Shedding Some Light on Podcasts!

Apologies to everyone who didn’t know what I was wittering on about in my Thank You Cloody and Frank posting, so here’s a little bit of information to clarify things.

Podcasts

Now I may be teaching my grannie to suck eggs as they say so, apologies if that’s the case, but here’s some information on podcasts.

Podcasts are shows on radio or TV which you can download to your computer, iPod or iPhone or Apple TV. If you have one!

You can see a huge list of podcasts and download them from the iTunes store.

Alternatively you can download specific programmes from other websites such as the BBC or ITV. I listen to Radio 2 a lot but often miss Wake Up to Wogan so I download the podcast from the Radio 2 webpage to the computer to listen to it, when I get time!

You could then transfer them to an iPod if you want to listen at other times and in other places. To be honest I haven’t bothered doing that yet, I just use the laptop.

There’s a tutorial here on the iTunes website just click on the Get Free Podcasts at the bottom of the page to load the video.


I found it quite useful.

Thank You Cloody and Frank!

Note my new speakers! (lovely Christmas present from my daughter)

Just wanted to say a big thank you to Cloody and Frank who pointed me in the direction of using the iPod to listen to podcasts with their Mighty iPod Shuffle posting.

I hadn't bothered at all with the iTunes shop after my horrendous problems with iTunes. However I took Frank's word for it and did a bit of a reccie. I found absolutely loads of podcasts there that as Frank said are free to download. All kinds of topics, arts, comedy, music, education and so on.

My favourites? From the Education section I've downloaded a whole Spanish course, Coffee Break Spanish. There's French, German, Italian, Japanese and loads more types of language courses.

My other choice picks are Wake up to Wogan and Stephen Fry's podcasts.

It's absolutely amazing! I'm going to spend some more time researching what's available.

Now there has to be a downside for me, there always is somehow. I can't get any podcast to download to my laptop, only my husband's. So I can't download to my iPod as I use my laptop for that. Not clever enough to figure out how or whether you can use the iPod with two laptops. Not to worry I'll just use his laptop to listen to them.

So a million thanks to you Cloody and Frank, happy podcasting.

Hope the weather is better for you. Take care of yourselves.

The iPod Saga Continues

My iPod

Now just look at it sitting there. Pretty little thing isn’t it? Sounds great too for such a small piece of equipment. It's really small, my car key is longer!

However that's where my admiration ends. It’s amazing how it can be such a real pain to get the music onto it, thanks to iTunes.

Now I’m no quitter, I’m determined I’m not going to let iTunes beat me. I’ve been trying for almost a whole week to put some more CDs onto the computer but it’s such tortuous process. A real pain in the bum!

It's still putting some songs into different folders. Michael Jackson’s Number Ones went into 18 separate folders. So I decided I can live without that on the iPod and took it off.

Still not finding the art work either and it’s so slow. It often freezes totally and I daren’t use any other programs with it. So much for the multi-tasking concept, iTunes puts the mockers on that!

Decided to check out whether other people are having problems. First my son-in-law who has all his music on his iPod. He says he has the same problem with the art work but it doesn’t bother him. Well I can't ignore it, looks horrible. I know I'm a bit of a perfectionist but I hate those blanks. So I’ll have to keep going onto the Internet to find it and manually add it. How come if iTunes is the major online music store they can’t find half my records when they’re all still available to buy?

He has had a different problem with iTunes though, has lost half his music from the laptop! Hasn’t a clue how it happened. Now he has to figure out whether he can get it back from the iPod onto his computer. Hopefully I won't have that problem, but if I do, my backup drive should put them back.

Tried my son next. His comment about iTunes was, “It’s total pants!” He’s about to buy a new MP3 player, one that he can use his Windows Media Player with. Looks like I'm not the only one who has problems.

So Apple, (the company that is world renowned for its design of computers), if you can design such nice looking music hardware, why the heck can’t you go the whole hog and get the software to work properly?