I’m an avid listener of podcasts. It lets me consume information while doing something else. And to be even more efficient, I like to listen to podcasts at about 1.5x speed.
For the PC, I use mplayer. There are optimised versions for particular CPUs here and here. You will also need to drop this file in your mplayer folder. Mplayer is a media player that supports Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, etc. There is a GUI version but the one I use is command-line-based. In Windows Vista, I just make a shortcut with the commands I prefer and then drag media files to that shortcut. The command-line options that I use are: -vo gl2 -idx This basically says, use OpenGL to display the movie and generate an index if it is missing to allow jumping backward and forward through the media. I use the OpenGL switch so that Vista does not switch to Aero Basic mode whenever I play a media file. The following are the keystrokes that I use the most:
| Left arrow | Seek -10 seconds |
| Right Arrow | Seek +10 seconds |
| Up Arrow | Seek -60 seconds |
| Down Arrow | Seek +60 seconds |
| 9 | Decrease volume |
| 0 | Increase volume |
| [ | Decrease playback rate |
| ] | Increase playback rate |
| Backspace | Reset playback rate |
| F | Fullscreen toggle |
For my PDA, I use The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP). There is a mplayer version for the PocketPC but it doesn’t work on my HP iPaq.
Update: I have “rediscovered” that Windows Media Player has the ability to speed up the playback of media files. Unlike mplayer, the audio retains the original pitch, so voices don’t sound like chipmunks on caffeine. I think this will now be my preferred player for podcasts.
