In this amazingly fast-growing (like, really fast) phenomenon called podcasting (yes, I am willing to use the terms phenomenon and podcasting when discussing this, even if I don't particularly like the name), it's hard to always know which way is up. So, it's also hard to know where to go and what to do with all this stuff, both as a content creator and a consumer/end user of podcasts.

Heck, it's difficult enough just to explain to people what podcasting is, let alone how it works. Of course, it's early in this experiment, and we'll certainly have to improve things from the usability standpoint. But still, it's truly amazing what's happened in the past month or so in this portion of the universe.

Enter Doppler [http://www.dopplerradio.net/], a client program that runs on Windows and raises the bar in terms of making it easier for the end user to subscribe to podcasts without too much hassle. In other words, this is just the kind of thought and change that needs to happen to make podcasting a mainstream application. As a community we're not there yet, but with ideas like this and a few people to kick them out the door, we will be before too long.

The best part is, it just works. It makes subscribing to podcasts easier. It makes sense to use. It makes life simpler.

Features

• Doppler is designed for the Windows platform
• Drag and drop a URL onto Doppler
• Scheduled interval to retrieve feeds
• Specify the numer of files to download
• Restrict the allowable size of downloads
• Filter your items by text
• Possibility to run in minimized mode
• Import and export of OPML files

Doppler is an aggregator that downloads podcasts based on RSS feeds, and lets you listen to it the way you want it, whenever you like it, on the device of your choice. Doppler has been developed using the latest Microsoft .NET technology and is available as a small download sizing less than 500 KB.

And Doppler has been alive for something like, oh, three days. And work continues on adding features and shoring it up as we speak type. Or maybe it is speak. Oof...

Go download it and try it out.