Sticher app for iPhone…. I’ll admit I’m a bit behind the curve on the RSS “thing”…. Stitcher is an app (and more generally a service) that offers podcast delivery without having to know any of the technical jargon…. it only offers podcasts in its service, not random ones you might find…. but it does a seamless job of delivering the content.
It probably won’t happen for the obvious reason, but I find that I get really impatient at the slow pace of the podcasts…. it’s like they’re stretching 2 minutes of information to an hour with patter and ensemble conversation….. I really want a “skip X minutes” or play at 2x speed” button…. sliding the controls to skip is not very precise and requires too much attention to the phone….
Long term, radio has to deal with the issue of…. given a choice between listening to a show when I want and with the ability to skip commercials… (eek!) or listening to the show when a radio station wants to play it, why would I choose the radio station stream? The only answer that makes sense to me is if the show is LIVE and there is significant interaction with the audience. This is the vampire that is stalking “real” radio
The iPod touch with firmware 3.1.2 and newer (and I assume the iPhone too) allow you to play podcasts at half speed and double speed.
Stitcher has its own player – it doesn’t use Quicktime, which also means no background playing. If it has a speed control, I haven’t spotted it yet.
Apple did a smart thing today – I had 8 updates to apps today. Looks like for non-critical updates, they are pushing them to weekend only. That should help AT&T’s network capacity issues