I've only recently started listening to podcasts as a way to keep myself from being incredibly bored while spending an hour or so on a treadmill or exercise machine. This means that your main competition for my attention is the mechanical whine of the elliptical machine. Surprisingly, there are a lot of podcasts that don't clear this very low bar. I wanted to write down some things that I really like about podcasts that work well for me.
- Identify the podcast and show immediately. I mostly navigate through my podcasts through audio -- I have a teensy MP3 player, and I'm also kind of busy as I'm listening. If a podcast starts with 30 seconds of theme music, then an advertisement, THEN the name of the show, I won't listen all the way through -- I'll skip to the next one. Shows that start with the name of the podcast, episode title, and release date are really welcome. "This is Foo Podcast for January 27, 2008, Episode number 73: 'Bar Baz Quux'". Shows that also give a quick keyword lists at the beginning are really, really pleasant.
- Name your files well. My cheap MP3 player doesn't give me a very good interface for viewing files; all I can see is the file name. I've been surprised how many podcasts have simply gobbledygook instead of understandable names for their files. Please: give the name of the podcast, a title for the episode, and a date in the file name. Like, "Foo Podcast - Episode title - 27 Jan 2008.mp3". It's really simple and easy to do.
- Split different segments into different files. It's not uncommon for podcast shows to have multiple segments. If I'm interested in segment 3 and not 2 or 1, I'm not going to listen through them