Listen to podcasts at high speed
More hours of podcasts in your feed bin than hours in the day? Phil Windley feels your pain. He's even figured out how to speed things up a bit without converting all his podcasts to audiobooks:
Right-click the show in iTunes and choose "Show song file."
Open the selected song file with Quicktime (right-click again and select Quicktime).
Choose "Show A/V Controls."
Move the "Playback Speed" slider at the bottom of the window to your preferred speed.
His method seems to work pretty well, and most podcasts are remarkably listenable at speeds up to about 1.5x. Much beyond that, though, and you start expecting someone to scream "Alvin!" in the background. Whether it's worth the effort, though, is a different matter. If you routinely listen to many podcasts, the time it takes to modify the files will become an issue in its own right. Sounds to me like a job for Automator.
