Yasssu.com – Mobile Podcast Service
Posted on | June 2, 2009 | 2 Comments
you love podcasts, especially on the go, but feel limited by the need to download those audio-files to your computer just to sync them to your mobile device? or, if you’ve got an iPhone, have you ever tried to download a podcast which is >10mbytes over the air (don’t bother, Apple won’t let you)?
enter Yasssu, an Austrian-based startup offering an alternative way to listen to podcasts. once signed up, it’s pretty easy to use Yasssu’s podcast directory to build your own personal subscription-list by browsing by category, industry or media (which makes it easy to find all podcasts by one certain media-outlet) or using the search-bar. there’s also a section ’special interest’, containing editorial bundles of podcast-episodes on certain topics (i.e. “Fincial Crisis”, “Middle East Conflict” etc.). another way to find interesting stuff is to filter by language or ranking. If you’re missing one of your favorite shows (like I wasn’t able to find the TWIT-network’s shows or Gillmor Gang), you can request them for future inclusion. nice, but what I really would like to see is the ability to add any arbitrary podcast-feed to my Yasssu-portfolio (update: according to Yasssu, this feature is already in the works! 
).
once you’ve set-up your subscription-list, there are several ways to consume your media-selection: YasssuMobile is the way to go if you’ve got an internet-enabled smartphone with a reasonable data-plan. just point your browser to m.yasssu.com, login, and find your subscribed podcasts waiting for you. while Yasssu is optimized for smartphones like iPhone or Blackberry, this should also work fairly well on most older devices. haven’t got an internet-connected phone or want to avoid expensive data-rates ( f.e. when being abroad)? no worries, YasssuCall provides an easy way to call-in utilizing a normal voice-line. using the keypad of your phone allows navigation, skipping etc. of podcast-episodes. while audio-quality naturally suffers a bit, it’s still good enough for most spoken-word content.
Yasssu is currently available as a free service with a premium option at the cost of EUR 3,90 a month. the free version restricts your portfolio to 5 podcasts and limits call-in time via YasssuCall to 30minutes/month, if you want more (and you probably will), you’ll have to go premium.
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2 Responses to “Yasssu.com – Mobile Podcast Service”
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June 3rd, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
Nice, yasssu rules! Great blog, thanks!!
June 4th, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
Nice site and fair price for a good service. Way better than iTunes.