nothing. To me, after having a listen and look through, I find it uninteresting - to ME, that's the point surely - we're supposed to give our own perspectives, others will agree or not, nothing wrong with that at all. I would have liked to see the iTunes podcast interface to be more localised, some English people may want to hear foreign US stuff, I don't, there's nothing wrong with it and it doesn't make me short sighted. I'm just not interested in much stuff from the US, it's not being anti-American or anything, some things I like, some I don't - I'd like to make the choice for myself rather than have it forced on me, I think that is fair and reasonable. If I was Spanish or German I'd expect and want relevant content, I'm English and I'd like British content supplied, the BBC podcasts are not very 'user friendly' as they are synthesised and hard to understand. Now, in the light of our last round, can you just be open-minded enough to understand that people have tastes and preferences without getting all haughty about it, and realise a question has been posed and I've answered it from MY perspective and according to my opinion without it being a slur on those who differ. ;) I don't want to hijack this thread so if you want to continue, start a new thread or send me a message. Cheers.
 
Robn Kester said:
I just wish people would stop calling them podcasts. They are not being broadcast by an ipod. They are being listened to on an ipod, and many times, not even an ipod is playing them.

For them to be truly podcasts, you would have broadcast them from your ipod to somewhere else, such as with a FM transmitter.
Click to expand...

Just to continue with linguistic thing.... To continue the comparison that "podcasts" should be put out by "iPods," then apparently "broadcasts" should be put out by "broads."

Instead, I feel that, although "podcast" is a silly name, it is okay because, instead of "cast"ing the message out to a "broad" audience, like a broadcast, you're "cast"ing the message out to an "iPod" audience.

Language rant over.

P.S. To remove "Radio" or "Party Shuffle" from the Source panel, choose "Preferences" from the "iTunes" menu. Click "general," and uncheck the options for the respective sources. Such an option however, doesn't seem to exist for the "Podcasts" feature.
 
adambyte said:
Just to continue with linguistic thing.... To continue the comparison that "podcasts" should be put out by "iPods," then apparently "broadcasts" should be put out by "broads."
Click to expand...
LOL! That's funny :D

adambyte said:
P.S. To remove "Radio" or "Party Shuffle" from the Source panel, choose "Preferences" from the "iTunes" menu. Click "general," and uncheck the options for the respective sources. Such an option however, doesn't seem to exist for the "Podcasts" feature.
Click to expand...
Of course! Stupid me! Thanks for that :) Seems a bit inconsistent not including a check box for podcasts though..
 
adambyte said:
Instead, I feel that, although "podcast" is a silly name, it is okay because, instead of "cast"ing the message out to a "broad" audience, like a broadcast, you're "cast"ing the message out to an "iPod" audience.
Click to expand...

It sounds a lot like over-zealous marketing from Apple, or trying to place their brand image on a technology that they didn't invent, but as the name was thought up by a third party, that's not the case.

Also, it will be interesting to see if Windows Media Player will ever support podcasts because they'd clearly be advertising Apple's products :p
 
"pod"-cast. not ipodcast. It's about how it's distributed. You have RSS as a pod for MP3 (or other) content. It becomes clear if you think about it. Thinking "podcast" derives from iPod is a bit, well, strange. Both have "pod" in their name, but people seem not to think about what a "pod" is and means.
 
Might be that the people creating it had iPods in mind, too, (and marketing-wise, that certainly helped), but my explanation still can make sense to those who want people to stop calling it "podcasting". Which ain't gonna happen, anyway.
 
I thought Podcasting was a neat feature. I downloaded a few things of the Mac to Mac show and enjoyed listening to it some as I did a little work on the computer. Though it's really neat and I'd like to see more and more things being added, I wouldn't ever pay for this. So, the moment they start charging, I'll stop listening. :p
 
Reality said:
I thought Podcasting was a neat feature. I downloaded a few things of the Mac to Mac show and enjoyed listening to it some as I did a little work on the computer. Though it's really neat and I'd like to see more and more things being added, I wouldn't ever pay for this. So, the moment they start charging, I'll stop listening. :p
Click to expand...

Yep, same here. They may, however, opt to play adverts like some radio stations do. I wouldn't object to that as long as they're not too long or frequent. I wouldn't object to a "sponsored by" message at the beginning either.

Although on second thoughts, that might affect the quality of the content (i.e. they try to keep advertisers happy rather than listeners).
 
Quick and painless:

Podcasting is nothing more than Webradio. Don't need that, already have my Webradios bookmarked. Podcasting isn't as nice to me as I thought it'd be.
 
parb.johal@ante said:
you're right - podcasts are exactly like radio shows you can download...

to the people who like podcasts it great wooby-jooby that itunes supports them...

to the people who don't care about podcast its wooby-jooby over nothing...
Click to expand...

Amen!
 
I love it.

I miss out on some radio shows during the day so getting them automatically on the ipod is great. Also means I can listen to radio from other countries.

Its very cool..
 
Wow, what a lot of wining over something that's free. I say, take it or leave it!

I like some of the podcastings that one can download and listen to "on the go". There are more that I do not want to listen to so....what's the big deal?
There are worse things to rant about, imv. ;)

Cheers!
 
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