In the Hands around the net

What are the cool kids going these days? Podcasting: it’s the new skateboarding! And what, you might ask, is this “podcasting?” I didn’t know myself until Dan Steeves clued me in.

Here’s the idea: You have a portable digital music player (e.g. an iPod). You find some blogs to your liking that include audio (e.g. this one!). Such a blog is called a “podcast” — and yes, people use this word with a straight face. Then you get a program (e.g. iPodder) that automatically downloads new entries from the audio blog to your music player.

At first I thought this was just a gratuitous overapplication of technology, one of those delightful but ridiculous “because we can” projects like The Public 8 Ball. But actually, it makes sense: every day on your commute or your run or wherever it is that you carry your iPod around, instead of getting the same songs over and over, you get a sort of personalized global community radio. Nice idea. Heck, if I had an iPod, I’d probably do it.

Obviously this idea fits In the Hands perfectly. And a few sites devoted to podcasting agree: the folks at Podcast Reviews and Podcast Bunker gave the blog nice little write-ups, and decent ratings to boot. Thanks fellows!

Oddly, this is the only blog / podcast I’ve found that’s publishing original music — all the other podcasts seem to be either talk or broadcasts of already-released music. Surely I’m not the only one? If you discover any others, let me know!