Podcasts on the Android

Reading Time: 2 minutesFor three days now I have been listening to podcasts on the Nexus one using Listen. It is a podcast app that allows you to subscribe to and download podcasts from the comfort of the mobile device.

What I like about this app is the ease with which you can select which podcasts to listen to. If you want to listen to This week in tech for example just type the name of the podcast and it will find those feeds, allow you to subscribe or manually select which podcasts to listen to.

Another aspect of the search feature which I like is the search for keywords function. It displays a number of podcasts according to the keyword.

As an example I typed hike to see which podcasts would be suggested. I found some trailcast podcasts and so downloaded a podcast. It works well. If you enjoy the podcast then you can subscribe to and download the podcasts.

The settings tab has an interesting set of options. You can tell it to download new apps when possible, select whether you want the downloads to occur when you are using wifi or over the air using the data plan. You can set how many podcasts you want to store on the device at any one time.

One of the best features for me is that when you have a few hours to listen to podcasts rather than work by podcast subscription this software allows you to listen to podcasts in queue order. What this means is that I may be listening to This week in tech, then this week in google before moving on to the BBC history podcast and finishing with a trail cast podcast. With this system you do not need to interrupt what you are doing to get to the next podcast.

The benefit of a podcast client that is within the phone is that you can select what to listen to whilst on the move. As a benefit of this you are less likely to download hundreds of podcasts you end up never listening to.

The last feature is that it is synched with Google Reader. This means that you can see those subscriptions from any google reader application. It is stored in the cloud so should work across multiple devices.

This is the future of podcasting, and media consumption. It takes advantage of the power that modern devices can sync from anywherwe at anytime, that your habits and tastes may change and that you actualise it from any machine, computer, or mobile.