My holiday has had two themes–(other than being felled by a bad cold and having a wonderful visit with the kids)–

–my new Ipod, and our new constantly meowing mama cat(found outside the library in August) and her new kitten.

It was an Ipod Christmas at our house, and I’m learning how to use mine and loving it more and more!  (This isn’t an ad for Ipod, I promise!)

To me the  feature I’m most surprised to be enjoying is the ability to subscribe to  podcasts.  For a while, I’ve thought–well, podcasts are nice but I don’t want to sit at my computer and listen to them–I can just read the article online, so why listen to it?

And though I’m a librarian, I don’t seem to be able to concentrate on  long audiobooks, which is a feature of Ipod that would be great for a lot of users.  But I like listening to short things, like radio news stories, feature stories, book reviews, music reviews, etc.   And since I can connect my Ipod to my car radio with a tape adapter, I can create my own set of subscriptions of “podcasts” I like to listen to in the car.  So far I have subscribed to a coffee break Spanish program, a learn to speak French program, Garrison Keiller’s daily almanac, and a couple of technology podcasts.  

I’m as much a novice to Ipod as a lot of you, so here’s basically how it works–you install Itunes on your computer and create a login.  Click on podcasts and select the free ones you want to subscribe to.  When you hook your Ipod to the computer to recharge–it downloads the newest broadcasts into your Ipod, and you are ready to go.

In using the Ipod the last three days(and of course, in my thinking I am as always far behind the students!), I am re-envisioning it, not just as a music player, but as a small hard drive that I can carry everywhere, taking files, powerpoints, pictures, movies, audiobooks, news broadcasts, etc., with me. And of course for our students, it is all about the sharing and the portability, and the convenience of being able to carry their entire music and photo collection on something that fits in their pocket.

So now I too can share music or photos I want to show people wherever I go.  (Including one of the incessantly mewing mama cat, although ironically in this photo she is sleeping peacefully!)