I listen to a lot of podcasts, and my queue of things to listen seems to be growing constantly; I can never catch up. What's frustrating about this is that most people talk too slowly on podcasts. To be fair, they are speaking at a reasonable conversational pace, but when you are simply listening to a conversation rather than taking part in it, you can take it all in at a much faster pace.

While iPods have been able to speed up audio books for some time, the latest 3.0 iPhone / iPod Touch release has added the ability to speed up (and slow down) podcasts as well as audiobooks. That's the good news. The bad news is that whatever the algorithm is that is being used to speed up the audio ends up sounding quite rough.

For podcast listeners that are not using an iPhone or iPod Touch, there are not many options for speeding up podcasts, short of doing it yourself manually with a program like Audacity.

Luckily, there's a new site that is looking to take care of this problem for us. PodShifter is a site that will allow you to enter the RSS feed for a given podcast, and it will spit out a new feed URL that will deliver podcasts that are sped up to exactly the speed you prefer. You can choose from slowing down your feed to 0.6 times its original speed, all the way up to 3.0 times the original speed, in increments of 0.2. Based on the demo MP3s on PodShifter's homepage, the sped-up audio is quite smooth.

Unfortunately, in my testing PodShifter has generated new podcast RSS URLs, but when I put them into iTunes, the audio files that I get are exactly the same speed as the originals. I was surprised that they downloaded at all to begin with, so I'm hopeful that there is processing going on in the background and a new version of the podcast will arrive that actually is sped up.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it is quite likely that some podcast publishers will not be thrilled about a republishing service such as this. Larger podcasts that rely on download statistics for determining advertising rates could potentially lose track of the subscribers that sit behind a republishing service like PodShifter. And unfortunately PodShifter's site is not particularly forthcoming with information, so it's hard to determine whether they offer publishers some manner of tracking statistics properly.

In any event, the service that PodShifter provides is a very useful one, and one I hope will succeed. Now excuse me while I go refresh my podcasts to see if any of my PodShifter subscriptions have delivered on its promise.

[via Lifehacker]

Open-source software is everywhere, and developers use it to speed up their development on a regular basis. This is as it should be, for the most part, assuming the developers follow the licensing for whatever open-source software (OSS) they use. Along with licensing, the open-source community is, probably rightly so, very focused on attributing credit correctly. Considering that most OSS developers do not make any money for their contributions, credit and reputation are really the only compensation they can expect.

Imagine the horror in the OSS community then, when a mini-TEDTalk was released today that had presenter Chris Hughes showing off augmented-reality software that is built on very powerful open-source toolkits, but fails to attribute any credit to them, or even mention their existence.

Ralph Hauwert certainly took issue, and wrote a scathing blog post describing the offense. To TED's credit, they have updated the page for today's video, acknowledging the furor and offering an explanation. According to the update, Chris hadn't been intending on presenting at TED, but after privately showing his project to a number of people, he was invited to do a short 2 minute presentation. Due to the extremely short format, there was apparently no time for attribution of credit for the software frameworks his software was based on.

This is a cautionary tale. Clearly someone made a mistake, and Hughes' reputation may end up bearing the brunt of the error. It's important to remember that in the software business there are always two currencies at play: the typical financial currency that we usually think of (you know, money), and credit for the work that was done. Although there is a lot of open-source software that is licensed to be free to use, that fact amplifies the focus on correctly attributing credit for the work that went into the software.

My guess is this is a lesson Chris Hughes isn't likely to forget again.

If you're as busy as rest of us, you may not have time to catch all the latest presidential election details on the evening news. Fortunately, you can still keep up by listening to a few really excellent podcasts while you're commuting or working out. [Note: All links open in iTunes.]

Listen to selected speeches from the Democratic National Convention in a podcast series put together by the DNC. It's got all the usual suspects like Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but you can also catch speeches given by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and some of the governors in attendance.

The Republican National Convention will also have speeches available as the event gets underway today in Minnesota.

For a general overview of what's happening with the election, have a listen to National Public Radio's "It's All Politics," a weekly podcast covering news and events in the presidential race. If it's political punditry you're after, choose from Bill Maher, Dan Carlin, Bill Moyers, and others.

Download Pod is an occasional series about our favorite podcasts. If you have suggestions for podcasts you think we should check out, let us know in the comments or via our tips page.

Last time we told you about a science podcast that was all about getting to the truth, now let's look at a podcast that covers the other side of science. Escape Pod is a weekly short story podcast hosted by Stephen Eley released every Thursday. The three-year-old podcast will stretch your mind with all types of sci-fi including space, time, technology, hard science, and even weird psychological science fiction. Each episode features some of the best science fiction from the present and the past with some stories from the great digests being read as well as this years Hugo nominees.

