Podcasts to your WinMo

For the last 2 years I have been listening to a lot of podcasts. It started with TWiT.TV and grew from there. I listen to at least 6 different shows a week while driving to and from work or while doing things where I can listen and still concentrate.  For that whole time, the biggest frustration has been getting the downloaded shows onto my device of choice in a reasonable amount of time from when they are posted and downloaded.  No more.

About two weeks ago, I and some of my co-workers stumbled onto a wonderful free app called BeyondPod.  It is the first heavily functional podcatcher for the Windows Mobile platform that I have ever seen.  I have played with others but they are manual intervention beasts.  They require that you manually start the download and that you key in the URL for the RSS feed and that is a serious pain in the screen on a WinMo device.

BeyondPod allows for RSS feed management in concert with Google Reader so right out of the gate, this is a very easy app to add additional RSS feeds into.  From there, you can easily set the check/update intervals as you need.  There is even a feature to allow for the deletion of podcasts that are too old based on what you determine is “too old”.

From an interface perrspective, it is quite nice.  It has a lot of large touch surface assigned to most of the daily functions and with the d-pad on most WinMo devices, there is little need to take out the stylus.  That being the biggest test now with the iPhone and its no stylus interface now setting the standard.

The scheduled download can be set to whatever interval you want based on how many or how often you are expecting to get new podcasts from your list of RSS feeds.  The app starts and stops itself like a scheduled task in Windows or a Cron job in Linux so when it is done downloading, it shuts off.  The downloading functionality works under all power conditions so if you are plugged in charging or just walking around, BeyondPod will just follow its schedule and download when new content is available.  The only things that would stop it would be not being in some form of wireless connection to the internet or if the battery was so low that the phone starts turning off all the RADIOs in an attempt to save battery life (Which I have had happen due to not remembering to charge from time to time).

My personal solution to dealing with battery use and downloads was to set the download schedule to once a day at 6am,  This is when I am the most likely to still have my phone charging and by that hour in the morning, it should be 100% anyways.

The only major downside to this and similar apps is that it uses your 3G (or God forbid your 2G) connection on your phone.  I have unlimited data on my phone as I lucked in on the Bell HTC Touch being considered a PHONE and not a SMART Phone.  That being said, I just let it go nuts downloading whenever it wants.  For those that may have a WiFi enabled PDA or Smart Phone and do not have an unlimited data plan, there is an option in the software to prevent the use of the GPRS/EDGE/3G connection and only use the bluetooth or WiFi connection that you have (When in range of course).

Beyond possible data use costs (Which are beyond BeyondPods control), the only issues I have are:

• The built in player cannot interact with A2DP devices like my Motorola MotoRokr S9 hands free headphones.  Audio will play but no transport controls are available.
• More of the screens should adopt the “large button” motif to more easily allow finger use
• Make selecting the feed on the main screen take you to the downloaded podcasts for that selection.  Currently, it takes you to the RSS feed page.
• Move away from using classic WinMo menus and more towards an SPB or iPhone style.

All in all though, I find that if you are a serious podcast listener or watcher, this is a must have if you have unlimited data or a very large data limit.  Hats off to the develoers of BeyondPod.