You don’t need any plugin to listen to podcasts, but the method of doing so isn’t entirely obvious and the official documentation isn’t exactly helpful. I spent two weeks playing around with plugins that didn’t really help before stumbling upon this method, so I feel like I should share it.

Simply put, there are no good plugins, as of this writing, for managing your podcasts in XBMC, but there is a way to listen to and watch podcasts by default. Your media center will be way better if you do this.

Adding Your Podcast Using The GUI

So what’s the trick? Basically, it’s adding the RSS feed as a media source. I know, it’s not intuitive. The media source menu seems like a place to add folders with media files and nothing else, but that’s simply not the case.

Head to the “File” menu of the music or video section of XBMC, depending on what sort of podcast you are adding. Then click “Add Source.” Instead of adding a folder on your computer, type the RSS feed yourself, beginning with “rss://” instead of “http://”.

So far as I can tell, you can’t paste the URL into XBMC, meaning you’ll have to type the URL by hand. Keep reading if this is too much work; there’s another method.

Repeat the process for all of your podcasts, being sure to put video and audio podcasts in their proper places. That’s it; you can now stream music from your podcasts by browsing the “File” section whenever you like.

Editing Sources.xml

Do you prefer editing a text file rather than messing around with the GUI? That makes sense. You can manually add your sources in Sources.xml, if you’re geeky enough to figure it out.

Where is Sources.xml? It depends what operating system you’re using. Here’s the list:

• Windows XP: Documents and Settings\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Vista/Windows 7: Users\\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Mac OS X: /Users//Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  
• iOS: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/
  
• Linux: $HOME/.xbmc/userdata/

Once you’ve found the file, you’re going to need to add code. Use this code:

<source>
<name>RSS Feed</name>
<path>rss://</path>
</source>


You’re going to need to replace “RSS Feed” with the name of your podcast, and “rss://” with the URL of your podcast. Remember: you need to replace “http://” with “rss://” or this may not work. You’re also going to want to make sure that audio podcasts are within this <music> tag, while video ones are within the <video> tag.

Are you confused by this method? Stick to the GUI, then, but know that learning this can save you time.

Using The Favorites

Once you’ve added your podcasts you’re going to want to browse them regularly. They’ll be a lot easier to find if you add them to your favorites. Doing so is easy – simply right-click on the podcast in the “File” menu, or press the “C” key while the podcast is selected. Then click “Add to Favorites”

You can add just about anything to your favorites, including shows and sections from addons and even shows on Hulu, so this menu will quickly become the center of your media center.

Conclusion

XBMC is complicated, but rewarding. Adding podcasts is no exception. I don’t know why this needed to be so hard, but I really like having access now that I figured it out. I hope I’ve helped you solve a problem too.

What podcasts do you like to watch or listen to on your media center? Share, along with any other thoughts, in the comments below.

If you have access to Last.fm, Pandora or Spotify, you may find all your new music needs there. But these services don’t include everything, and more importantly, they’re geo-restricted. So without further ado, here are 6 great ways to discover cool music you’ve never heard before, no matter where you are in the world.

Earbits Radio

Earbits is a fantastic website in which you can discover new music, listen to it, learn about new artists, chat and comment about them, and much more. To start, all you have to do is pick a station. Stations are based on genres, but there are loads of them to choose from. Whether you’re interested in experimental rock, funk jazz or street hop, you’re going to find it in Earbits.

If you can’t even decide on a genre, you can choose a shuffle station, or go for editor’s picks or listener’s picks stations. After you choose a station, the music will immediately start playing, featuring a huge image of the artist and a short bio and buy links on the bottom.

You can log in using Facebook to rate songs and comment (unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to so this without Facebook). You can also download the Chrome app, and get the Earbits iOS or Android apps. This is an awesome way to listen to new music you’ve never heard of before.

Musicovery

Musicovery is another great service which helps you discover new music. It’s not as eye-catching as Earbits, but it does the job well. To start, you can either enter a name of an artist you like, or choose your mood.

