Podcasts bloat

I recently gave up on trying to get decent cell-phone reception with my Palm Treo and Sprint and switched to T-Mobile.  I specifically wanted a GSM carrier, which means T-Moble or Cigular, here in Seattle.  T-Mobile has better rates, especially for data (although it's data rates are much slower...).  I also needed a new phone and copied my lovely girlfriend and got an unlocked Samsung slider.  She got the D600 (which she loves), but I picked up the E900.  It is smaller ans just looks slick.

The E900 has a built-in mp3 player and the J2ME implementation has support for MP3 playback, so I've been playing with trying to build a RSS/Podcast reader that I could use to listen to podcasts while driving to/from work, or reading the latest news tidbits in the Starbucks line.  I specifically want it download the content and work offline.  I've got some really hacky bits that accomplish some of this but and really feeling the limitations of the J2ME platform.

This has also caused me to go look at the various Podcasts I listen to and review file-size, etc.  I was really surprised to see how many podcasters encode their dialog podcasts at 128kbps or greater!  That is just ridiculous!  I can understand why my Trance Tuesday podcast is at 192kbps (I am a music jukie, after all) but I don't understand why the Gillmore Gang is encoded at 128 kbps.  (I don't mean to call out Steve Gillmore as the only perpetrator, but his podcast is near the top of my iTunes list...) Many of my other podcasts are at 56kpbs or 64 kpbs, which is perfectly fine for human speech.  It also means much smaller files, so faster downloads, faster copies to you mp3 listening device of choice, etc.  People.. please!  If you are making a talk-show type podcast, choose an appropriate bitrate!