Podcasts

I've spent lots of time browsing the suggested podcast sites.

The BBC's website seemed really attractive, intelligently organized and easy to use. I discovered the podcasts of a few radio shows that I like to listen to. I thought it a great idea to collect the best bits of their broadcasts on Google Reader.

Podcast.com was a bit too busy for my liking. Amongst podcasts that seem to come from reputable channels and offer intelligible and interesting files, there were many others which seemed like amateurish nonsense. Some podcasts brought up lots of error messages and others took a long time to download. The ratio of quality information to rubbish on the internet seems to be quite bad generally. This site reassures me that people who like to organize data truly make the world a better place. (Gosh librarians are just brilliant aren't they! Hee hee!)

Podcasts from the University of Oxford seems like a good idea in essence; as a student, I think I would have really appreciated the opportunity to re-listen to parts of my lectures. When my eyes were too tired to read about subjects, it would have been good to listen to others talking about them instead. Files seemed few and far between, however, and many appeared to be quite old. Perhaps demand doesn't warrant the time and effort of putting lots of files out there at the moment? Perhaps this is a field that will develop.