Musicovery will create a radio station for you, much like Last.fm or Pandora, which should feature songs that suit your taste and/or mood. You can listen to all the music you want this way. If you create a free account, you can ban songs from appearing in your playlists and mark songs as favorites. A paid account will get you some extra features.

Musicovery also comes as an iPhone app, and there are other goodies such as the widget and lab you’re going to want to check out.

Shuffler.fm

Shuffler.fm is a music discovery engine that is entirely based on music blogs. You can listen to music by genre, by popular tracks, or by blog. Simply choose your “channel”, and off you go.

If you choose to listen by genre, each song in the playlist will come from a different blog. The page will change accordingly, and you will get to view the actual blog post relating to the song you’re listening to.

You can create an account with the site, or log in using Facebook, to follow specific blogs and more. Shuffler.fm also comes as an iPad app.

YouLicense Mood Finder

YouLicense is actually a site aimed at letting people license music, but it also provides a pretty good way to discover some new music. The website includes a tool which lets you browse for new music by mood; there aren’t a lot of moods to choose from, but all the really important ones are includes.

When you choose a mood, a new window will open with a set playlist for that mood. In that aspect, there’s a limit to the amount of music you can discover with YouLicense, but it does contain songs by artists you’ve probably never heard of, and you can use it as a stepping stone to discovering even more great music.

If you create an account on the site, you can rate songs and create playlists as well. The website is not meant to be a music discovery tool per se, but it’s definitely useful as one.

From The Basement

We now move on to a different kind of websites: These websites don’t provide a lot of music to listen to, but do provide information and names of new artists you may want to listen to. And after all, that’s half the problem with finding new music.

The first one of these is From The Basement – a sort of podcast/live performances website created by Radiohead’s producer Nigel Godrich. The site features live shows shot by the website, which aim to create a relaxed atmosphere for the artist and produce the best performances possible.

There is a limited number of artists to choose from, some of which you’ve probably never heard of, and each contains 1 or more live performances, a picture gallery, and useful links. The videos are very well made – not something you would find on MTV, that’s for sure – and the minimalistic site is a joy to browse for any music lover.

Gnoosic

Gnoosic is a music discovery service that doesn’t include any actual music. You give it up to three names of artists you like, and Gnoosic starts giving you suggestions for more artists you may enjoy.

For each suggestion, you can choose whether you like it, don’t like it, or don’t know it, and the suggestions continue. For each suggestion you can also access a discussion board, and even cooler, see it on a music map.

The band you were looking at will appear in the middle, with other, similar bands floating all around it. You can use this to find music that is similar to music you already know you like. After finding some names that look interesting, you can use other services to find the actual music.

Looking for more online music sources? Check out:

• 10 Music Search Engines To Discover Cool Music, Musicians & Great Bands
• Top 10 Free Ways To Discover New Music Online
• The 4 Best Websites To Check Out New Music Releases First

Do you know of more cool ways to discover new music? Share in the comments!

Image credit: Shutterstock

We, as listeners and fans, only stand to gain. One of the best tools on the scene today, for artists and listeners both, is Bandcamp. We have mentioned Bandcamp before, when Tina listed the site as one of 5 Resources Used To Find Free MP3 Albums For Sound Sunday. Today, I’d like to take you in for a closer look at the site from the listener perspective.

The Concept

Bandcamp lets artists put their albums online and let users listen to the music right on the site. The artists selects what tracks users can listen to (usually, all of them). These are not previews or 30-second snippets, but the full track. And you can listen to it as many times as you want, without having to pay anything. The typical album interface looks like this:

Look at everything you can do here. The large button at the top lets you play the whole album. The playlist at the bottom shows you what song is currently playing, and you can also read the lyrics, skip between songs, and buy individual songs. The artist can offer specific songs for free – the first two songs in this particular album (Diablo Mambo) are offered for free, in exchange for a subscription to the artist’s mailing list. This is what happens when you click the Download button:

So you share your email with the band, but if you like their music enough to want to download it, you probably won’t mind.

