Listen: Now you can speed it up

This item takes its cue from .TXT’s “How Do I” feature. This week we answer the question, “How do I listen to podcasts faster?” In other words, if you have a 40-minute podcast, how would you listen to it in 30 minutes?

It’s easy if you use Quicktime, or even if you use iTunes, as your podcast player.

(Quicktime comes with Macs but also comes in versions that work with Windows. Find it at www.www.apple.com/ quicktime.com. Don’t download the pro version unless you have money to burn.)

In iTunes, select the podcast you want to listen to and right-click, then choose “show” in Windows Explorer. On Macs the choice is “show song file.” That will open the directory where your podcasts end up. Then right-click that podcast file and choose “open with.” That will produce a list of programs, which might have Quicktime Player listed. If it’s there, select Quicktime to play the file. If it’s not in the window list, choose “browse” and move to “program files” and Quicktime, where the file you want, quicktime player.exe, will be found. Choose it and click OK.

Select “show A/V controls” from QuickTime’s Windows menu. That leaves the choice of adjusting the playback speed slider while playing the podcast. You can move it up to roughly two or three times normal speed, but that usually leaves any podcast fairly unintelligible. Try the 1.1 or 1.2 speed settings and see how that sounds.