Since the rise of iTunes 4.9 I have noticed a number of podcasts to which I subscribe have switched from their own servers to high-bandwidth providers such as Libsyn (presumably due to increased subscription rates).

Probably contra to the views of several outspoken people, I actually find that iTunes does its job reasonable well, apart from non-standard RSS tags which just seems wrong, and no indication of file-size before you embark on a download1.

Unfortunately, I tend to download and listen to most podcasts at work where Websense filtering is used, which blocks such providers. A lot of podcast sites have also been blocked (on private servers), presumably there has been recent activity classifying them.

I haven’t yet found a work-around yet, even the Podcatcher on a stick seemed stymied.

Incidentally, Websense also seems to be one of the principle IPs blocked by Bad Behavior as their bot sends incorrect/ false (spammer-like) header information.

1I’m still on 56k (just) and setting up some downloads overnight only to find that some mug has recorded a half-hour of speech at 128kbps, creating a 50Mb+ file, is most irritating.

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