Thing 21: Podcasts

This is another example of a Thing that can be very attractive for some people but not exactly for me. The thing is I do not own an iPod nor an MP3-player and do not plan to acquire one soon. Maybe a should!

I have to admit that the first two podcasts I "listened" to I was expecting to also see images or a video... Yeah... then I got it! This was just for listening.

First I visited the City of Los Angeles Public Library Teen Podcast and I listened to an interview and also learned about the Teen services. The sound seems to be good quality but from my computer I can only barely hear what they were saying. The problem was not the podcast but that I don't have earphones to better listen or that from my PCs the highest volume is not enough for me. This, I am afraid, applied to all the podcasts I tried.

Also I visited the Education Podcast Network in the hope to listen to some educational podcasts but whenever I tried to listen to any of them I received the following Note: "Unable to open RSS feed".

Then I tried a podcast about Frank Sinatra called "The Frank Truth". Since I don't like Frankie well I moved out pretty soon.

One that I found interesting was the "Free talk live", a radio show where they were talking about the profiling from some Border Patrol agents towards people with Hispanic names. They talked about the case of a Carlos González guy who frankly has been constantly persecuted by the Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas.

I also tried something called "Great Smokey Mountains" where a professor teaches people how to make clicking sounds like African Bushmen but again... a Note appeared telling me: "Quick Time is missing software required to perform this operation. Unfortunately not available on Quick Time server".

Could a Podcast work on a library? Perhaps. There seems to be many patrons listening to something on their iPods or MP3-players so why not!