A Podcast-Friendly Shuffle?

Up until now, it's been a pain to listen to podcasts on the iPod shuffle, since they needed to be synced on an episode-by-episode basis.

According to Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge, that's been fixed on the snazzy new version:

Though the prior-generation model was capable of playing individually synchronized podcasts, the new iPod shuffle supports sequential audio podcast synchronization—it can automatically synchronize a series of podcasts, rather than just specific episodes. To that end, it now has an iTunes tab for podcasts, unlike the prior-generation model. This feature will appear in iTunes 8.1, due out in very short order. 

Though there are other plenty of other features that people may find exasperating about the latest tiny addition to the iPod line (the robot voice, for one), uploading a slew of new podcasts won't be one of them. To read Horwitz's top 10 changes to the new shuffle, click here.