So I started listening to podcasts on my Nokia 9500 Communicator. Six immediate observations:

1. Forget everything I’ve ever said about the Internet becoming all-pervasive. Now it has happened. Audio is simply un-escapable. This is scary!
2. Mobility is key. Browsing and downloading over WLAN, GPRS or 3G is a must and a blast!
3. I love the way the Nokia 9500 Communicator automatically interrupts and pauses the mp3 file for an incoming phone call. Count me in!
4. Too bad I couldn’t download more than a little over 2 hours of audio at a time, due to hard disk shortage.
5. Stephen Johnston sees podcasting as the audio version of blogging. I’m not decided. Blogging’s killer feature is its ease of publishing. Podcasting requires more professional production methods. Podcasts seem perhaps more suitable as time-shifted radio than as personal online journal entries. They seem a better fit to the MSM paradigm than to grassroots journalism. Perhaps that’s just because the most interesting podcasts I’ve recently heard are radio-type interviews, documentaries and, admittedly, conference presentations. Well, let’s see what will happen.
6. Mobility aside, the two main challenges to podcasting are scanability and searchability. We may be able to link to fragments of sound files, but still: we cannot see sound.