Podcasters Skeptical About iPod Shuffle

Internet News reports that Doc Searls is not impressed with the iPod shuffle:

"It's neither a boon nor a bust. It's just not useful for listening to podcasts," said Doc Searls, a respected blogger and co-author of the book Cluetrain Manifesto. "Navigating inside a long podcast -- and many are very long -- is difficult even with a regular iPod, as it is with all players. So, rather than fix the one feature that's lame about the iPod, they eliminated it completely."

ZDNet's Steve Gillmore thinks that if Apple won't come to podcasters, then podcasters will have to come to Apple:

"Though most of us boomers can’t fathom the idea that 'life is random' is a feature, the Shuffle’s secret sauce is its Playlist mode, turned off by default. Attention: iPodder developers–if you develop SmartPlaylist functionality in your aggregators, you can use attention and other explicit metadata to program iTunes to download, sort, and sequence podcasts while you sleep. Remember, the iPod is the delivery system, the data cache at the end of the pipeline. Of course, if some smart 3rd-party vendor adds a microphone that clips onto the Shuffle, it’s a data recorder hanging around your neck."

Podcaster Harold Johnson compares the iPod shuffle to its competition:

"iRiver devices in the same price range include mic recording, FM recording, and line-in recording, and more hours of battery life (from 17-40, depending on whether you're playing digital music or the included FM radio)."