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Listen to Podcasts using Google Listen

Posted by Andrew McGivern on Aug 11, 2010 in Podcasting | 0 comments

Google Listen is a cool Google Labs application for your android phone that allows you to subscribe and listen to your podcasts straight to your device. The audio file is not downloaded to your device but is streamed for your listening pleasure. If you are concerned about your data plan usage you can check the box that prevents streaming without a Wifi connection.

Listen is a research Android app providing a personalized audio news-magazine loaded with fresh and interesting content whenever it is turned on. Start with directed search and streaming and then sit back or multi-task and Listen to content matching your favorite programs and queries like “ABC Nightline,” “Bernanke,” and “Fantasy Baseball.” Currently we are indexing audio files from thousands of English-only RSS feeds but we plan to index all web audio, talking head videos, and short personalized text-to-speech segments in the future.

Google Listen is a very cool application but it does need some work. The search podcasts feature could be much better. It only brings up a few podcasts and takes a while to load more episodes if you find a podcast you like. It is also difficult to move back a little in a podcast if you miss something. It tends to go right to the beginning. In general, it is a great app and I am looking forward to using it in the future to scout out new and interesting shows.

I am using it now to preview some podcasts before I subscribe to them in iTunes. I use iSycr to sync my podcasts in iTunes to my Android phone using a smart playlist. It is working well and only requires the clicking of a shortcut to iSyncr on my desktop to initiate the sync. Almost as convenient as syncing an iphone or ipod!

http://www.googlelabs.com/show_details?app_key=agtnbGFiczIwLXd3d3IUCxIMTGFic0FwcE1vZGVsGK3vEQw