Podcasts and WiFi

Now that people have had a breather of a week or so from the endless iPhone hype, I see it's time to start of the 6G iPod rumor cycle. I'm sort of vaguely interested in this. I have a 4G and have started to think that maybe an upgrade is in order one of these days. The current generation didn't have enough new to make me plunk down a few C notes but I'm definitely curious about what comes next.

The betting money seems to be on something that looks similar to an iPhone but without WiFi or phone capabilities. That makes a lot of sense, but WiFi could be nice. Here's why.

As I've written about previously, one of my personal problems with podcasting is that:

It's not exactly hard to get a podcast onto your portable flash memory music thingamajig. But it does take several steps more than just turning on the freekin' radio. When we get to the point that your home computer handles this all automagically between itself and its counterpart in your car, OK.

I just don't sync my iPod on a regular basis. It's not a big deal to do but I just don't do it. That was always my issue with PDAs as well. I didn't get around to syncing them--which is one reason that my Treo 700p is the first "PDA" that I find truly useful. As a result, I don't have current podcasts on my iPod, which means I don't listen to them, which means I don't think about syncing my iPod to get new podcasts, and so forth.

Automagical syncs though. That would be interesting. I'm afraid it might not be as automatic as I would like in any case (for one thing I don't generally use iTunes as my preferred music organizer) but WiFi would at least open up the possibility of some sort of fairly transparent syncing to a PC on the same wireless network.

(Embarrassed as I am to admit it, this thought got kicked off after running across this digg comment that said: "All I want is an iPod that auto updates all my podcast feeds without needing to connect to a computer. Give it WiFi and let is start downloading as soon as I walk into my house at the end of they day or anyplace that WiFi is connected.")