To Podcast or Podcatch, that is the question.

Well both is the answer, of course, but how.

I listened to the first 3 Trade Secrets Podcasts this morning, after installing Jaeger and leaving it running all night with my 56k connection. I don't have a handheld to sync it to, and I'm not sure there is one that I would pay for anyway. Dave Winer and Adam Curry were discussing a wish list for a device for Podcasting (I assume it's for creating and listening.) and Podcatching.

That device would be:

- 60Gb Hard drive
- Wireless
- Be able to rec multiple simultaneous sources
- Dock to a computer / becomes router of audio (audio for one app and rec another.)

This is something that is similar to a handheld that I have envisaged for several years now.
After hearing about 802.11 and sniffing and mobile wireless base stations, and reading about hotspots and about some amazing apps people have created (Like Skype and Audacity and iPodder and Jaeger). I have been looking at all this and thought a handheld that runs windows Pocket PC (and the other handheld formats and OS's I've heard.) can do all that and if it has a hard drive big enough can run anything. Being a PC user running Win I've looked at solutions I can use.

So this leads to the question of how.

Well at the moment an iPod has a 40Gb hard drive, but its USB not Wireless. I've heard that soon a video capable iPod is to be released, (When - Days).

An Ipaq has wireless capabilty but uses Flash memory (upto 1Gb I'm told).

So the storage and Transfer of data seem to be on different OS's and different devices. How long before someone pulls the guts out of these devices wraps 1000 mile tap around it and calls it a PodPaq (or OneHand) and runs everything from both in one hand.

Where I live a 40Gb iPod is NZ$799 (thats about US$556.) a 2nd hand one is upto NZ$530.
an IPaq is around the same price and of course there are alot more 2nd hand at around NZ$550. So at the moment just playing with the idea of combining these two devices on the cheap would appear to be a $1000+ exercise, then you have to do all the work of getting it to work as one device.

Well from where I am standing this looks like something that will happen either in a market where these devices are cheaper 2nd hand, or in the future when they are superceded by newer technology and therefore become cheaper. At the moment a computer Desktop or Laptop, for NZ$250 (US$175), can do all the things required to Podcast.

So the solution to this question is a smaller computer, is it really that simple. Isn't that what a handheld is?