Those of you who’ve been visiting this site for a while, may remember that Mike and I used to do a (mostly) weekly podcast. During that time, I played around with dozens of different audio recording applications, none of which worked as well as my still favorite application, Audacity; however, there is a small application I just discovered which may prove useful not just for podcasting, but for recording streaming internet radio, or even VOIP calls on your machine. The application is MP3MyMP3 Recorder.

Were you one of the lucky few who managed to get your grubby little hands on an XBox360 yesterday? If so, I hope you didn’t beat up any EBGames employees for one. Now that you have your new console set up, you may want to put its multimedia capabilities to some good use, like maybe listening to a few podcasts while playing on XBox Live, right? Sure you do!

I, like much of the world it seems, own an iPod so I often forget that there are other MP3 players available on the market. iTunes is great because it automatically synchronizes any podcasts you download straight onto your iPod, but what if you don’t have an iPod? Many MP3 players don’t really require software to transfer songs onto it, instead using a simple drag and drop interface. If you have one of these devices, you may find it bothersome to have to download podcasts with a podcatcher then move those files onto your device, but I found out about a little tool the other day which does it for you, MP3Loader.

Mefeedia is an awesome service I heard about on Rocketboom which is very similar to RSS aggregators like Bloglines and Rojo but targetting the emerging market of video podcasts (or videocasts, or vlogs, or whatever you want to call them). In this way, it is similar to my favorite podcatcher/podcast directory, Odeo. Unlike other videocast aggregators, there is no need to download videos as they are streamed right from the browser. I currently subscribe to about 10 different video podcasts so I have a few gigs worth of video just from that, so it’s nice to finally just be able to stream content. The interface could use a little work as it’s not as clean and intuitive as Odeo but there is lots of great content, and you can tag videos, send them to friends, and do a few other cool things. Additionally, you could subscribe to your member feed in iTunes to gather all those videos if you wanted to transfer them to your iPod. Mefeedia is totally free.

Looking for somewhere to host your podcast or videocast? There are many options available nowadays, but if you’re looking for something else, check out a new service called Shockpod. Shockpod offers both free and paid services with different tiers of hosting. If you select the free account, you will receive 90MB of free hosting with podcast sizes up to 30MB allowed. The free account is supported by audio ads which subscribers can download if they wish. The paid account ($4 USD/month) has no ads and gives you 750MB of storage with no restrictions on individual podcast file size. Bandwidth seems to be unlimited but I couldn’t find enough information on this. Shockpod seems worth a look though if you’re not fond of other similar services.

Hot on the trail of my post on universities who make lectures available via podcasts, it seems that iPREPpress and SparkNotes have teamed up to make study guides available as podcasts. I’m sure many of you who have attended private high schools or universities have at some point used SparkNotes to get ahead on a course, so I think this is a great idea. All the content usually available on the print guides will be available on the podcasts as well, including book and plot summaries, list of characters, and more. Each guide will sell for USD4.95 and can be downloaded directly from iPREPpress. Currently available titles including study guides for literature classics like Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and The Odyssey among others. My question is, why are all these great productivity tools coming out AFTER I graduate college!?

When people think of podcasts, they usually think of weekly techie shows, sometimes with bad audio quality, but a few universities are using them as teaching tools, sometimes even letting students miss a few classes as long as they listen to their lectures via podcast; some schools even provide students with iPods so they have a play with which to listen to them. Productive Strategies has put together a short and sweet list of academic lecture podcasts which are freely available to the public. The list includes podcasts from Purdue University, the University of Washington, Washington College of Law, the University of Hawaii, and even Hardvard University. Those of you who are always looking for learning for the sake of it (guilty!), should definitely check them out. You won’t get college credit for them, of course, but it’s still a pretty cool tool. I hope that other universities start doing this as well, as it could be particularly useful for those of you who are in distance learning programs.