Our audience isn’t very large yet and in an effort to make everything as easy as possible, I’ve compiled a list of software that should make everyone’s browsing and listening experience much more enjoyable.
For Browsing:
The best browser to use is Firefox. In addition to being less prone to security issues, Firefox also offers add on software that makes it easier to browse and listen to the podcast. Get it Here.
Optional Browsing Enhancements:
These add-ons are what make Firefox the browser of choice. Do everything from block advertisements to share articles with built in tools from your browser.
Ad Block
Ad Block is an extension that you can use to block virtually any advertisement on any site you visit. Probably the most valuable extension that Firefox has to offer.
Download
Flashblock
Flash advertisements are one thing that Ad Block has trouble with, take care of them easily with this plugin.
Download
del.icio.us
del.icio.us is one of the add ons that Joe and I use to share our links with the audience. It provides us with the ability to centrally bookmark articles and make them available to listeners.
Download
diigo
diigo is an extremely versatile research and bookmarking tool that we use to annotate our articles. It integrates seemlessly with del.icio.us and Firefox. This is useful primarily to other podcasters, but we mention it here because of it’s impressive feature set and performance.
diigo
Sage
Sage is an RSS feed reader that allows users to easily keep track of a large number of news sources. It is quick, clean, and efficient. We use Sage to keep up to date on most of our news sources.
Download
For Listening:
These two software players are the preferred methods of subscribing to/downloading the podcast. WinAmp is our personal recommendation, but many people are also familiar with iTunes and will find it easier to use because of that.
WinAmp
WinAmp is the old standby. It was the first mp3 player to truly take off and it is still the best, if flawed.
Download
iTunes
iTunes is a terrible program. If I was to eat WinAmp and shit it out, it would still work better than iTunes. iTunes is bloated, runs like shit, puts an assload of unnecessary background processes on your computer, forces you to install quicktime, tries to take over all of your multimedia files, and the interface is terrible. However, it’s quite likely that you have an iPod and that you’ve used iTunes before. It also provides a one click subscription to podcasts. While this is a recommended software page, iTunes is simply being mentioned rather than recommended. You should be able to find this one on your own.