Yeah, I’m still an old-fashioned text crawler, but I am starting to get more interested in the Internet radio out there. I was not aware of the huge number of programs listed at BlogTalkRadio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/.

The site, which is in beta, describes itself as “extending the blog”. The free service allows folks with blogs to create podcasts to go along with them. Show listings are divided into a number of categories, including business, politics, sports, education, and paranormal. You can also search by keyword if you like.

A search for home found 213 hosts and 999 shows. At the top of the search results you can filter your results by country, language, and genre. Search results give show name and description, listing of when the next show will be, and a pointer to play the most recent show.

The shows have their own pages, providing additional information on the show as well as pointers to archived segments and additional program notes (most of the shows I looked at did not have any program notes.) The couple of shows I listed to sounded like it was basically a conference call which was being recorded, but that’s not a bad thing. I could hear everything fine.

I can see that this site could be a huge timesink for me. My only issue with it was load time. Sometimes just doing a simple keyword search took a lot longer than it should have. And sometimes just loading a clip to listen to was a bit of a wait. Might be because things are in beta. Worth a look, but be prepared to spend a little extra time.

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