Podcasts put users in control, and is an “Ambient” medium

This post in response to Phil’s experience listening to the TalkCrunch podcast “Pocasts are Too Long“.  While yes, an hour could be considered long, he’s in more control than he realizes.  Phil, here’s some tips and suggestions that could empower as a podcast consumer:

1) Browser players give you control: You can control the podcast in the browser, the player that Mike’s embedded lets you fast forward, rewind, stop the podcast. Try dragging the arrow left and right.  (TV, Talk radio, radio doesn’t give you this control)

2) MP3 gives you control: On your mobile MP3 Player you have the same amount of controls if not more.

3) Most of the time, more is better: Having more content in this medium may be better than not having enough, since with points 2 and 3, you’re in control (kind of like Tivo)

4) Podcasts put the listener in charge: you can simply turn it off.

5) Podcast are an Ambient Medium: which means you can do other things unlike reading, or watching video.  You can drive, cook, eat, or put one earbud in your left ear when your wife is chewing you out about blogging too much while driving.  (don’t forget to nod once in a while and mutter the occasional “yes dear”)

Oh, and I’m not getting into the whole Podcast naming debate so I’ll just use the term “Podcast” for now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 10:56 am and is filed under Podcasts, Web Tools, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.