Finding Music To Listen To

Okay, so we’ve seen a little bit of the individual artist interface, and we’ll get back to it later. But before delving into it in further detail, we need to answer an important question: How do you find stuff to listen to?

Bandcamp lets you directly search by artist, track, and album names, and even by lyrics. But if you’re not looking for anything specific, you can browse the library by either genre or location:

For example, here’s a list of artists from New Zealand:

Another good way to find artists is via Bandcamp’s featured music tag on their blog. This is a relatively new venture for Bandcamp. Once per week, a detailed review of an album is published. The reviews are well written and compelling, and span many different genres from hip-hop to folk to electronica.

The Current Activity List

There’s one more way to find new music, and it’s actually my favorite. Bandcamp’s front page has a running stream of music selling right now. The stream is constantly updated in real time, and watching it feels a bit like standing next to the cash register in a “real” record store:

There’s a big difference between just listening to music on the site and deciding to pay for it. When a user decides to spend real money on an album, that means the album is at least worth a listen. Spending money is a fantastic filter.

Name Your Price, Pick Your Format

It’s hard to put a price on something as intangible as an album. So, why not let the customer decide how much they want to pay?

If you look at the list above, you will see that the top four albums were sold for “more than the minimum”. In fact, they were all available for download for free, (a $5 purchase that is $5 over the minimum means the album was available for $0) and yet users opted to pay for them.

Other albums do have a minimum price:

Here, it is at least $10. But again, you can usually listen to the entire album online over and over again before deciding to spend that money.

Final Thoughts

Bandcamp is an incredible way to get to know new music. It’s how I found Marian Call, great Ukelele covers of Radiohead by Amanda Palmer, and lots of other fantastic music that stuck with me. This is clearly the future of music, and if you haven’t tried it yet, you really should take it for a spin.  Let us know what you think of it.

Radio is, by nature, a passive medium. You turn on the radio and you listen to music or news stories. You don’t control what stories or songs come up, meaning you’ll often stumble onto something new serendipitously. That’s part of the fun of the medium. Websites, on the other hand, are active. You go to a site and you pick what you want to read, watch or listen to. When one story finishes you continue browsing.

This self-selection means you only consume news you’re interested in, because you yourself are choosing what to consume. It also means you need to take an active role in picking stories, which is problematic if you wanted to listen to the news while doing something else. NPR’s Infinite Player is an experiment aimed at addressing this. It currently works in Safari and Chrome; versions of other browsers are in development.

For Comparison’s Sake

NPR’s website, by default, looks like any other news site. You can browse and read stories, and you can pick stories to listen to. You can even make a playlist of stories.

This is an extremely active version of NPR. Basically, nothing plays unless you pick the story and tell it to play.

When Google launched the Chrome Web Store, NPR quickly put out an app version of their site. This is cleaner, and makes it easier to listen to stories you like. It’s still however, an active tool – nothing plays unless you tell it to.

To Infinity…

Which brings me to the subject of this article – the Infinite Player. Open this site, sign in with your NPR account, and it starts playing right away:

The player always begins with the latest hourly update, giving you an overview of what’s happening right now. It will then start playing random, recent stories from a variety of NPR’s programs.

Controls are, by design, minimal. You can rewind thirty seconds and skip to the next story. You can also give each story a thumbs up or down. The more you use this, the more the player catches on to your interests. If you enjoy music stories more than political stories, for example, you’ll hear more about music and less about politics – provided you give feedback to the program as you’re listening.

You won’t hear no political stories, however. According to NPR, part of the point of this project is to bring serendipity back to Internet radio, meaning there will always be at least some variety in the stories you hear. This is important. You don’t want to create a walled garden of only stories you’re interested in. You might never learn anything new about the world that way.

Limitations

Of course, there are some limitations to this project. As of this writing it only works with recent versions of Safari and Chrome, being based on media functions other browsers don’t have yet. It’s also worth noting that this tool only includes national stories from NPR, meaning you’ll need to look elsewhere for local news (although there are local-news-enhanced versions for KQED, KPLU and Michigan Radio). Still, this thing is worth checking out. I’m enjoying it immensely. I myself would love to see other media outlets take an approach like this.