All stories come with an introduction that helps guide the listener into the work and gives fair warning to parents about the content of the work. Each episode even carries a rating similar to movies (G to R) to help determine whether you want your kids to listen. This week's PG episode features a 2008 Hugo nominee that was published in Asimov's Science Fiction short story magazine last year. The story took our minds on an Outer Limits type journey that included a main character living out the end of his life and discovering someone who may have been the reincarnation of someone very close to him.

Escape Pod is part of a network of short story podcasts including the horror podcast, Pseudopod, and the fantasy podcast, PodCastle.

Download Pod is an occasional series about our favorite podcasts. If you have suggestions for podcasts you think we should check out, let us know in the comments or via our tips page.

We'd never, ever turn down a good ghost story. Aliens, even the abducting kind (especially the abducting kind!) are incredibly cool. Still, we are pretty sure that T. Rex existed and didn't use those huge incisors for gnashing hellaciously into cantaloupes and mangoes. And we have enough acquaintances who act a little too similarly to lower primates to believe Darwin was too terribly far off.

We really dig people who can talk about the Drake Equation. We dig people who can speak articulately about science, sound extra intelligent, and still be accessible enough that we are able to follow along.

Feel the same? Check out The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. The weekly podcast is produced by the New England Skeptical Society and the James Randi Educational Foundation. Each week the panel takes on news from fringe science and takes a scientific look at controversial issues from a number of scientific fields.

Scientific podcasts are a funny thing. There are many out there that remind us way too much of our college days when we sat for two or three hours in a hot lecture hall listening to a professor full of even hotter air drone on about weather patterns. But there are gems like The Skeptic's Guide, which feel much more like you're sitting a table in a restaurant having a conversation with your smartest friends.

And these guys (and girls!) are smart. The host, Dr. Stephen Novella, is a neurologist teaching at Yale Medical School. Rebecca Watson is the resident Skepchick on the panel, and has the unique claim to fame that there's an asteroid named after her. Jay and Robert Novella are regular contributors and leaders in the New England Skeptical Society. And the weekly guest, James Randi, is the most interesting of the bunch: He's a magician. He's a world famous escape artist. And he's ready to expose, explain, and share with the layman the very scientific explanations for the magical things that go on in the paranormal and pseudoscientific world.

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is available from their site, or through iTunes.

With Twitter being all the rage these days, it was only a matter of time before a podcast would grow out of new Twitter friendships. And the time has apparently come, since You Look Nice Today is a podcast created by three friends that decided they enjoyed each other's senses of humor so much in their tweets that they ought to start recording their interactions for everyone else to hear.

You Look Nice Today describes itself as a "journal of emotional hygiene". Whatever that means.

The subject matter of You Look Nice Today meanders pretty erratically, but fortunately it's pretty consistently entertaining. Topics range from what each host uses to wash themselves in the shower, to the relative merits of each of the types of nuts in a can of mixed nuts.

The show is squarely aimed at adults (and probably primarily male adults), and It should be noted that despite the innocuous title, You Look Nice Today is decidedly not work-safe. It proudly sports an Explicit tag in iTunes, due to both subject matter and the odd forceful expletive.

The topics are certainly entertaining, but this podcast is really about the personalities. If you're familiar with the concept of "ratholes" from MacBreak Weekly (and how they can sometimes be the most entertaining part of the show), just consider You Look Nice Today as one huge rathole, and you'll be on the right track. Your hosts are @hotdogsladies, @lonelysandwich, and @scottsimpson. This is how they describe themselves in the credits of the show, by their Twitter names rather than their given names, ostensibly due to the fact that the show grew out of their Twitter friendships. Their real names, respectively, are Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor, and (unsurprisingly) Scott Simpson.

And we're back! After a brief hiatus (sorry about that!), the Squadcast returns, this time with tips on how to trick out your WordPress install to make it as "bloggerrific" as possible. Grant and Christina catch up with uber-WordPresser Alex King to talk about why so many bloggers swear by WordPress.

The Squadcast's The Five takes a look at five of Download Squad's favorite WordPress plugins.

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Can you believe the Squadcast is now on episode 10? Well, we're excited anyway. This week Grant and Christina discuss the future of web search, specifically social search. Christina chats up Jason Calacanis from Mahalo to get the inside scoop on social search and its benefits over traditional methods.

The Squadcast's "The Five" takes a look at five of Download Squad's favorite social search tools and plugins.

