Subscribe by EmailListen to podcasts and other audio files using Gmail
January 10, 2008 by Mark O'Neill | 8 commentsBy Mark O’Neill
One of the most overlooked features in Gmail, in my opinion, is the built-in MP3 player. It’s a stripped down version of the Google video player and it actually works extremely well.
I have started to listen to a lot of podcasts on the net, mainly news and German learning courses, and sometimes when I am out and about, I want to listen to one of them. But if I am using someone else’s computer, I can’t just decide on my own initiative to download Winamp or iTunes. This is where Gmail’s MP3 player comes riding in to save the day.
Before leaving home, if you think that you may want to listen to a podcast while you’re out, just email the MP3 file to your Gmail account.
Then just open the email, click on “play” (watch you don’t click “download” accidently!) and a small pop-up window will open with the player. It will then immediately start to load and play.
For it to work, you will need the latest version of Adobe Flash Player installed on the computer.
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If you’ve already downloaded it at home isn’t it easier to just put it on your MP3 player?
Well, beleive it or not, there are still a lot of people out there that do not have an MP3 player :)
I’ve tried it and it works great thanks for the tip
This is a very good feature… hope the next one would be getting info on number and names of files in the zip attachment.
What would be really useful is a way to automatically have podcasts delivered to my email. Anyone?
Just click on the RSS button to subscribe to the podcast and then use a RSS to email service such as ZapTXT – http://zaptxt.com or RSSfwd – http://www.rssfwd.com/ to have that sent on to your email address.
Granted, that will only send the RSS post notification onto your email – it WON’T download the podcast to your email ready for listening. It can’t download the podcast unprompted to your email because at the very least it would need your password and probably FTP access.
I think I was wrong about this. I’m going to test this and write an article about it on GAS. Stand by.
[...] A recent comment by Melyvn on one of my past articles got me thinking. The article was about the built-in MP3 player in Gmail and Melyvn asked if it was possible for podcasts to be delivered directly to email. My instinctive reply was “no” but then I thought “was it actually possible?”. [...]