I recieved some comments regarding my post about podcasting, so I thought I would follow up. They ranged from “my iPod is for music” to “this would be a personal hell for me” to “it’s cool if you keep the podcasts short and sweet” to “this is the worst idea ever”.

Scoble even goes as far as saying “thanks from Microsoft to the Ipodder team“ (speaking of which, have you ever seen Plus! Sync and Go? It’s been doing time shifted audio recording over the net for years).

Now, here’s my followup: I certainly agree that audio can be an extremely powerful medium (as is video, as proven by the Channel 9 team) and I’m not just dismissing this as a fad. For me (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), podcasting just doesn’t work for me.

First, there’s a big difference between time shifted recordings of ’shows’ vs. bloggers just posting audio of their posts. There’s been several products already out on the market, such as RadioShark (did it ever ship?) or Plus! Sync and Go that provide the ability to grab streams, such as NPR, CBS Marketwatch, etc and record to MP3 or a device for later listening.

One of the best technical shows has been .NET Rocks. For several months, I would download the latest show and bring it with me to the gym on my iPod. After a while though, I kept falling behind with the episodes (usually around 40-50 minutes long) and just gave up listening. It was always entertaining, and I especially enjoyed the episodes with Chris Sells and Alan Cooper. It just became to much of a time commitment to keep up with the content.

Now, the thought of bloggers putting up audio webcasts is where “yawn” comes to mind. Here’s an example of why: Don Box has a really great post (FYI: his permalinks seem messed up) on how to use HTTP.SYS to self host a web service. He has some small code snippets that I can not only read quickly, but I can file the post for later reference and move on with my life. In 2 months, when I need to do something with HTTP.SYS, do I really want to sit and listen through a talk to figure out how to use it? No. Do I want to sit for 5 minutes hearing Don talk about it? Not really.

And that’s with content I’m interested in. Don’t get me started on the other stuff.

Maybe I just don’t get it. For now, podcasting feels like another technology that’s an answer that’s searching for a question. (C’mon, really: How often do you get an audio email?). Jeff Atwood summed it up for me: “it’s like getting voicemail all day instead of e-mail. In what crazy bizarro world is that BETTER?”

Anyways - this is my last post for now on podcasting. If I have anything else to post, perhaps I’ll podcast it