Every weekday I get up at 7:30, program from 8:30 till 7 and hit the
gym or the dancefloor in the evening. I've got a pair of great
housemates who I chat with in the evenings, I've got my family and
I've got some wonderful friends, all of whom I love to talk with.

Professionally though, I'm completely isolated. I'm now in the closing
stages of writing an RSS app which (as my long-suffering friends will
testify) consumes almost my every thought. All day and every day. It's
not easy for me to find people to toss these ideas around with.

Of all the people I know in the UK, only three read RSS feeds on a
regular basis and one of them is now in the Finnish army. I work from
home and work alone. It keeps me lean and definitely keeps me keen but
I can't help yearning for peers to discuss the things I'm doing.

Reading the feeds coming out of Silicon Valley and the other
developer-hubs in the States has been my lifeline. Not only do I get
to keep my ear to the ground but that ground is the same ground the
inventors and the entrepreneurs of these technologies stand upon.

When Apple released iTunes 4.9 I started experimenting with Podcasts.
I hadn't held out high hopes and was doing it more out of a sense of
obligation than intrigue. When I played that first track though, it
was like nothing I was expecting. If feed-reading brings me close,
Podcasting makes me feel like I'm actually there. It is like being at
a university tailored just for me. I can listen to any lecture from
any of the best professors or the banter of the funniest students and
I can play them whenever and wherever I want.

A few years ago there was an advert for butter on TV. The advert
opened with the line, 'Imagine if you'd never seen a snowflake' and
had showed a little boy in Africa as a flake drifted rather
anomolously down in front of him. The closing line was, "Imagine if
you'd never tasted butter". It was a cute advert but as chuffed as I'd
be to find out that marge wasn't the beginning and ending of
bread-spread it definitely wouldn't be on a par with my first white
Christmas.

When I started listening to Dave Winer, to Steve Gilmore and to the Engadget guys it really was like the first time I saw
snow. Text is wonderful but voices communicate a thousand times more.
In a single episode of Morning Coffee Notes my isolation melted and I
started feeling like I was a part of things. No-one else knows I'm a
part and that's just fine, if they had to deal with all their
listeners they'd probably stop Podcasting and then I'd be back to
square one. All that matters is that I do.

Why then was it Adam Curry who moved me? It was because he's the man
behind the Podfinder show which I listened to for the first time last
night. For those of you who don't know, the Podfinder show does
exactly what it says on the tin. It's half an hour of Adam reviewing
and playing clips from a selection of the different podcasts out there
and I love it.

I love the fact that these people are podcasting, I love how
intelligent and interesting the people he reviewed were, I love the
fact that here, finally, was a way for the funny and the smart among
us to be enjoyed by a wider community without having to prostrate
themselves at the feet of the old media oligarchy.

I love the fact that even though I really don't care about what pilots
talk to each other about on long haul flights or what the most
absorbent brand of nappy is, it was still worth Joe Deon and
Gretchen and Paige making those shows and that people who do
care can listen to them. I love the raw humanity of it and most of all
I love being invited to be a part of these peoples lives. Oh and even
though a childhood of country and western water-torture has left me
numbed to the genre, I love Wichita Rutherford - he's
something special.

From programmers to scientists, the retired to first-time mothers,
feeds and Podcasting allow people to find and to experience each
other. We've had great ways to connect for years but you can't connect
if you can't find and you can't experience if someone doesn't want you
to connect.

Blogging and podcasting give us a little way to let people in. They
let people get to know us and as even big companies are finding, the
better people know us, the more empathetic the are to us
and the more people empathise with us, the more they like us. Web 2.0
helps melt away the barriers that we protect ourselves with but which
simultaneously isolate us from those we crave to know.