Geek 29 Sep 2004 10:36 am
Podcasting II
Right after writing the previous entry I remembered another problem… it is not a problem yet, and it may not be a problem of this specific medium, but I feel it coming in the not-so-distant future: time. That is, time to listen to audio blog entries. With text blogs, it’s relatively easy to scan the headlines and read just the parts you want; that is what I do, most of the time. With audio, if you have a few 25-minute MP3 files, there’s not really anyway to know what is ahead and to skip directly to the “interesting” parts.
Which, I realize now, comes back to the issue of searchability. If you were able to get an “index” of an audio entry (preferrably automatically generated) telling you what is in what part of the entry, that might help. The problem, of course, is that it’s harder to handle audio than text with automated tools. Google, are you listening?
