Keeping track of pocastsa

[bima]

How are people keeping track of what podcasts they have listened to on their ipods?

I listen to podcasts on my 3g ipod as I exercise and never listen to the whole podcast. So I am never sure which ones I have listened to and where I left off.

The best I have come up with is to mark the "in progress" podcasts with 3 stars and the ones I have finished with with one star. Then when I synch the ipod with itunes I delete the podcasts with one star. Of course when I see a podcast with 3 stars I know I am in the process of listening to it but have no idea where I stopped.

There must be a better way. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[jhollington]

In terms of retaining the position that you left off, you can convert your Podcasts to bookmarkable M4B files, either manually, or automatically with a Podcasting application like Doppler (I'm not sure if there are others that will do this for you as well).

To convert them manually, you can find instructions in this thread (http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45967).

By converting your Podcasts into M4B files, which are basically audiobook format files, your last listening position is automatically synced between iTunes and the iPod, so not only does it retain that position, but it will also sync it to iTunes (so you can pick up where you left off on your computer).

[ethornber]

I use Doppler as well, which allows you to set custom artist/album/genre tags as well as convert your podcast mp3 files to m4b files. This allows me to have all of my podcasts set to the genre 'Podcast' and permits the following smart playlist:

Smart Playlist: Unfinished Podcasts
Match all conditions
Genre IS Podcast
Play Count IS 0
Limit to 100 entries by Least Recently Added

This gives me a playlist that shows only podcast files that haven't been listened to all the way through (since the playcount is only incremented at the end of the file) and sorts them in a neat chronological list based on when they were downloaded. It's helped me manage my backlog quite a bit.

[ipodsailor]

Hi,
With the new itunes 4.9, and updated click wheel ipod software, my ipod is remembering my bookmark in each podcast. But I don't know which ones I've listened to from the ipod menus.