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The open source, cross-platform video platform, Miro, recently released version 1.1. The new update offers two main improvements. First, Miro has significantly improved BitTorrent performance by giving the user more control and settings for BitTorrent downloads. Miro's support of BitTorrent has always set itself apart from other media players with it's BitTorrent support and we're glad to see them enhancing this important feature.

Second, Miro 1.1 has made it easier to find the search results you're looking for by instituting a combined search across all 5 of their search engines. Users who want to only search the engines one at a time can still do so by choosing the engines they're most interested in seeing results from.

If you're not a user of Miro yet, we encourage you to take a look its way. Miro is a media viewing software package that allows you to view almost any video file format, search for and view YouTube videos, and access video podcasts via BitTorrent. Additionally, Miro is an open source video platform that lacks any DRM and allows unrestricted viewing of their materials. Also, they Miro takes pride in it's selection of HD content.

[via Miro's blog]

Web video is hot and getting easier and easier to use. Grant and Christina talk to Vimeo's dalas verdugo about techniques to make web video look its best and garner attention.

The Squadcast's "The Five" takes a look at Download Squad's five favorite applications/web services for editing, exporting and uploading web video.

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This week's Squadcast features an interview with one of our own. Kristin Shoemaker joins Grant and Christina to talk about what it takes to switch to Linux and leave Windows behind, for good.

Also, we take a look at our five favorite Linux applications for people who've recently switched. Direct replacements for a few of those must-have apps on Windows.

More from Download Squad on switching to Linux.
Kristin's series on switching to Linux.
From the archives, Download Squad's "Switcher podcast" with Brad Linder, Alex Hung and Grant Robertson.

Download The Squadcast 07 in SD(480i) Mpeg4(84MB)

Check out previous episodes of The Squadcast

In this episode:
The Asus Eee PC : Portable Linux at four-hundred bucks
Gmail + IMAP = love.
Christina's first week with OS X Leopard

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As we mentioned on Monday, the Free Software Foundation's Defective by Design campaign against DRM paid the U.K. a visit yesterday with protests outside the BBC's London and Manchester locations against the use of Microsoft DRM technology in their highly debated iPlayer software.

The BBC iPlayer has been in development for a number of years now, costing the BBC public £130 million (nearly $260 million) to date. The use of Microsoft's DRM technology has been highly contentious, especially with the appointment of Erik Huggers (previously director of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division whose technology the BBC now employs in their iPlayer software) as controller of the BBC's future media and technology group which is managing the iPlayer project.

The BBC is a publicly funded body, governed by the BBC Trust who protect, amongst other things, open access and independence form corporate influence. The BBC has been told to make the player platform independent, however Mac and Linux users are likely to be out in the cold for some time.

Download Squad decided to visit the protest and spoke to Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, about the reasoning behind the protests and what the campaigns hopes for the future. We've made the interview available either as a text transcript after the break, or via the Download Squad podcast feed.

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Podcast Links

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Back when I was a full time commuter (spending almost as much time on the train every day as I did in the office), I spent a lot of time and energy converting my Windows Mobile PDA from a simple productivity tool into a one-stop entertainment shop. While you could buy a fancy phone that will be obsolete in a year and sign up for an expensive data plan so that you can watch the occasional YouTube clip, my weapon of choice was the off-line media viewer.

My commute is now much shorter, but every time I go away for the weekend or take a vacation I'm glad I spent so much time tracking down these tools.

News/eBook readers

During the early years of Windows CE, AvantGo was the undisputed champion of mobile web browsing software. The service allowed you to save mobile versions of selected web pages to your device's memory and catch up on news from The New York Times, CNet, and hundreds of other sources on the go. Every time you sync your device, your subscriptions are updated.

But the software hasn't been updated in years, and for many users it has become obsolete. While offering up hundreds of websites was sufficient a few years ago, today AvantGo's offerings seem terribly limited.

While Steve Jobs has been busy dropping "computer" from Apple's name and pushing out iPod after iPod, the company is still probably best known by loyal fans as a computer maker.

Unlike Windows PCs, Apple controls the hardware and software that goes onto every Macintosh, meaning they have a reputation for working the instant you plug them in. No struggling to make all the parts play nice together.

But while Macs have a loyal fan base, it's still a PC world, and there's plenty of software out there that just won't run on a Mac.

Today we speak with Download Squad's Jason Clarke and Lisa Hoover about their recent decisions to become full time Mac users. Both are experienced Windows users who have switched to Mac for one reason or another. We wanted to find out why, and to share their wisdom with you.