Automated podcast downloading.

Downloading podcasts manually from rss feeds isn't too convenient if you follow
a lot of podcasts (I follow 10 or so) or the podcasts appear irregularly (as
they will for the lectures).  The next step after following rss feeds is to
automatically download podcasts as they become available.

I use a bash script called bashpodder ( http://lincgeek.org/bashpodder/ ) do
download podcasts.  I use cron to run it once a week early Saturday mornings to
download whatever podcasts have been made available in the previous week.

There are other, less spartan downloaders available.  Juice (
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ ) seems to be a popular one, but there
isn't a version for *nix, so I can't say anything about it.  Jpodder (
http://www.jpodder.com/ ) is a java-based downloader, but it didn't work for me
(the pop-up windows were empty).