In amongst my podcasts, iTunes downloaded three “PDFcasts”, two from Make Magazine and one from PilotCast. Of all the ways that people on the Internet have found to re-implement the same basic idea as Usenet, this has got to be the worst. If I wanted content that I had to read on my computer, what’s wrong with a web page? Or better yet, an RSS feed for a web page. Or an email list. Or Usenet.

5 Comments

  1. ronebofh@livejournal says:

    I think i would like to prosecute these people for crimes against humanity.

  2. JoAnne says:

    I’d love someone to implement a download of Usenet messages on my iPod.

  3. Black Knight says:

    @JoAnne - that’d be great! Imagine — Usenet, the original ‘read-only’ medium!

  4. Paul Tomblin says:

    It shouldn’t be too hard - just enable disk use, and have a script to dump stuff in /Volumes/Paul’s_iPod/Notes.

  5. JoAnne says:

    Hm, would I be able to read from the iPod, though, while sitting at the dentist’s office or whatever? That’s the thing I’d want.

    Or even run it through a text-to-speech engine, so I could listen to newsgroups while on the treadmill. Maybe include email too?

    Yeah, right. Like I need another reason to want to kill top-posters and overquoters and spammers.

Leave a Reply