I <3 podcasts bigtime. If anything is responsible for me getting healthier, it’s podcasts. The connection? Listening to something interesting gets me out walking and running more often than I would otherwise. And listening to library and technology related podcasts lets me do some professional development along the way.

My mp3 player is NOT an iPod – it’s an Archos 104 player. It’s similar in size to an iPod. But unlike an iPod, I can use it to play books downloaded from the library. And it has that all important bookmarking feature, which lets you put virtual bookmarks in multiple files so you can return to the right spot in any of them.

For this discovery exercise, I thought I’d use the time to upgrade Windows Media Player and clean up my virtual piles of podcasts and music. The latest version of WMP (version 11) still doesn’t have support for subscribing to podcasts. Not sure why, seems like there will be a growing demand for this.

I tried out several podcast retrieving programs that were supposed to work with WMP. The programs, iPodder and it’s later incarnation as Juice, just didn’t work. Rather than waste any more time, I’m still using iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. iTunes downloads the new episodes to my computer. Then WMP scans the hard drive for new files. It works well, but it’s not the most straightforward process.

I was also determined to finally learn a bit more about WMP, so finally spent a few minutes creating playlists and getting them synched properly to my mp3 player. This wasn’t hard, but I just needed to set aside a few minutes to do it and this was my excuse to take the time.

And that’s my podcast experience for ‘thing 3′!

(p.s. true confessions – I don’t run any more, but I can walk pretty darned fast)