Reader's Question - Remember playback position

A couple of days ago a reader wrote me a mail containing the following concern: "I just can't figure out how to get a podcast in a way that I can pause, stop and continue later."

It turned out, this reader listened to podcasts directly from the web. Web browsers call an embedded player to run the file on the fly and as a consequence, they will not remember the playback position. Remember Playback Position is a default setting you will get when you subscribe to podcasts in iTunes. If however, you are playing a direct download, the files will not have this setting. You can, however, change it.

Select any file in iTunes you want to be able to listen to and continue where you left off afterwards. Right click the file and choose Get Info.

The info of the file will pop up. Here you have several tabs, one them being Options. Select Options and then check Remember Playback Position. Click OK and you are done.



Once this setting is chosen in iTunes, it will also work once you have transferred the file to iPod. Other players and other podcatcher must have various ways to achieve the same effect.

More basic instructions:
Preference settings per podcast,
Subscribing to podcasts in iTunes,
Install iTunes,
downloading audio files,
Listening on-line.

Anne is a Man reviewed

Recently my blog was evaluated at two other blogs and I wish to show you those reviews.

A short review was delivered by my podcast review colleague at The Podcast Place: "The man called Anne reviews many podcasts that you won’t find on this site and his writing is very good. Like me, he is a fan of podcasts and also like me, does not give the podcasts he reviews ratings."

A much longer review was delivered from the blog PTSD Spirituality; Healing Souls Wounded by PTSD, which is written by the theologian and US Army veteran and PTSD struck John D. Zemler PhD. The blog is mainly about Zemler's PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) experiences and his views how spirituality can point the way out of the infliction. Pointing to a blog about podcasts then seems like a far away side step, but here is how John Zemler makes the point that learning is a way out of PTSD and that the disorder frequently goes with symptoms that make it extremely hard to read and to check in with regular classes, not to mention the financial constraints. In this respect the kind of intellectual podcasts I review offer exactly the kind of low-threshold, free education in your own time and pace that PTSD patients can benefit from.

"In the world of podcasting, Anne provides [a] service. He spends a lot of time evaluating and finding the best of the best when it comes to podcasts and then posts them for you and me to listen and learn.

What I find most amazing is that Anne does this for free. He does not make money from this service. He has a love of learning, podcasting, and making it available to whomever is interested in using it. [...]

Anne even has helpful tutorials that explain what a podcasts is, how to use an RSS feeder, and so on. For many blog readers this is old hat. For folks like me, who are on the wrong side of the digital divide, this is very helpful information that enables the internet to be useful to me – and not be only something which bewilders me."

Arie Kleywegt - Marathon Interview recensie

Eerder deze week meldde ik dat Ronald van den Boogaard over zijn Marathon Interview met Arie Kleywegt had geschreven. Aangezien dit interview niet in de officiele podcast feed wordt aangeboden, had ik hem zelf via Huffduffer gemaakt (feed Arie Kleywegt).

Inmiddels heb ik het drie en een half uur durend interview beluisterd. Het is zeer de moeite waard; ik kan het van harte aanbevelen.

War in winter: diplomacy - Historyzine

Historyzine's recounting of the War of Spanish Succession, brings us in the latest issue of the podcast to the winter of 1705. The main protagonist in Jim Mowatt's version of this history is the Duke of Marlbourough. Until the winter of 1705 he has had a successful campaign and now the war takes a break and preparations begin for the next round, after the winter in 1706.

These preparations consist of diplomacy. Marlbourough travels around the courts of his allies to assure their continued support in the next part of the war. Mowatt makes this lull in the fighting an extra interesting part of the history. He describes how Marlbourough has to use all his talents in order to placate the various allies in the east. Once having done that, he makes his last stop in The Hague, where the closest allies, the Dutch are and only on the last day of the year he returns to England.

The importance of this round of diplomacy is made clear especially by the example of Prussia. Marlbourough, in Mowatt's history, closes a fateful deal with Prussia, that keeps this rising power from allying with the Swedes and paving the way to the consistent growth of the small kingdom, to the eventual power that would unite the German Reich.

More Historyzine:
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession,
The year 1703.

The podcast reviewers

When I started reviewing podcasts, two and a half years ago, I think I was the only one. There may have been an abandoned blog that contained an insignificant number of reviews, but that was all. By now there are many more, maybe even more than I actually know of. So here is a list of where you can go.

Blogs:
The Podcast Place. A blog that started in December 2008 and tries to review a couple of podcasts per week from all genres.
Daily Podcast Reviews. Is not exactly a daily blog, but every now and then there is a new podcast review. Among the reviewed podcasts are quite a number of the Quick and Dirty series, best known from the podcast Grammar Girl.
DIY Scholar. My favorite among these blogs and a recurring source of inspiration is the Do It Yourself Scholar. She reviews many educational podcasts as well as videos, blogs and other free academic content.
Baxter Wood. The re-education of Baxter Wood is the blog of a 62 year old truck driver who takes on academic podcast series and reports about them without links. But he is quite exact in how to google the content.
Marje's favorite history podcasts. A near complete source for history podcast reviews compiled in a bookmarking tool. Marje helped me discover new history podcasts, but it seems, I have helped Marje as well.
Open Culture. The free culture blog by Dan Colman, associate dean of Stanford, which used to bring more podcast reviews than it does today. These days there are more general culture links and many, many videos.

Podcasts:
Edgy Reviews (feed). A weekly podcast that rates a wide variety of podcasts in sets of three.
Podwatch (feed). An Australian podcast review show that has recently been revived.
Historyzine (feed). A history podcast that also reviews history podcasts.
Forgotten Classics (feed). A literature podcast that opens every episode with one or several podcast reviews in various genres.

Veertien Achttien in transit

Voor de trouwe luisteraars van Veertien Achttien wacht er vanochtend wellicht een kleine teleurstelling. Wie in afwachting zit te kijken tot de nieuwste aflevering uit de feed komt rollen, moet tot de ontdekking komen dat die feed niet meer werkt. Wat daar aan de hand is, is dat de provider van deze feed, podplaza, over de kop is gegaan en daardoor is Veertien Achttien nu in een transit terechtgekomen.

Er moet dus een nieuwe feed komen en de maker van de podcast, Tom Tacken, laat me weten dat een nieuwe formule voor de podcast in de maak is. Tot nader order zullen de nieuwe afleveringen handmatig op de website gedownload kunnen worden. Voor de aflevering die men vandaag verwacht, heeft het dus zin om op de betreffende blog post te kijken; zie: Wilhelm Wassmuss.

Nu dat er download links op het blog staan, betekent het echter dat de rss 2.0 feed ook als podcast feed kan worden gebruikt. Wie zich in de podcatcher (ook iTunes) abonneert op de feed van Veertien Achttien, kan in ieder geval alle in rechtstreekse download aangeboden afleveringen automatisch ophalen. Het valt te betwijfelen of deze situatie nog lang voort zal duren, maar tot nader order is dit een goede tussenoplossing en ik zal jullie op de hoogte houden hoe het verder gaat.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Pegoud, Grimm - Veertien Achttien,
Emmeline Pankhurst,
Lord Kitchener,
Walther Rathenau,
Komitas Vardapet.