[Noisebridge-discuss] iPhone podcast play speed

[Eric Boyd]

Hi noisebridge!

I'm wondering if anyone at noisebridge has a method to do this:

I would like to play the podcasts that I listen to on my iPhone at a 
faster speed.  i.e. adjust the "play speed" of the MP3s, preferably at 
play time (i.e. in the "iPod" player).  The result would be reducing the 
amount of time it takes to listen to an episode of a podcast, e.g. by 
25% or 50%, with no change in pitch, just in playback speed.  This is 
important to me since I'd like to listen to more material but have a 
defined/limited amount of time each month to devote to this (on the 
order of 30 hours, so 25% increase could add as much as 8h of effective 
playtime).


Example solutions:
  - preferred: the "iPod" player has a "play speed" control and I can 
change it dynamically as each track plays.  This is unfortunatly 
impossible, and Apple isn't letting competing MP3 players unto the App 
Store :-(
  - also acceptable: I manually pass all tracks (MP3s) through a 
converter script which adjusts their play speed before transferring them 
to my iPhone.  I found a start for this here: 
http://mark.santaniello.com/archives/260  There is also a $40 program 
which can do it: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6740 but of course 
I'd like the free/open source way...
  - more work: hack my iPhone, download a new "iPod" replacement app 
which has this feature, or code up such an app if not available

I'm looking for pointers to any of these solutions on the internet, or 
if you have a better solution I'm all ears.  I have done a fair amount 
of google-ing on this and not found anything directly useful. It strikes 
me that if this hasn't already been done it really needs to be done, so 
I hope to make a wiki page with my final solution.  If you have any 
suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Eric