UPDATE: Purchased an iRiver H120 jukebox/recorder.

Was commenting on Tama Leaver‘s post about watching his own lecture videos on a fifth-generation iPod. There’s a lot of room for experimentation with these methods and technologies.

Apple is well-positioned in this sphere, actually. Its iLife and iWork suites can integrate content in different formats, some of which might actually work on the iPod (Keynote to Quicktime H.264, GarageBand to AAC enhanced podcast). Furthermore, Apple has this iTunes U project for hosted and protected podcast content. Not to mention the obvious point about Apple’s iPod success. Don’t have the necessary material to try it out but it should be relatively simple to create full-featured lecture podcasts using these tools. In fact, there’s already a product out meant to simply this integration (can’t try it out myself, unfortunately).
With at least three microphones for iPod 5G coming out Real Soon Now (XtremeMac’s MicroMemo, Belkin’s TuneTalk, and Griffin’s iTalkPro), life can become quite fun indeed for those of us who’d like to “lecturecast.” It’s an even better time to turn to academic podcasting with so many podcasting projects springing up at such diverse institutions as IUSB, Duke, UdeM, Brandeis, and IUB. The open-source course management system Moodle now supports podcasts. So does Sakai, the free/open knowledge management project. Of course, educational podcasting isn’t new. But it’s gaining steam.