Josh Bancroft, of Tinyscreenfuls.com, led a session on podcasting from mobile devices at the Podcasting Academy, held in Ontario, CA on November 10, 2005. Josh’s notes for the talk can be found at the tinyscreenfuls’ wiki.

Cell phones, pdas, and mp3 players are carried by just about everyone. Examples of podcasts via mobile devices include:

• Trucker Tom - iRiver
• Treocast- Treo 650
• Morning Coffee Notes – Arcos Mp3 player
• Brainwagon – Dell Axim X50V
• Commute-Cast – Tablet PC

To record via your cell phone you can use Audioblogs.com or K7.net

Josh highlighted the Dell Axim X50 as an excellent portable podcasting tool the Axim X50 has an built-in mic, supports Bluetooth headset profile, and allows for plug in external mic into the headphone jack for recording. Josh also recommends Resco Audio Recorder for the Pocket PC platform. Resco is similar to Audacity, but runs on the Pocket PC platform.

You can also use the Treo 650 and use the Personal Audio Recorder Pro software to podcast on the go.

The iPod can also be used to record podcasts using add on devices like Griffin iTalk, which allows for recording a “lousy” 8KHz sampling rate. To change this you can install Linux on your iPod which will allow you to record at 96KHz, go to ipod.linux.com to find out how to install Linux on your iPod. With Linux on your iPod, you can plug in a mic right into the headphone jack and record on your iPod. The 5G iPod can record at 22KHz(mono) or 44KHz(stereo), uncompressed WAV, but no hardware peripherals are available yet.

Other mp3 players include the Creative Zen Micro is a great devices with 5GB capacity, has a great built in mic and records to WAV. iRiver also makes some excellent options. Using the iRiver, you can use a y-jack to plug in two mono mics into it’s stereo input, giving you the ability to do two person podcasts.

You can also use dedicated digital recorders. Included in this class are the M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 Professional Recorder. This a battery powered device, records to Compact Flash cards and microdrives. This device runs about $499. The other option in this class is the Edirol/Roland R-1 which is also priced at $499.

Laptops/Tablet PCs have built in mics that can be surprisingly good.

For portable mics, check out the Griffin Lapel Mic priced at $14.99 which records in stereo and the Sony Lavalier Mic which records in mono.

If you plan on editing you podcast, start with uncompressed WAV, not mp3 compressed files. That way when you edit, you will be able to produce higher quality output once the file is transformed into an mp3 file.

If you have more to add to about mobile podcasting you can go to Josh’s wiki and add you ideas.