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November 25, 2004
Podcast First Take: iPodLounge Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast FirstTake
Format: commentary
Content: iPod product reviews and commentary
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe; don't own an iPod.
Typical Length: 30 minutes
iPod Lounge's podcast is an experiment; the editors of iPodlounge don't know if they are going to continue to produce it or not, but they request a review, so there you have it.
Jeremy at iPodLounge is the narrator of this podcast, and if you own an iPod or are interested in the technology (or even are thinking about purchasing one) then this podcast contains a great deal of useful data. The iPod Lounge website is one of the best-known resources for iPod users, and much of what makes the site so valuable can be heard in the podcast. If you are not interested in the iPod, however, this podcast is probably not for you. In addition, I think much of what makes the site so terrific a resource is the member interaction, which will be difficult to reproduce in a podcast. That said, the attention to detail in the reviews and commentary is quite impressive.
In the first 'cast Jeremy reviews the iPod Photo, Oakley's Thump sun-glasses/mp3 player, and Bose's iPod Dock. As I said, these reviews are higly detailed and they are well-organized, commenting on everything from the features of the device in question to (in the case of the iPod Photo) delving into the operation and weaknesses of the accompanying software. The reviews are impartial and factual - no product pushing here, but there are enough details for you to listen to the podcast and make an informed choice about a putchase (if one opinion is enough).
The vocals for this podcast are recorded using an iPod Photo and the Griffin's iTalk recorder, and as such the audio for the podcast is acceptable. The vocals in specific are clear and easy to understand. I don't know if the post-production work (if any) was done on the iPod, but I suspect the musical intro and outro were mixed in after the fact. These clips of music were a little distorted on the bass end on my portable, but not so bad in my automobile. The music does not cut off Jeremy's vocals at all and the fades are handled smoothly, but a little bit of a musical bed might make the podcast a little less flat.
The podcast is encoded at 56 kbps, which seems to me to be a perfectly fine bitrate for this sort of podcast, and the resulting mp3 clocks in at just over 10MB for the almost-half-hour podcast. iPodLounge's meta-data is satisfactory; files and tracks are easy to identify both in my portable and in the Windows filesystem. There are no musical tracks, so track lengths are unimportant.
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review horowitz
Posted by cori at November 25, 2004 06:58 AM