More and more of my computing is moving into the “cloud.”  I have Outlook on my laptop, but I can’t figure out how to get my wife’s laptop to look at the same calendar.  Step in Google calendar.  I can set it up so we can layer lots of different calendars together for family calendar.  Where is the calendar, really?  Google.  Google where?  I don’t know.  I don’t care.  I can get it just about anywhere as the internet “cloud” gets more pervasive.

So, what’s next.  iTunes.  I have an iPod Nano.  I like to listen to podcasts.  I like to update my podcasts.  However, using iTunes, I have to synch my iPod to my laptop which may be 2000 miles away when I want to get the latest shows on my iPod.  I really thought the iPhone would solve this.  All the bandwidth you can eat and a direct link to the music store.  No.  You can’t download podcasts thru the ATT network.   I can understand that perfectly.  If I were ATT, I wouldn’t want to supply the pipe for someone to download free content (read podcasts) without getting something in return.   I’ll bet that was part of the agreement between ATT and Apple.  Apple would not allow podcasts to be downloaded thru iTunes to the iPhone.   You have to synch it thru a computer with an iTunes account.  I didn’t buy the iPhone.

Then there was the iPod Touch with wifi.  I thought this would be great.  Find a wifi access point and update my podcasts on the fly.  Wrong.  Can’t do that either.   You have to synch it thru a computer with an iTunes account.   I didn’t buy the iPod Touch.

Right now, my iTunes podcast subscription list lives in my laptop.  This needs to move into the device or into the “cloud.”  It could be at Apple.  I don’t care.  I should be able to plug my device into the network, USB, Bluetooth, wifi, cellular network and get my latest episodes on my device.   This will be a big change for the iTunes architecture, but it has to change and I predict it will.

I know Podcast Ready has a system that will do this.  Do you know of another way to do this?  Add it in the comments.