Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Podcast and Ctrl+F
I'm not sure if it's just me or what but nowadays I cannot browse a webpage without hitting ctrl+f at least once. Incase it's just me, pressing ctrl+f allows you to search for a keyword within a webpage and if you're like me and use Firefox the page scrolls to parts matching the word or phrase you want to find as you type it! -- Which is an amazing feature that combined with tabbed browsing makes me really wonder why anyone would choose to use IE. Anyways, the bottom line is that by using ctrl-f I’ve grown accustomed to finding the exact information that I want very quickly, without much mucking around reading a bunch of words that don't relate to what I want to know. I don't want to have to sift through content to get to what I want when I want it, and I don't think I’m the only one. Society is moving at such a fast pace nowadays that people don't want (or even have time) to waste time finding what they want and if they don’t' get it then they'll go somewhere where they can. It is for these reasons that I believe that Podcasts are overrated and are going to need an upgrade very soon.
Podcasts are pretty much just RSS 2.0 feeds that automatically download audio files to listen to on your portable MP3 player or any compatible machine (desktop, home stereo, etc...). There are many types of Podcasts out there including audio books, music shows, news, humor and sports which I'm sure are chalk full of great content. But the shame is that they are still just normal audio files NOTHING NEW! How you get them may be new and there may be a lot more people creating their own content for them (for free) , which is awesome, but I just can't consider them to be that much of an asset until a few features are added.
Right now there is no way of searching through a Podcast for a specific word or phrase and go there right away. There are only predetermined markers set by whoever encoded the file and a part of the time these are omitted. This may not be a problem for you but for people like me whom are very impatient when it comes to getting the information they want right away it is very frustrating. Most people can ingest information a lot faster by reading it than they could if someone was reading it to them. This problem spills over into so many different scenarios such as using a Podcast as a reference during a presentation or meeting when you only want to use a specific part of it you cannot do this very easily. Even if you listen through the whole Podcast you cannot place a direct link at a particular spot to revisit at a later time.
I don't know, I guess I’m being too harsh but Podcasts could be used for so much more if they weren't just simple audio files, but until the iPOD becomes extinct I don't think we'll see the "ctrl-f" in a Podcast anytime soon.
Please put a ctrl-f feature or something new in the next generation of Podcasting.
