I have recently taken up to listening to podcasts while working. I know I am very late to the game but with a less than 15 minute commute to work, I haven’t had the urge/need to download podcasts to my iPod and listen to them. But, recently with my day job getting hectic and finding little time at home to keep up with the tech news, I am resorting to listening to podcasts, while working, on variety of topics to keep myself informed.

I tried a few different podcast players and now have settled to using a very cool one from the makers of Newzie and it’s called Ziepod.

ZiePod is a very cool podcast receiver and is free to use and it’s paid counterpart ZiePod+ has few more features like support for video.

Let’s take a look at a few cool features of ZiePod

• The browser based interface itself is very pleasing to the eye and easy to use and get used to.
• It offers 4 different visual modes
• Easy subscription options and individual preference settings for each feed
• Abililty to export and import OPML feed lists.
• Set to check for new podcasts automatically and download as well
• Browse for interesting podcasts in a variety of categories in a Podcast Directory right from within the player
• Check out the most recent played podcasts as well as latest audio & videos available with easy-to-read timestamps.
• Popup notifier to notify you of new content
• iPod support to manage playlists
• Bloglines support
• A quick delete button – Sweeper to clear unnecessary clutter in one click
• Usage reporting
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Their RSS desktop aggregrator, Newzie is also a cool rss reader and I was using it happily until I went back to Google Reader. You can see a lot of the cool features and the unique styling in Newzie, in ZiePod as well.If you are into video logs, ZiePod+ might be an attractive option even if it costs a few dollars.

As I mentioned, even though I am a new podcast listener I took to ZiePod immediately as I have used NewZie before and I liked its interface a lot. My only gripe is that it is based on the IE rendering engine but not a deal breaker for me. Especially with ZiePod+ providing a tabbed interface. And it is Windows only.

What podcast player do you use and prefer? How does it compare to Ziepod? I would love to learn and try other alternatives out there.

Download Free ZiePod