Isn’t the coolest thing about podcasting the fact that it can be different things to different people? Several comments here allude to that. The fact that podcasting can be hard to describe without references to things people know (blogging, radio, MP3 players…). After all, you can podcast PDF files as well as video and audio. But people do tend to think from what they know.

Longer podcasts can be really nice. Even some fairly dry ones. Some quick and witty ones are also cool. And holding a strict schedule is difficult to do, for a lot of people (including bloggers). Cool thing is, there’s room for all of this. What is podcasting likely to achieve if it comes to the point at which 95% of podcast listeners only listen to two or three main regularly-produced podcasts? Now, something which seems to be missing from podcast directories (haven’t looked specifically, but didn’t notice this yet) is a way to sort and search for podcasts by types. You mostly want short, infrequent, blog-like podcasts? There should be an easy way to find them. You only want podcast versions of professionally produced radio-like shows? That list should include non-mainstream shows. In fact, we should be able to have different podcast subscriptions for different situations. Don’t know about you but I have a hard time listening to people talk when I write. Music podcasts can be cool but most of them have sections of talking. Kind of distracting. On the other hand, it’s fun to listen to talk-intensive podcasts while walking or commuting. It’d be useful to have different playlists for different activities. Actually, same holds true for music. Not everyone listens to the same music while doing the dishes or taking a shower.