This is a follow up on my post about Listening to Podcasts. I went ahead and developed a small application that grabs the podcast files and moves them to the removable media card. Here is a little idea on what it does.

• Tests to be sure the destination folder (removable media card) is available
• Looks for files of type MP3 in the source folder walking all the directories
• If a file is found verifies that enough room is on the destination folder
• Copies the file to the destination
• Removes the file from the source
• When all files are processed it looks for empty directories in the source directory and deletes them

All I have to do when I am done with listening to the podcast on my Dell is delete it. The only problem I have left is that the Windows Media Player does not support bookmarks.

Room for improvement:

 Currently the application must be launched manually and pass into it the source and destination directories. It would be nice to have a service that just watches the source folder for new files and process them as they come in. The program looks for mp3 files only. It would be nice to add support for other media files.

Scott Hanselman provides a great comprehensive list of tools for developers and power users.

I have been listening to several podcasts over the last couple of months. I have to say I am hooked on some of the technical shows. Whenever I am in the car I listen to a podcast. The radio in my car is rarely tuned on. I use a Dell Axim x50v with Media Player 10 and iPodder 1.1.4. I have been spending a lot of time trying to get the content to synchronise correctly. I am not sure if it is iPodder, Media player or my Active Sync program that has problems with this. But for some reason at times I noticed podcasts that are on my PC but are not on my Pocket PC. I think there is an update to Active Sync I do not have so I am going to try this first to solve my problem.

I have a few grips on this setup

• There needs to be a purge podcasts after x days setting.
• Finding new podcasts on the device is a real pain. Need a playlist that can be settup to show podcasts added in the last x days.
• Organizing podcasts with playlists is a real pain.
• Deleting podcasts on the Pocket PC should delete it from the PC. I don't want the podcast once I hear it and I listen to 90% of them on the Pocket PC.
• I need bookmarks. Stopping a podcast and starting it later is a pain.
• The media center interface is clunky. I have to click too many menu items to get to a playlist.
• The buttons and the screen on the Pocket PC are way too easy to bump while listening to a podcast.

I found one product that made finding podcasts on the pocket PC while driving real easy. Voice Command from Microsoft. However I am not convinced I want to stick with Microsoft Media Player just yet, so I have not purchased Voice Command. The trial version worked out very well. I could ask the device to play music and it would come back with questions that would lead me down to a particular play list. Once in a play list I could easily skip ahead to next tracks without taking my eyes off the road.