Hear a Podcasts on your PDA device

Dec 28 Hear a Podcasts on your PDA device
Found in:Mobile News, Tips, PDA,

For those of you who don't own a slick new iPod, it's easy to hear a Podcast on your PDA. For the uninitiated, Podcasts are the fastest growing segment of iTunes. PDA users may be feeling a little left out in the cold, but we don't have to be.

Podcasts are essentially audio files, either MP3 or MPEG-2 audio available through iTunes (as well as various websites). Podcasts are available on just about every subject — from hard news to comedy — downloaded to your computer.

Getting Podcasts onto your Palm or Pocket PC is very easy, and you don't need to buy an iPod to do it.

The process is so straightforward, you'll wonder why you haven't done it sooner.

First, download iTunes onto your desktop computer. Yes, there is a version for Windows-based computers.

Next, from the main menu of iTunes, click on Podcast. Choose what category of Podcast you want to get or do a search for a specific Podcast.

Once you've found one or several, you can then click the icon to start downloading a specific Podcast or you can subscribe to the entire series.

The only technical thing you'll need to feel comfortable with, especially if you don't have an iPod that will automatically sync your content for you, is into which folder iTunes is putting your Podcast files. You'll need to be able to find that folder so you can transfer the Podcast files to your PDA.

Podcasts will automatically show up in Windows Media Player, which will let you sync directly to your storage card whether you are using a Palm or Pocket PC.

I strongly advocate storage cards for your Podcasts since they tend to be very large audio files. After you listen, you can always delete them and put on more if your space is at a premium.

Palm PDA users can skip Windows Media Player all together and sync directly to their storage cards using Quick Install.

From there, Podcasts work just like any other audio file on your PDA. All free or commercial music players will play them.

Unfortunately, Video Podcasts don't seem to transfer at all.

I admit to trying several different methods to copy and convert a Video Podcast MPEG-4 file to my PDA since the excellent and free video viewer application TCPMP (more about this great application next week) can handle the format. But all attempts ended in vain.

So, until someone comes up with a work around, we PDA users will just have to settle for the audio Podcasts, which are better than nothing. If I hear of a better solution, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

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