What do you think? Is this a valid experiment, or are people already tired of Pandora-style radio? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Let’s try to keep the conversation about the technology and ideas behind this software. Or, if you prefer, we could just talk about how NPR is an evil liberal network and how you prefer to get your news from more nuanced sources, such as Glenn Beck. That’s cool too.

Finding a podcast you like listening to isn’t necessarily easy, though. Finding my favorite cool podcasts took a while, so I thought I’d share them with you. Let’s not stop there, though. Add links to your favorite podcasts below so everyone can benefit, myself included. Who knows, we just might end up publishing a follow-up piece outlining your favorites.

RadioLab

Humans have no idea how pigeons navigate so well. It’s not by sight, and it’s not by smell; we’ve run tests to prove this. If we could figure out how they navigate so well GPS satellites might become redundant. But we can’t.

That’s just one thing I’ve learned by listening to Radiolab, an altogether impossible to describe show exploring the intersection of science and philosophy. This extremely well-crafted show only puts out five one-hour episodes a year, along with ten shorts. This quality-over-quantity strategy pays off in a big way, because I’m yet to be disappointed by an episode of this show. For best results listen with headphones.

The Bugle

This is the opposite of Radiolab. John Oliver, of Daily Show fame, joins his former co-host Andy Zaltzman once a week to make up a bunch of nonsense regarding the news. It’s the only audio newspaper for a visual world. If you like walking around town wearing headphones and bursting into occasional fits of laughter, this show is for you. Be warned, though: this show has a satirical point of view, and isn’t shy to offend.

Check out The Bugle‘s terrible website, which Andy really shouldn’t have built himself. Oh well, there are subscription links there and that’s all you need.

This American Life

Not much needs to be said about this show. Consistently among the most popular podcasts on iTunes, This American Life is a weekly examination of the big and small stories that collectively define America. Even if you’re not American, though, you’ll find something to love here.

The storytelling transcends documentary or journalism; it’s perhaps best described simply as “non-fiction” (though sometimes fictional stories are included as well). Oh, and take note, you can listen to the complete This American Life archives for free.

Planet Money

Does business and economic news confuse you? You’re not alone. From the Wall Street Journal to CNBC, financial news is riddled with jargon and often impossible to understand if you’re not an insider.

That’s why I love Planet Money, an NPR podcast that seeks to explain in simple English how our economy functions. Listen to this on a regular basis and you’ll be amazed how fast you start comprehending financial news, and how much fun you can have figuring it out.

Freakonomics

It was a book and then a movie. Now it’s a podcast.

Exploring the weird ways economics can be used to understand the world beyond money, Freakonomics Radio is great fun to listen to. If you’ve read the books you know how different the Freakonomics point of view can be, but if not you should check out this podcast.

Conclusion

Oh, by the way, James and Dave, both writers here for MakeUseOf, work with me on a weekly technology podcast called Technophilia. It’s not in the same league as these shows, but it’s a lot of fun and covers a lot of the stuff you read here at MakeUseOf. I’d love it if you’d give us a listen.

Do you want some other podcasts to check out? We’ve made a few lists already:

• 10 Educational Podcasts
• 5 Podcasts for Manly Men
• 4 Mixed Martial Arts Podcasts
• 5 Comedy Podcasts

Do you know of some other podcasts I should check out? Please let me know in the comments below. I look forward to your suggestions!

Podcasts are probably the best multi-tasking medium out there. You can listen to news about the world, technology or any other interest you have while walking to work, cooking dinner or cleaning your place. Getting started listening to podcasts can be overwhelming, however, especially if you don’t have access to iTunes. You typically need to find the (often-buried) RSS feed for the podcast, then add it to the podcast function of your media player.

That’s why gPodder is nice. It does one thing and does it well. Even better, its online directory of podcasts makes finding new things to listen to very simple.

I scratched the surface of this program while outlining 3 lightweight Linux podcast managers, but there’s a lot more to tell about gPodder.

