One of my favorite things in all the Internet is podcasts. I love podcasts. I love them so much I attended the first ever live Diggnation in Chattanooga, TN and went to MaxFunCon at Lake Arrowhead, CA. The iPhone is potentially the greatest device for listening to podcasts, but the built in application is lacking. You cannot download any podcast over twenty megabytes over a cellular network using the iTunes application, podcasts do not automatically update, and you cannot stream podcasts to your device. There is an elegant solution to this problem.

Instacast from Vemedio is a sleek application for the iPhone and iPad for listening to podcasts. You can download episodes to listen to offline, stream them, and sync your playback position amongst devices using iCloud. You can import the podcasts you listen to from iTunes with Dropbox or add them by hand. You can even read the show notes from within the application, and if there is a link to an article you can send it to Instapaper to read later.

I use Instacast with my Jambox from Jawbone. It is a Bluetooth speaker that will work with your laptop, iOS device, and even with your phone as a speaker phone. I typically fall asleep in the shower so what I do is connect the Jambox to my iPhone and stream a podcast with Instacast so that I can hear it through the shower curtain. Productivity in the shower is up.

If you like Instapaper, the application for marking things to read later, you can turn this application in to the Instapaper of podcasts. You can get a bookmarklet for any browser from Huffduffer that will detect when you are on a webpage that has a podcast on it and will send it to your custom podcast feed of things you have marked to listen to later. This is great for that podcast you do not want to subscribe to, but you really want to hear the episode where they interview Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston.

More About Instacast

• Vemedio’s Instacast
• Jawbone’s Jambox
• Huffduffer

Download for iPhone and iPad