Droid Tips & Tricks: Listen is a search way to think podcasting

There are many apps in the Android Market for podcasting. I choose Google Listen first because I want to understand the philosophy behind Google's push into the smartphone business.

Once telling a friend how much I enjoyed podcasts using a BlackBerry Storm, he seemed surprised thinking that people could only receive podcasts though the iTunes store.

Actually "podcasting" or rather the idea of streaming programmed content has been around since the AM radio was invented and people gathered around a wooden box with glowing tubes to hear a favorite program. Eventually, portable AM radios made this programming mobile.

Using the app Podtrapper, on my Blackberry, I downloaded and cached podcasts over the wireless connection after going down a static list in the app or entering in a URL that I obtained from a search engine.

Once it was set up, the phone updated automatically. It was my self-contained portable transistor AM radio, only I was the station programmer.

Google's Listen podcasting app begins as a search, then you can stream and cache the programs all from the phone.

Once you find a podcast you like, the podcast falls into the directory and automatically updates as new podcasts appear in the series. You can also search by most popular and most popular term searches. Your search terms are saved as bookmarks.

Updated podcasts will stream from one to the next in your updated series.

Closing the program leaves you right where you left off in a particular podcast.

You can obtain more (previous) episodes from a single touch.

You can add a URL from a podcast found in the wild.

Listen has pulled me out of my box of podcast listening because the search and play is so convenient and all from the handset.

The search begins with podcasts most recently updated so you aren't wasting time looking at something that hasn't been updated in 300 days.

Listen turns podcasting on your Droid into a live feed for podcasts, updating what you like and giving you a quick mobile sample of the latest of what the world has to offer.