BeyondPod offers one of the best Podcast managers for Android smartphones. Now the developer is working on a version for Android tablets as well. BeyondPod HD has a multi-panel view, allowing you to see a list of your audio and video podcast subscriptions on the left while browsing for individual episodes on the right.

At the bottom of the screen you’ll also find new Honeycomb-style controls including a new progress bar and nice big buttons.

For the most part BeyondPod HD is exactly what you would want from a tablet version of the podcast manager. It has all the same basic features including the ability to find, download, manage, and play your podcast content as well as the ability to choose how many episdoes of each podcast to download at a time, and how long to keep them on your mobile device. The only difference is that BeyondTV is designed to play well with Honeycomb tablets rather than just smartphones.

BeyondPod HD is available as a free download from the developer’s web site. You can purchase an “unlock key” for BeyondPod or BeyondPod HD for $6.99, but it doesn’t look like you absolutely need it to beta test the tablet app.

via Android Central

Microsoft is retooling the Music+Videos Hub for Windows Phone. When the Mango software update rolls out later this year it will bring new tools for managing podcasts, a “Smart DJ” option which creates a playlist based on an individual song, artist or album, and better Marketplace search.

The podcast update is long overdue. While you can listen to podcasts on a Windows Phone device you currently need a computer running Zune desktop software to subscribe to podcasts. Mango will add an on-device podcast directory.

The Smart DJ service will create playlists from music on your device. But if you have a subscription to Microsoft’s Zune Pass service, the Smart DJ feature will be able to create mixes by pulling in some of the millions of songs available to subscribers.

Other changes in Mango include new placements for the shuffle, rate, and repeat buttons, better history, and new options for controlling media  playback from your phone’s lock screen.

We got an early look at some of these changes when the Windows Phone 7 Mango emulator hit the streets. But now Microsoft is highlighting most of the major changes to the Zune media software and Musi+Videos Hub in a Windows Team blog post where you can find more details and pictures.

Most internet radio apps either let you choose from a list of curated music streams with songs selected by a DJ (or a machine), or create a new mix on-the-fly based on your musical tastes. TuneIn Radio is a good example of the former while Pandora is probably the most popular of the latter. Mixcloud is a new app which takes a different approach.

Mixcloud helps you discover radio programs, podcasts, and DJ mixes. The company calls them Cloudcasts which is basically the company’s name for a Podcast which is hosted online and streamed on-demand. You don’t download it to your device like a Podcast. But it’s not live like a radio stream. Instead a Cloudcast brings you a pre-recorded radio show or DJ mix.

Instead of streaming songs on demand, Mixcloud lets you stream a series of songs hand-picked by… somebody. That doesn’t just help you find music you might like, but also DJs or other users you might like. You can Cloucasts to your favorites and follow other Cloudcast users to find their latest mixes.

What Mixcloud doesn’t let you do is download songs or mixes to your device, skip tracks, or fast forward.

Mixcloud offers a web-based service, and this week the company also launched an iOS app which is available as a free, ad-supported download from the App Store.

via TechCrunch

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My favorite podcast manager for Android is on sale this weekend for $1.99. BeyondPod normally runs $6.99, an dit’s well worth the price. In fact, it was one of the first paid apps I purchased for Android, since it’s head and shoulders above any free podcast manager I’ve found.

BeyondPod supports audio and video podcasts, includes a podcast search tool for finding new programs, allows you to choose how many episodes to download, whether or not to download over 3G, and allows you to sort your podcasts by category.

You can download BeyondPod for free from the Android Market for a 7-day free trial. The BeyondPod unlock key is available for $1.99 through Monday.

via Android Police

Research in Motion has released an updated version of its BlackBerry Podcasts app. Version 1.5 comes with a new web podcast search feature based on Google search. this lets you search for podcasts that aren’t already in the BlackBerry Podcast catalog. You can also copy and paste the URL of any podcast from another app in order to add it to your list.

The developers have also tweaked the app’s extensive catalog of podcasts. There are more than 3000 podcast feeds available, and now the first 40 in each category will be “featured” content. Apps will be featured if they’re popular with other users and the RIM staffers responsible for judging these things.

Blackberry Podcasts 1.5 also now lets you start listening to a podcast before it’s finished downloading.

BlackBerry Podcasts 1.5 is available as a free download from the BlackBerry App World. Unfortunately it’s only available in North America for now.

The Zune software for Windows Phone 7 provides a great way to manage music and videos. It’s not so great with podcasts, which is where a third party app called Podcasts! comes in.

The app is designed to look almost exactly like the native Zune software, allowing you to flick your way through a directory of audio and video podcasts. Podcasts are sorted by genre, and you can also search for podcasts.

There’s one catch though: The app doesn’t actually let you download podcasts. Instead, you stream them over a 3G or WiFi connection. Hopefully the developer will add download capabilities in a future release.

The folks at WP Central put together a demo video which you can check out after the break.

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I’ve been using BeyondPod to manage my audio podcasts since shortly after picking up my Google Nexus One earlier this year. While the app can also download and play video podcasts, I didn’t really pay much attention to that feature because the video features were kind of clunky and because I don’t really make time to watch video podcasts all that often. That may change now that BeyondPod has rolled out an update with better video support.

BeyondPod 2.4.9 includes a number of tweaks and bug fixes. That includes a new video catalog with a thousand video titles from tech blogs, TV and movie sites, news organizations, and other sources.

There’s also a new “video” tab in searches helping you differentiate audio from video podcasts in the Add Feeds area.

The new version of BeyondPod also has a setting to lock screen orientation to portrait or landscape, and a new feature that lets you selet the defult screen that opens when you launch the app (Feeds, Podcasts, or Player).

I checked out the new features by finding a few video podcasts this morning and I had no trouble finding what I was looking for and choosing to either download the videos to my phone or stream the larger files over the web without downloading them first (which comes in happy when you’re staring at a 600MB video file!)

BeyondPod is available as a free download for Google Android, but the free version only provides a 7 day trial period before it stops working. You can purchase an unlock key from the Android Market for $6.99 which lets you continue using BeyondPod after the trial period is up.

AudioPress is a new iOS app that lets you create audio playlists with podcasts and internet radio stations. There’s also a category for “AudioArticles,” with the latest news stories from The Associated Press and other news sources — but there’s currently no content available in the AudioArticles directory.

As a streaming podcast client, AudioPress works pretty well and couldn’t be much easier to set up. When you first launch the app, you simply select 3 categories from a list of 12 including News, TV and Movies, Science and Medicine, Technology, Comedy and others. AudioPress will create a playlist with popular podcasts from each of those categories. You can also manually add or remove podcasts from the playlist or create a new playlist altogether.

The app streams podcasts over the internet, so you don’t actually download the audio to your device until you’re ready to listen. From the playlist menu you can pick the podcast you want to listen to, skip, pause, play, or skip ahead or back by thirty seconds or drag the timeline to find a spot in the podcast.

The Radio Stations category is a lot less polished. Don’t get me wrong, you can find online radio streams and listen to them. The problem is that the AudioPress directory seems to be pretty small right now. I couldn’t find the stream for my local public radio station or my favorite online-only music station.

The app is still pretty new, and I’m hopeful that AudioPress will add additional online radio stations in the future, because overall the app has the makings of a pretty decent all-in-one internet audio app. There’s even a feature that lets you listen to the latest weather updates from across the country — which AudioPress translates from text to speech with an only mildly annoying digital voice. The company plans to add other non-weather content to the “MyUpdates” category as well.

AudioPress is currently available as a free download from the App Store.

via TUAW

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