Archive for May, 2009

When I was telling a friend the other day about my podcastes, she asked me, “How do you listen to a podcast?”. On asking around, it turns out quite a number of my “middle youth” friends don’t know how to listen to podcasts and don’t have iTunes or other music / multimedia aggregator installed. Many have been too busy with work and family to fiddle around online to find out how to do it and others just don’t know where to start.

So to help them out - and anyone else who’d like to know how to listen to podcasts, here’s some guidance

Listen from my blog page

You can listen from my blog FusionView.co.uk - on the post which has the podcast, click on the grey player at the end of the post or on the brown player which shows a list of podcast episodes. That’s the simplest way to listen but you will need to be at your computer during the whole podcast to listen to all of it.

Note that you’ll need to have your sound speakers on to hear the audio. You’ll also need a broadband connection for best results.

Listen on your iPod or mp3 player

It’s best to listen to podcasts on an iPod or mp3 player which you can take with you wherever you are. Setting it up takes a few steps and once you’ve done that, everything is pretty much automated.

1. The easiest podcast application to use is iTunes - but do note that there are other options. Go to the Apple iTunes store and you’ll see the prominent section to Download iTunes, which will take you a page explaining what iTunes is with instructions. When you’re ready, click the Download Now button on that page and follow the instructions.

2. Once iTunes is downloaded, open it up and go the iTunes Store. You’ll see a virtual store where you can download music, videos, podcasts and audiobooks - some of which are free and some are paid-for.

3. To find the Fusion View podcast in the iTunes Store, the easiest thing to do is to go to the Search box in the top right corner and type in Fusion View. My podcast will come up - click on that to see the episodes. Click Subscribe and iTunes will download the latest episode. In future, any time you open up iTunes, it will download the latest episode since your last download.

You can also click on the Subscribe with iTunes button on the podcast posts on my blog - or below:

Clicking on the above button will open up iTunes and subscribe to the Fusion View podcast automatically.

Many other podcasters have this or similar logos on their blogs so clicking on that will automatically subscribe you to their podcasts using iTunes.

4. If you want to get previous episodes on my podcast, go to the Library section of iTunes (left sidebar), click on Podcasts. This will take you to your library of podcasts that you’ve subscribed to. Click on Fusion View in the list of your podcasts and you will see a drop down list of previous podcasts in pale grey text to indicate that you haven’t downloaded them yet. Click on the “Get” button alongside whichever episodes you want to download.

5. To transfer podcasts from your iTunes library to your iPod or mp3 player, plug that device into your computer with iTunes open. iTunes should automatically recognise the device and take you through the steps to make the connection and download items from iTunes to the device. The iPod synch should be seamless as it’s an Apple product but you can find more help at the iPod and iTunes FAQ page. For those with mp3 players, there’s more detailed information on the mp3 players and iTunes page.

6. Every time you then plug in your iPod or mp3 player to your computer, iTunes should automatically open up and transfer the latest episodes of podcasts you’ve subscribed to across to your device.

For beginners, there’s more info and help at the New Users Guide to iTunes page.

Again, you’ll get best results for fast downloads via a broadband connection.

There are great podcasts to download from the BBC as well as radio stations in Australia and USA - what I love is that you can listen to them when you choose, not when the broadcaster chooses. There are also really good ones by ordinary people like myself (eg on running, triathlon, gardening, marketing, management, communications, technology etc) and also podcasts of lectures from some of the best universities in the world - check out iTunes U in the iTunes Store (I especially like UC Berkeley’s History and Psychology podcasts). Podcasts have really saved me from boredom and helped me get through tedious activities as I plenty of interesting audio to entertain me when I commute to work or I’m doing the washing up or gardening.

Enjoy!