Peer pressure on the net

I listened to my first podcast today. I've avoided them so far because I don't think they offer me anything - I can get information more quickly from text on blogs and news sites, those sites can link to other information, be copied or saved easily, things I don't care about can be skipped, etc.

But if iTunes is going to do it, I figured I should try. Unfortunately it was as bad as I expected (maybe a bit worse). It had music I didn't care for, talking that wasn't interesting, and I got to wait through 30-60 minutes of stuff to try to hear the information that I was looking for.

I found another good use for Soundtrack Pro though - it's good for figuring out what's going on in a podcast. With the mp3 loaded and zoomed out it was easy to tell the difference between the music and the talking, which allowed me to skip the music and save a fair amount of time :) I don't know how people can stand listening to these things on an iPod...

I'm also trying out NetNewsWire 2, since it always feels like I'm not a true Mac blog nerd without it. I've imported my Bloglines feeds, which works, but doesn't seem to bring over the folders. I keep reverting to using Bloglines though, so I think I'll force myself to just use NNW for a week to give it a fair chance.

Exciting stuff, I know. But at least reading this took you less time than a podcast. :)