Thing 21: Castaway

I like podcasts although they are less interesting than video. I suppose watching someone expound isn't that interesting either, so for some things podcasting is an easier and cheaper alternative to video which still allows for content to quickly reach an audience.

I explored the three podcast search tools. Here is my take on them:

Podcast.net--the worst of the three. I search for "library" and got about half the hits I had gotten on the other two and none of the podcasts seemed to be from 2007! Thumbs down!

Podcastalley.com--This one had more hits than Podcast.net and recent 'casts. The only think I really didn't like about Podcast alley were the ads. Thumbs up!

Yahoo podcasts: This one had even more hits than Postcast Alley, but it looked like a lot of them were duplicates. I did like the fact that they had ratings for each podcast. Thumbs up!

I downloaded one podcast into my blog from Podcast Alley called LibVibe which looks like a good library-based blog (has library news). Each 'cast is sort of long for my taste, but I realized that I was just sitting there listening rather than listening and doing something else.

The advantage of the podcast over a video is that you can definitely multitask while listening to one rather than just sitting and staring at your computer screen. Podcasts may grow on me for this reason.