Today Rob Fahrni ponders whether a Palm podcasting platform makes sense:
It’s new and it’s hip. It’s the perfect time to create a new piece of hardware to support this endeavor. I myself this Palm is in the best position to make it work. Why Palm? Well for one thing you can write code to run on it! That’s absolutely critical. My question is how good is the microphone on the Treo 650? Could someone get enough recording time on the device? Why hasn’t Palm jammed a 5 GB hard drive into one yet? Is it because it would increase the size of the device too much? I think Palm is in the best position to create the ultimate Podcasting device; not Apple, not Microsoft, Palm.
I agree completely — the Palm platform has definite potential in this new podcast space. A notable example is Russell Holliman who records his podcasts on his Treo directly; they sound great. Being a programmable system opens up all sorts of application possibilities, such as a dedicated podcasting application that handles recording, posting, and listening duties.
On the receiving end, the drop in memory card prices has made PDAs usable for listening to your favorite podcasts. Dedicated MP3 players generally have a file transfer speed advantage (FireWire/USB2.0 vs HotSync speeds), so some improvement is needed there. I’m planning to look closer at this part of the problem to see what can be done with today’s devices.