Using gPodder

Start up gPodder and you will see a simple interface for downloading and listening to podcasts:

You can add RSS feeds easily from inside the program, and you can browse previous episodes of any podcast you add.

Dig around in the settings, however, and you’ll find control that music players, including Banshee and Rhythmbox, don’t provide when it comes to podcasts. You can set the program to automatically download new episodes, but to skip certain podcasts. You can also automatically delete files you listened to or watched some days ago. You can use OPML files to import and export your list of podcasts, which is very useful if you want to share your list or are switching computers.

I like that I can set this up to sync with my phone, which uses a basic file system for music and media. There is also support for iPod and MTP devices, but I could not test that function because I don’t own an iPod or an MTP device.

It seems this feature is being dropped from future releases, something I sincerely hope changes. I like this feature.

Of course, this service doesn’t only sync with your devices. It also syncs with the cloud.

Online Interface

If you use gPodder, you should really get an account over at gPodder. Using this service you can edit your list of podcasts online, away from the computer you have gPodder installed on.

Add or remove podcasts online; your changes will be synced the next time you run the program. Adding podcasts is made even easier thanks to the gPodder Podcast directory:

Here you can find a wide variety of podcasts, with a special focus on technology podcasts as well as those from NPR and the BBC. Explore and add them to gPodder in a single click. This web interface is a great way to find and add podcasts to your home collection from at work or anytime you’re away from your computer.

You can also share your podcast collection publicly using this feature, in the form of an OPML file or as a webpage.

Installing gPodder

Ubuntu users can simply click here to install gPodder. Users of other Linux distributions should check their package manager, because this program is almost certainly there.

Are you on Windows? You can use gPodder too; find the download for Windows here along with a MacPorts entry for OS X users.

Conclusion

I’ve been heavily using this program for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve got to say I’m a fan. It does exactly what I need it to, and that makes me happy.

How does gPodder work for you? Let me know in the comments below, because as always I’m thrilled to hang out and chat with you.

We first featured SoundCloud on MakeUseOf initially back in 2008, and while the core service largely remains the same; much has changed. If you’ve been wondering what SoundCloud is, whether you can make use of it and what makes it so special then read on to find out why you should probably have been using this free service all along.

Follow The Music

The service operates much in the same way as Twitter whereby, once registered, you can follow other users and receive notification of new activity in your stream. The process really doesn’t get more complicated than this, and once you’ve followed a few users then your stream will begin to look fairly busy.

Along the top of the page is the main navigation, including your Dashboard (essentially a stream), You featuring all your activity, including comments made, favourites and so on, Tracks which is a quick way of exploring music on offer (now includes a Creative Commons option), People for finding other users and Groups. You can of course search for music, though you’re probably better going by tags for specific genres.

Listening to music via SoundCloud can provide an oddly visual experience. For starters, each track is represented by a waveform with comments layered on top. Comments are tied to specific points in the song, and will be displayed accordingly for future listeners. Much of the time whilst using the service I find myself transfixed by the waveform and fairly amused by the barrage of comments, especially near a drop.

Comments are not only somewhat amusing but also a great way of discovering other artists you may like. If you notice someone is frequently passing comment on music you’re fond of then why not see who else that user is following.

The player itself really has come a long way since our last profile of SoundCloud, and there are a wealth of options for each song. As well as sharing with a lot of social networks, clicking “Like” to favourite the song and of course adding a comment, it is also possible to buy or download the song (depending on what the artist has stipulated) and even embed the player within a website.

I’ve taken advantage of this here to bring you a few choice cuts from the service, and to demonstrate a great way of sharing your favourite tracks with those not currently using SoundCloud.

SoundCloud Mobile

By far one of the best ways of using the service is via one of the mobile apps. Both the Android version and SoundCloud for iOS received updates recently, and whilst I can’t really speak too much for Android, the updated app I’m running on my iPhone is better than ever.

The recent iOS update finally added the viewing of comments during playback and refreshed the UI. Your followers’ activity in both versions is now constricted to the Stream tab with any sounds you choose to record or share going in the Activity tab. As you’d expect, the iPhone version continues playback in the background without a hitch (some apps still don’t do this) and you can skip and pause from your homescreen.

