Podcast Critique

For anyone with average technological skills finding and choosing podcasts seems like a pretty easy endeavor. Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near average skills, so it took me a little more work than I would generally care to admit. However, once I had someone show me how to do it, it was quite easy and straight forward. I downloaded three different podcasts and put them onto an ipod so that I could listen to them anywhere. Since I don't have a computer at home this was a particularly useful feature for me. I choose two podcasts from NPR, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and "Car Talk". I love listening to these but rarely get the chance because of the time they come on the radio and the fact that having two children leaves little time for leisurely listening. This was my favorite thing about the podcasts, that you can listen to them anytime at your own convenience. The automatic download of each installment means that you also don't have to remember to do it each week, it's automatically done for you. The other podcast I choose was from the New York Times, a weekly news update, this one was about women's shelters in Afghanistan. I thought this was a useful podcast because again, it's hard to catch news at home, and I definitely don't have time to read a newspaper very often. I thought this, or a daily news podcast would be particularly useful if you had a commute from work and could download to an ipod and have something to listen to each day for the ride home. I found it somewhat hard to tell at a glance how often anygiven podcast was published, but I'm sure it wouldn't really be hard to figure out. Overall I was thoroughly intrigued by podcasts and intend to try to keep enjoying them.