Old Habits, New Technology

I'm not just a podcaster, I'm also a listener.

I just noticed something that I thought was funny and maddening at the same
time. Remember when you where a kid and you sent off for something in the
mail? And every day you'd run out to the mailbox to see if it was there
yet. The crushing disappointment every time you opened that box and bill,
bill, junk mail... Damn! Still not here! And then one day, just as you'd
almost given up hope, you go out to the mailbox jaded, not expecting to see
anything and IT'S HERE! Oh happy day!

Well, I'm starting to do that with podcasts. My podcast for 1SRC.com seems
to be relatively rare in that it's posted every Wednesday, no matter what.
Sometimes I define Wednesday as 3am Thusday morning, but you get the idea.
No matter when I record it, you'll be able to listen by Thusday.

If only more podcasts were like that. When's the next Engadget Podcast
going to come out? Have Phil and Len just fallen off the planet? Every day,
I check my podcast download folder. Slashdot review, Rip&Read, stuff from
IT Conversations I probably won't get time to listen to... No Engadget!
Damn!

And I listen to three shows on Air America Radio by podcast so I can
timeshift them. Depending on whether I'm in morning person or night owl
mode, I can't listen to both Morning Sedition and Majority Report here in
Denver. I also get to listen to those and the Franken show sans
commercials, which is nice (for me, not the network).

Whoever puts these 'casts together does a great job. The sound quality is
great for the file size and the commercials are edited out cleanly. But
sometimes it can take up to three or four days for the 'cast to make it's
way to my download folder (from where it's dragged and dropped into Palm
Desktop to sync to the music player on my Zod and played in prodcast
order). It's Wednesday evening here in Denver (I'm at Chipotle, avoiding
recording my own podcast) and I just now got to listen to Morning Sedition
from Monday morning! Argh!

Again, I'm not complaining. These are free services and I wouldn't suffer
so much waiting for them if they weren't so darn good. But the waiting, the
endless waiting is just killing me!

Thank goodness I have Audible to fall back on...