The only thing that the mobile version really lacks is the ability to download tracks, though if you really like a track that much you can favourite it and download it the next time you’re near a PC. The mobile SoundCloud experience is generally a faster and more pleasant way of checking your stream, and I’d thoroughly recommend it.

Download: SoundCloud for iOS @ App Store
Download: SoundCloud for Android @ Android Market
View: SoundCloud Mobile (Web)

Other Ways To Get Your ‘Cloud On

SoundCloud really has been growing for a long time now, and as a result there are a lot of ways to use the service. Mac OS X users who are running 10.6 or later can jump right in and download SoundCloud Desktop, directly from the Mac App Store. The interface somewhat resembles iTunes and the software is ideal if you’re thinking of streaming SoundCloud for a party.

There are further add-ons and plugins for the PS3, Boxee and Roku. In addition to this there are a wealth of apps that take advantage of the SoundCloud service. If you’re fond of mobile music making apps like the recently featured iMaschine or KORG’s iMS-20 then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find out you can share your creations straight to SoundCloud simply by logging in using your chosen app.

SoundCloud’s API has spawned literally hundreds of additional ways to use the service, be it creating an online presence using your taste in music, setting up a trigger to Tweet your uploads using If This Then That or simply sharing a rough loop or two with your followers.

View: The SoundCloud App Database

Finally…

Who exactly is SoundCloud good for? Well aside from being an awesome tool for you and me to quickly discover new music, SoundCloud is also great for artists and record labels, particularly smaller ones.

My SoundCloud favourites are populated mostly by tracks from obscure artists, some just starting out, who I would never have discovered were it not for the service. Similarly, many of these artists and producers would never have received the same level of exposure had it not been for SoundCloud.

So there’s your final reason to sign up, download and wallow in the SoundCloud service. If you’d like to share any tracks, your profile or artists in the comments then go ahead.

Do you like SoundCloud? Have you used it for a while? Noticed the mobile updates? Post your thoughts in the comment box below.

But most big websites provide similar selections. Should we be limited to mainstream just because we choose to read using audiobooks? Not at all. If you love unique books, unknown authors and books you generally don’t find in the usual book collections, you can still play the free audiobook game.

These 7 websites provide very interesting books, but the user experience is not always perfect. The books are there, and they are all decent quality, but you might have to dig for some really interesting finds. But hey, that’s all part of the fun!

Lit2Go

Lit2Go is an audiobook project containing both books and poems, and is run by Florida’s Educationsl Technology Clearinghouse. This is a nice collection of fiction books, educational books, poems, short stories and more, which you can browse by author, title, reading level or subject matter.

Each book is available to download as MP3 or PDF, so Lit2Go can be used as an interesting source for eBooks as well. You can also view each book as plain text on a webpage, if you wish to listen on your computer and follow while you read.

Internet Archive

Internet Archive includes, among other things, a sizable collection of audiobooks and poetry. While not the easiest site to browse, you can focus your attention on either regular browsing by title/keyword/subject (no author, for some reason), or check out the right sidebar for a list of the most downloaded audiobooks and some staff picks.

Since the website consolidated several collections, not all books are available in all formats. Some are available as MP3 only, while others are available as Ogg as well. The files are usually for individual chapters, though some books are available as a single download.

The Story Spieler

If Internet Archive seems crowded and confusing, The Story Spieler is one reader who hosts his files on Internet Archive, but also has his own blog where you can browse only his books. The books in The Story Spieler are narrated by a retired TV and radio broadcaster, and his choice of stories is both varied and interesting.

Browse the books using the huge category list which contains everything from history to Rudyard Kipling and from children’s stories to science fiction. Seriously, this guy is diverse. There are lots of books by famous classic authors, and a lot of titles you’ve probably never heard of. The books are available in MP3 format, and files are usually small, as appropriate to blog posts. Longer books are divided into chapters, which you can download individually.

