Few things are more annoying than two week-old podcasts. Yet it seems that every time I’m about to embark on a long train ride, I forget to sync my iPhone with iTunes, leaving me with stale news reports. Stitcher, which launches today in public beta, looks to put an end to this problem by providing a customizable and continuous stream of news, talk, and sports to your iPhone and computer.
Stitcher offers hundreds of audio feeds to choose from (including TechCrunch), categorized by topic or source. The site uses a personalization algorithm to recommend audio content (think Pandora for everything but music), but users are also able to set up playlists of their favorite material. While most content is drawn from audio RSS feeds, which can be found on most major news sites, Stitcher has also employed professionals to read a number of popular news sources aloud.
I have mixed feelings about Stitcher’s potential. While the desktop-based version of the website works as advertised, I have a hard time picturing many people sitting at their computers listening to recommended news articles and debates. This works well enough with music, but news content is much more involved - generally you need to pay more attention to what is being said, which probably isn’t how most people will want to spend their free time.
On the other hand, the iPhone version of the site has a chance to be a runaway success. The prospect of having my favorite blogs and podcasts streamed to my iPhone without ever having to sync up with a computer is very appealing. Right now the iPhone version of the site is clunky, mostly because of issues with iPhone’s integrated Quicktime player (though streaming over Edge works surprisingly well). But these problems should be short-lived, as Stitcher’s development team is hard at work on a native iPhone application which could see the service really start to shine this June, when Apple releases its sanctioned app store.
For the time being Stitcher is certainly worth exploring, but it probably won’t reach its full potential for a few more months. Keep an eye on this one.
I totally agree that this would be useful to get your podcasts on the road without syncing. I never get that done before I leave. Once I am on the road or plane I always wish that I’d have done the syncing. This would help to worry about one less thing in the usual hectic departure.
Peter
follow me @ http://twitter.com/peterurban
iPhone site seems to be down right now but if it works that would be an awesome service to complement my podcast collection.
Thanks guys, glad you find the iPhone site useful–we are excited about it.
The iPhone site is up (I just checked over EDGE). Over the next couple of hours you might see slight delays due to “the TechCrunch” effect, but keep in mind that 30-60 second delays are normal for any site over the EDGE network that the iPhone uses. Once you hit “play,” you should notice surprisingly smooth playback.
Check out the iphone version of http://www.fandalism.com
Disclaimer: I made Fandalism.
There’s a stitcher app I pitched a while back that was sleep inducing audio based on my FICO score prep seminars…
When I speak about credit 50% of the room falls asleep. Some would be offended but I saw opportunity: Fall asleep without meds using my $3.99 download
http://www.twitter.com/larrychiang
p.s. I’m at http://www.Stirr.net in palo alto May 14 6pm
How come no one is working on a service to actually download the podcast feed directly to your iPod? Why are the only options streaming, (something difficult to do, for example, on an airplane,) or tethered to iTunes on a laptop?
I do most of this on Foneshow. It works on any cell phone, not just iPhones.
http://www.foneshow.com
I also get SMS’s when the feed updates
-Z
Works very well. Congrats, guys!
Doesn’t Orb work with the iPhone yet? Then you can access all your audio, video, and live TV from your home computer while on the road. I suppose network speed might be an issue though. But I haven’t had any problems watching TV shows (when traveling) on my smartphone.
What about http://www.podcaster.fm. It’s an iPhone podcast client that allows you to stream podcasts to your iPhone. It also allows you to subscribe to feeds via podcast directory and if you can’t find it there, you can enter a feed url or import an opml file from iTunes.
I’m surprised there isn’t a mobile version of iTunes for the iPhone (or is there?). That seems like it would be the ideal way to ensure you always have the latest versions of your favorite podcasts. Not sure how Stitcher would compete with this if iTunes for iPhone becomes available.
“…I have a hard time picturing many people sitting at their computers listening to recommended news articles and debates.”
Totally agreed…but then the company must have done their research and found the iPhone bunch particularly interested in this kind of content.
If not…someone may just be in love with the idea…
We agree that a lot of value is derived from being able to have this audio content go mobile with you (e.g. on the iPhone).
In fact, if you want to listen to TechCrunch on your iPhone, just go to this landing page: http://landing.stitcher.com/index.php?id=10001
It can send you an SMS to listen to be listening to TechCrunch on your iPhone within seconds.
Podcasting on iPhone :
http://mirpod.com/iphone.php