Podcasts

I was somewhat familiar with podcasts, having listened to a couple of NPR's This American Life shows that I had heard parts of on the radio (I'd recommend "Switched at Birth" if you want to hear an unusual story of two Wisconsin babies who were raised by the wrong families until age 40) and also a couple of author interviews on the Teaching Books (Badgerlink) database. I looked at what a couple of other libraries were doing with podcasts with mixed results. I found Denver PL children's stories really disappointing, partly because of the reader's voice but mostly because while the stories were being read, the screen was showing really annoying abstract frenetic graphics. Photos of the pages or no graphics at all would have been more appropriate. I tried to watch NYPL's video program with Lidia, the Italian cookbook author, but the download was extremely slow with about 40 seconds of frozen screen download time between each 4 second segment. I've had that problem at home too occasionally, once when I tried to show a friend a short video that I'd already watched. It played straight through for me the first time, but repeated plays were jerky beyond belief. I suppose I have to admit that I did not complete the assignment, because I really don't want to subscribe to any feeds at this time.