I've been using podcasts now for quite a while on air travels (together with audiobooks). Yesterday I've used the empeg's auxiliary input for the first time to listen to podcasts in the car. I so loved it! However, it's totally awkward and dangerous to handle the iPod in the car!
Is there a podcast application to download podcasts directly to the empeg, or do I have to copy them there manually? If there isn't one, wouldn't that be a great project?

If you use mp3tofid+rsync to sync tunes (instead of emplode/jemplpode) you can just have your podcasts copied to your music directory on the host machine, then synced over to your empeg on a regular basis. But, I don't think the Cygwin port of mp3tofid is ready yet, so you'll have to have all your music on a Unix-like file server for this to work.

Isn't a podcast just an MP3 file? Can't you just copy the MP3 file onto the player normally?

Most are MP3 files, while some are AAC. So yes, the empeg would be able to have the MP3 ones transferred manually to it to listen to them. Though I think the poster was wishing for a more automated way.

I've personally just gotten used to using the iPod for podcasts, since it does niceties like sync shows automatically from iTunes, including the playback position. So I can listen to one partially in the car, then come home, sync, and resume playback via AirTunes to somewhere in the house. Syncs also only take a matter of 30 seconds typically, so it is a lot easier to deal with on a daily basis then the 5-10 minute sync ordeal that is my empeg with 50gigs of music.

I went with an iPod nano for the podcasts, so it's not quite as dangerous in the car to control. The placement of the headphone jack and the small size means I can plug it into the wire I have run in the car to the aux in, and the Nano stays in place simply due to the plug holding it there.

What is a Podcast?
Wikipedia says...

None of the process is complicated other than getting the mp3s onto the empeg. There are only three programs that exist that allow you to do that. The first is emplode, and there's not any way to extend that to automatically download podcasts or even to automatically upload specific mp3s without some sort of macro tool. The second is the open-source command-line tool, which could be extended, but currently only works on x86 Linux, and no one's put in any effort to port it to any other platform in the many years since it's been available. The third is jEmplode, which is the most feasible option. As I understand it, it actually has some sort of plugin architecture that would make it reasonably easy to add this feature. Personally, I don't know Java that well, and I don't have much desire for podcast features. But it shouldn't be unreasonable to make it happen if you can find someone who has an interest in both of those things.

Sorry. Let's say that no one's successfully ported it to anything else.

"Podcasts only work on iPods, silly. See, they have 'pod' right in the title."

::sigh:: Some companies hate having their product become a noun or verb, Apple apparently loves it. We really need a less encumbered name for audio blogs. I know, ZenCast!

I've recently gotten into podcasts, so I'm wondering if this automatic podcast sync idea is now possible. I am running Windows and have only slight Linux skill.

I hoped rsync could copy MP3s from the podcast folder on my Windows machine to the empeg, and maybe even remove the MP3s from the empeg which were deleted from the Windows machine (it is "sync" after all, right?). If not rsync, is there any other way to do this automatically?

Thanks.