Treocasting

A few months ago a friend introduced me to a website called ITConversations which provides recorded audio programs generated from conversations, interviews, conferences and the like.  As the name of the site suggests, topics discussed are almost exclusively technology related and participants are typically among the luminaries in their respective fields which makes for very interesting and high quality content.

I have become quite an avid fan of ITConversations and regularly download some of this audio content in MP3 format for playback on my Treo with PocketTunes (or any other MP3 player on my Treo) when going to a meeting in town or while travelling.  However, since we are now living in a society of 'choice up the wazoo' it is only natural that a simple MP3 download will not be the only option that you have available to listen to ITConversations' programs.

If you want to listen to a single program:

1. Do you prefer to listen to the programs on your PC?  No problem.  Choose between Windows Media stream, MP3 stream, download in MP3 or AAC formats for playback with your preferred MP3 player or iTunes.

2. Do you prefer to listen to the programs on your portable music player?  No problem.  Choose between MP3 download for playback on your Treo or AAC download for playback on your iPod.

3. Do you prefer to stream the programs directly on your Treo?  No problem if you have Pocket Tunes Deluxe and if you subscribe to an unlimited data plan with your carrier (otherwise it might be a tad expensive...).  Launch the Blazer browser on your Treo (or any other browser that you might use), visit ITConversations, browse to find your content of interest, select 'Stream MP3' and then 'Save' which will launch Pocket Tunes and begin streaming your program.

If you want to listen to an entire series of programs however you'll most likely not want to be clicking around for hours downloading every single program of that particular series - even less so if there are many series that you would like to 'subscribe' to.  This is where Podcasting and our own incarnation Treocasting comes into play (no pun intended).

To help get you started, I came across a very good overview of Podcasting specifically for Palm powered devices over at Raving Media.  The post is naturally called Palmcasting...

Treonauts are always on the lookout for the next big thing...