Voices In The Dark

While not being a huge collection, Voice in the Dark is one of those places you can’t help but fall in love with. This is an intriguing collection of mystery, fantasy and poetry, mixed with some legends, fairy tales and much more. All are read by real people and all are available in both low quality and high quality MP3s.

While the whole website seems to have been preserved from the 90′s, the book collection is really interesting, and the readers are very diverse. You can easily browse the collection by genre, title or author. It’s hard to tell if the website is still being updated, but one can hope. This is one truly unique find.

FreeAudioBooks

If you’re looking for something a bit more mainstream, FreeAudioBooks is probably the most classical collection on this list. This is a diverse collection which features many true classics along with children’s stories, lots of non-fiction audios and many more genres to choose from. Whether you’re into plays, biographies or classic humor, you’re going to find it all here.

All files are available in the ZIP format, inside which you’d find a separate MP3 for each chapter.

Tor.com

If you’re a true sci-fi and fantasy buff , be sure to check out Tor.com. This is a large collection of short stories by famous or not-so-famous authors, which are available for download in MP3 format. If you’re into eReaders, most books are also available in Kindle, Nook and iPad formats. Scattered among the stories, you’ll also find the odd comic strip. These are not available in audio, but are a nice addition to the general experience.

When you click a story, you’ll usually get the text itself. To get the audio, search the left sidebar for the word “listen”. This is where you can download the audio. Not all stories have audio, but a good amount of them do.

Pulp Daily

Remember the good old days of pulp fiction? Well, I don’t. Pulp stories are an interesting glimpse into the 1930s, and could be really entertaining to read. I’ve heard a lot of these pulp magazine stories, but who has time to locate them and read them? This is where Pulp Daily comes in handy.

Pulp Daily is a blog, which unfortunately was not updated since January, but still contains a lot of recorded pulp magazine stories. The author was posting a chapter every few days, and you can browse the archives for some interesting stories from the blog’s past. You will have to download each story chapter by chapter, but this might be worth it for an excellent way to listen to a piece of entertainment history.

On the left you’ll find links to several other free audiobook blogs, these are all interesting finds and you should go ahead and to check them all out.

Bottom Line

Don’t be deterred if you don’t find a good read on the main page of these websites. Part of the fun is in the browsing and finding, and all these websites offer some really good finds. And if you don’t have time, you can always pick something at random!

Want to share your experience from these websites? Know of more interesting audiobook websites? We’re waiting for your comments!

Image credit: Shutterstock

Do you ever wish you could read your tweets no matter where you are or what you’re doing? Or maybe you’re just so addicted to Twitter that you need to get your hit even while driving or folding your laundry? If one of these is true, you should give Tweet Speaker ($1.99 for a limited time, usually $2.99) a spin. Tweet Speaker for iOS turns your Twitter timeline into your own, personal news podcast. All you have to do is choose between your whole timeline, your mentions, or any other list you have on Twitter, and enjoy the ride.

You Don’t Need A Twitter Account To Enjoy

On the off chance that you don’t actually have a Twitter account, you can still use Tweet Speaker to get some interesting news. When you launch the app, you’ll get the usual options to sign in or sign up to Twitter, but you can also Read the News.

This option gathers tweets from multiple news sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, BBC World and more. Simply hit play and enjoy the latest news, Twitter style.

Your Own Personal Twitter Radio

But chances are that you do have a Twitter account (or two). Tap the Sign In button and enter your credentials, and you’re ready to start. If you don’t have lists, you can choose between your timeline and your mentions.

When you choose a list, you’ll reach this beautiful interface which shows all your tweets on a radio-like timeline. For each tweet, you can reply right from the app, mark as favorite, load the whole conversation (if there is one), and re-tweet.

Now simply hit play, sit back, and enjoy your timeline. You can pause the reading at any time, and restart it from the beginning of the last tweet you listened to.

You can see that the app’s developers put some thought into it. The voice is Twitter-adjusted and knows all the abbreviations – RT turns to “re-tweet”, links are read as their respective titles, not as incomprehensible gibberish and it’s not confused by hash tags or mentions.

