Notes from the Trail

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I don’t think I really began to understand how revolutionary the iPhone, iPod Touch, and yesterday’s iPod video really are until the past two weeks. I was eating lunch with Taylor, and he began to show off all the video podcasts that he’d put on his iPhone.

Now, I have subscriptions to several church podcasts and a few others, but I had never really paid any attention to video podcasts. I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that every major news network produced a daily video podcast. As I began searching the web and iTunes, I began to discover other video podcasts and within an hour, I had clicked “Subscribe” to about 20 different feeds.

Since then, I find myself watching the ABC Nightly News… when I want to. Usually it’s when I’m lying down to go to sleep. It’s nice to put the earphones on, catch up with the day, and even to pray for leaders, situations, and world events as I quiet my mind and heart.

I have also begun putting the TV shows that I follow (Smallville, Heroes, etc.) on my iPhone to watch the episodes that I’ve missed. Combine that with other video podcasts from churches, technology sites, etc., and I have a wealth of information in my palm that defies my ability to take it all in.

Since my subscription spree the other day, I’ve been paring down the amount of podcasts that I subscribe to, simply for the sake of time; however, I’m confident that my viewing habits have been radically changed. I used to not enjoy watching anything (movies, favorite shows) unless I could do so with my surround sound (no, I don’t have a plasma, LCD or big screen - still just a Sanyo 27″ analog tube). However, with my iPhone and ear buds, I have found that my audiovisual experience does not really suffer in the least. It’s startling to realize the crisp clarity of the iPhone screen and the sound that you can enjoy with ear buds.

Once in the morning, I’ll tell iTunes to refresh my podcasts so that it will catch the newest video podcast of Good Morning America, and then in the evening, I update my podcasts again so that I have the newest evening news episode.

Update: Another thing that has proved to be wonderful and could be done with any other phone these days is the strategic use of Twitter and Flickr. I use Twitter regularly to encourage, have fun, and simply update folks on my whereabouts, thoughts, and activities. It’s posted instantly on my Wordpress blog thanks to the Simple Twitter plugin. In addition, I use the email address Flickr provides for my account and send pictures that I’ve taken with my iPhone. I’ve set them to automatically be tagged so that they appear on my picture stream on my blog as well (using FlickrRSS plugin).

I’m curious for the rest of you tech geeks out there… how have you found portable media players such as the iPod changing your media and viewing habits?