I recently received a question about mobile devices and RSS, podcasting or video casting. It was beyond my knowledge of mobile devices so I decided to ask my personal mobile device answer guy, Ronnie Boon, founder of PDA-1.com. Here goes:

Q: Can you explain how digital phones and other devices will be able to get RSS channels to download podcasts and videocasts?

A: It must be understood from the beginning that the practice of having RSS feeds on mobile phones and other handheld devices (other than dedicated MP3 players) is still very much in its infancy and not at current, common practice. The technology is in place, but software specifically written to manage RSS feeds (thus podcasts and videocasts) are still in development – EXCEPT for devices running common mobile phone and PDA operating systems, namely Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Palmsource’s Palm OS.

For devices running on these two operating systems, a podcasting client will need to be installed – akin to PCs need for a podcasting client installed to manage the RSS feeds. The only difference is how the data will be transferred from the Internet to the devices: For mobile phones/PDAs, it can be either via the cellular network itself, wireless LANs (WiFi), or a PC with the PC acting as a “gateway” to a fixed-line Internet connection.

Q: And how much memory does a Blackberry or cellular phone have, meaning, how many videos or audios can it hold? Will they become viable podcasting tools vs. dedicated mp3 players and PDAs with expandable memory?

A: The amount of audio/video data a mobile phone or any other communication device can hold varies widely, depending on model – let alone make. Some hardly have enough memory built-in to hold a single MP3 song, while some come with removable and expandable memory chips/cards that can be as spacious as 2GB (at current removable memory productions.)

It is thus no longer a case of “will” mobile phones be the podcast listening tool of choice, but of “when” this is to happen. With Apple’s highly-anticipated release of its “iTunes” mobile phone by September 2005, and all of the high-end phones of other makes in the market now having MP3 and video playback/recording capability AND removable memory – I would
confidently say the time is right now.

Thanks to Penny Haynes for the question and Ronnie for providing the answers and much needed help