podcast

After the update to iOS 14.5, along with app updates for several apps, the Podcasts app seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Not for all, but certainly for some, the newest update to the Apple Podcasts app has hit a bit of a log jam. One of the reasons for bad reactions people are having to the latest Apple Podcasts app is a the switch Apple's made to handling individual podcast episodes. The old library is effectively gone.

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So you say you know what dinosaurs look like. You know all the superstars - the big, powerful, Jurassic Park monsters you learned about in the 90s. Take a look at the recently uncovered Bajadasaurus pronuspinax and you might well be thrown for a loop. This dinosaur doesn't look like any sort of dinosaur I knew as a kid. And why would I? All I knew (before Spielberg's blockbuster) was what I saw in books - and those dinosaurs looked a lot like lumpy hippos, really.

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Sure, there's a bunch of other stuff in the update, but that ability to put another episode after the episode that's playing - that's all I wanted. This app now has a dark mode - essentially the entirety of the app, by default. That'll be a whole lot nicer for the ol' battery life than the all-white layout that was the app since the beginning.

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Podcasts are popular again and it seems a new one appears every week covering a particular topic or hobby. NASA counts itself among them, revealing the launch of a new podcast called The Invisible Network. The space agency describes this as a limited edition podcast, one that already features six episodes available to download through popular platforms.

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With Spotify's success in the music streaming space pretty well on lockdown at the moment, the company has decided to turn its attention to podcasts. Spotify has revealed a new beta test that will allow essentially anyone to submit and subsequently list their podcast on the platform. The floodgates, in other words, have been opened.

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The podcasting market is experiencing a renaissance, in part due to how easy it is to make podcasts these days and how YouTube has made dreams of popularity come true for once small-time creators. But that rebirth has also caused an explosion of podcasts that have ironically made it more difficult to enjoy those audio content. How do you pick the best ones and, even after that, how do you find enough time to listen to them all? You don’t. Instead, you let Shortwave, the podcast experiment from Google’s Area 120 labs, do the picking and cutting for you.

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In late May, Plex launched its own podcasting platform for iOS, Android, and Roku devices, but only as a beta. Those who were willing to test it could use the feature to access their favorite podcasts, aggregating that content with their existing movie and music libraries for a less fragmented experience. Unfortunately, the beta lacked some important features for many users, driving them to existing alternatives, but Plex is back with a couple big changes.

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Google has never been one to be big on podcasts, almost as if it were rebelling against Apple’s pioneering lead in that market. Its lone official podcast feature on Google Play Music felt like a half-hearted afterthought. So when news hit that Google was making a standalone podcast app, it was pretty much a surprise. Even more surprising, the Google Podcasts that just launched, though raw, already has the hallmarks of a great podcast app: it lets you get to your content without getting in the way.

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Google released their Google Podcasts experience in app form this morning to the surprise of Podcast lovers everywhere. Before now, Google had a podcast-collecting experience available in their Search app, but it wasn't particularly comprehensive. Now there's an app for that, and it's free, and we're expecting apps like Pocket Casts and Sticher to be ... disappointed, to say the least.

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Plex has been updated with support for podcasts, the company has announced. The software, which enables anyone to create their own home media server, now allows users to access podcasts on both their television and mobile devices without a subscription or separate app. The new feature is currently in beta but available to anyone with the Plex App.

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This week Google's Podcast app was revealed in detail, from audio search to indexing. As it turns out, Google already released their Podcast App in the form of an update to their already-in-play Google Search app. Getting to this Podcast interface is not entirely intuitive - but for a good reason. Google doesn't just want to run over your face with their Podcasting abilities, not when you might want to be searching for other Podcasting apps. That's not what Google is all about.

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When you as Siri very early in the morning about the news, perhaps the last thing your still sleepy head wants to hear is an impersonal voice rattling off headlines. Perhaps you’d like to start your day with a freshly brewed cup of coffee and the voices of your favorite news reporters. If you’re that kind of person and you live in the US, the UK, or Australia, then you might be in luck. Tell Siri to “give me the news” and she’ll get out of the way and start playing a podcast instead.

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