The user interface is really slick as well. Scroll to the right to find your newer tweets and downwards to read conversations. If you scroll all the way to the end on either side, you’ll get the option to refresh your tweets.

If you need to stop and exit the app, the last tweet you were on is automatically bookmarked, so next time you load the app and wish to continue, it knows exactly the last tweet you were listening to.

More Options

Tapping a user’s picture will give you the options to unfollow or open in Safari.

You can add multiple clients to Tweet Speaker, so if you have a long drive ahead of you, for example, simply sign into all your accounts and spend the time catching up on all the latest news, hands free and eyes free.

You can’t control the reading voice just yet, but the developers promise that more is coming soon. As it is, you can control the reading speed and what happens when you tap links inside tweets (which you shouldn’t do while driving, of course).

Tweet Speaker also integrates with Tweet Marker, so you can keep track of the tweets you listened to even if you use other clients.

Bottom Line

Tweet Speak is more than just a tweet reader, it’s actually a Tweeter client all by itself, but a very cool and well-made one. The interface is beautiful, and the reading functionality is surprisingly useful. If you’re a true Twitter fan, or trying to become one, it’s worth the $2. Tweet Speaker’s unique capabilities are sure to come in handy next time you walk to work and forget to bring music.

What do you think of Tweet Speaker and the general idea of listening to your tweets everywhere? Share in the comments!

However, when I listened to podcasts in my browser I would always go to the website hosting the podcast and play it from there. This was a major pain, but no longer. Podcast Player Pro is a convenient app available from the Google App Store that rescued me from having to seek podcasts the hard way.

This is a huge time saver for me, since I no longer have to go to the website of a podcast I want to listen to. I just subscribe to the podcast through the app, and it is always there when I want to listen to it. I’ve always used a similar app for listening to podcasts in the car, but never thought to use one in my browser. Now that I have one, I will never go back to the old way of hunting around the internet for my podcast enjoyment.

Getting Started

First head over to Podcast Player Pro’s page on the Google App Store and install the application in your browser. To do this simply click the link labeled “Add to Chrome.” You will have to authorize the app to log in with your Google account and then you will be ready to start subscribing to your favorite internet radio shows.

The next step is to find some podcasts to listen to. On the right side of the screen there is a search box that you can use to find a podcast by name. For example, I typed “MMA” into the search box, and some of my favorites came up.

Pick the name of the podcast you like and the information on that podcast will come up in the middle of the screen. You can choose to listen to an episode or subscribe to the podcast for listening in the future.

If the podcast you are looking for is not readily available in the search, fear not, because you can easily subscribe to the podcast with the podcast RSS feed or by importing from iTunes. Simply go to the website for the podcast and get the feed for the show if you choose to go the RSS route.

If you choose to go with the iTunes method, simply export the .OPML file from iTunes, click the “Import from iTunes” or “Import OPML” link. Once you upload the file, the podcast will show in your subscriptions list.

Listening to Podcasts

Once you have your list of podcasts all ready to go, the obvious next thing you would want to do is listen to them. All your subscribed podcasts show up on the left side of the screen. Simple click the feed that you would like to listen to and a list of all available episodes will pop up in the middle of the player. You can either click the big “Play” button if you want to stream the podcast, or you can click the link to download the MP3 of the show. After a couple of seconds the episode will begin to play right in the app if you choose to stream.

Podcast Player Pro also supports video podcasts. It offers three different options for screen size and full screen support.

The player also features a convenient skip ahead button that will make the podcast jump ahead or back 15 seconds. This is a great way to skip commercials if the podcast you are listing to has them. I find skipping ahead like this much more precise than dragging the bar.

The program also remembers where you left off, so if you have to leave in the middle of a podcast fear not, because the next time you open the app you will be listening right where you last were.

Conclusion

If you are an avid podcast listener than this is a must download app. It has a clean, easy to use interface that allows you to add and listen to podcasts quickly and easily.

How do you listen to podcasts in your web browser? What are some great podcasts you enjoy? Let us know in the comments!