Daily Archives: 8/24/2005

Brainwagon Radio: Podcasting via CompactFlash, and Google Talk

Today’s podcast gives some information about my experiments with getting podcasts transferred to a CompactFlash card so I can listen to them using my Dell Axim x50v PDA, which I also use to record podcasts.

  • This post on Social Customer Manifesto detailed how one guy used a cheapy mp3 player in a pretty creative way. The player simply looked like a harddrive, so he installed Doppler on it, configured it to save podcasts to the same drive, and then created an AUTORUN.INF file so that when it is inserted. There is one big problem though: Windows XP doesn’t automatically run AUTORUN stuff from removeable drives. You can hack the registry to get around it, but instead I just configured my podcasting client to save to the CompactFlash “drive”, and dropped a shortcut on my desktop. Now, to update my CompactFlash I jam it in my reader slot, double click on the icon to run Doppler, and then wait for it to fill it up. Not too bad.
  • The pity is that I really prefer iTunes, especially their new podcasting support, which I find really decent. I suppose I could try configuring it in the same way, but instead I tried using SyncToy, a new gadget from Microsoft that copies one directory over to another. It worked, but didn’t really streamline my workflow over the other method.
  • Google Talk

    Everyone is running articles about Google Talk this morning. Apparently Google has settled on the Jabber protocol for instant messaging (gasp, a standard) and has released a pretty nice little client for Windows. Following their instructions, I’ve actually connected to the server using gaim as well. I have yet to try any of the audio capabilities, but the base functionality seems fine, and unpolluted by vast amounts of advertising (ala AIM, which I just can’t stand anymore). Nifty.

    As an experiment, anyone wanting to IM me can invite me (brainwagon at gmail.com) and I’ll try to respond.

    Addendum: Make already already has a cool hack:

    Yes, it is possible to broadcast music, MP3’s, Podcasts, etc. from your itunes, computer cd or whatever. Don’t limit yourself to a boring microphone… share your music!

    Basically it is just what you imagine: you can send an mp3 out by configuring the recording inputs to GoogleTalk to listen to the stereo mix device. Still, a cool idea that might be useful to us podcasters.