Subscribing to Podcasts

As I mentioned in my previous post, finding podcasts is relatively easy and there are thousands from which to choose. I am learning that I can not only listen to or watch podcasts on my computer but I can also download and save the podcast file on my computer and then play it using iTunes or Windows Media Player. Once the file is downloaded, it can be transferred to my iPod so that I can listen to what I want, when and where I want! What’s more, I can subscribe to podcasts through RSS podcast feeds, like Juice, Doppler and iTunes.
As an alternative to iTunes for subscribing to podcasts, Will Richardson recommends downloading the ipodder client by visiting indiepodder.org (which turned out to be a dead site). It seems ipodder has been replaced by Juice - so I decided to give Juice a try. This was very frustrating as my security software kept giving me warnings during the download. I aborted the first attempt and then decided to take the risk and installed the Juice program after all. With the download complete, I copied the URL of the desired podcast subscription into Juice, which attempted the download, with more warnings about the “unsecure source”. I panicked and uninstalled Juice. It was back to iTunes for me.

Subscribing to podcasts on iTunes was very user-friendly. I simply went to iTunes on my computer and clicked on the Podcast link from the source list on the side menu. At the bottom of the page, I clicked on Podcast directory and then I was able to browse through different podcasts in different categories. When I found a podcast for which I wanted a subscription, I clicked on the Subscribe button and it appeared in downloads and was soon on the list under podcasts. On the podcast page, under the settings button, I can decide how often I want my iTunes to check for updates. Now I can listen to my favourite CBC radio programs anywhere, anytime.