ShiftCasting not PodCasting

Seems to me that podcasting got off to a bad start with its name. The name is too narrow on two fronts. First, we don't all have iPods. At least one of us doesn't: me. Second, 'casting - which is really short for broadcasting - isn't only about sound, it's also about video and text and images. PodCasting sounds like broadcasting sound to others with iPods. If that was all this "revolution" was about I wouldn't be interested. So, I think we need a new name. How about: "shiftcasting." Narrowcasting is also not a bad one, and often used, but narrowcasting sounds more like broadcasting (real-time consumption) to a smaller set of people.
So, that's the name rant, but the real purpose of this post is to outline some of the key tech steps / alternatives / issues to making that broader concept work in practice. Mostly I am doing this now so that I'll have to write these components and get it working for myself on my decidedly non-pod setup -- the iRiver H340. Hopefully its also useful for others.
Steps, alternatives and issues in shiftcasting:

1. Get a recommendation of content
   
   • an RSS/Atom Feed
     
   • a list of recomendations, that may not be unique resources
     
   • recurring searches?
     
   • news outlets?
     
   • what someone else looks at or shifts
     
   • what groups do
     
   
   
2. Get the content itself
   
   • http and other straight get
     
   • bittorrent or p2p
     
   • tv / radio
     
   • netflix? or other purchase?
     
   • searching to figure out what ambiguous stuff is and how to get it
     
   • making sure you're not geting the same stuff twice
     
   • arbitrage, get the stuff the best way
     
   
   
3. Format the content for the device
   
   
   
   • downsampling
     
   • resizing
     
   • transcoding (both change in format and change in media -- mpeg2 to mpeg4 and text to speech)
     
   • summarizing and excerpting
     
   • removing cruft
     
   
   
4. Put the content on the device
   
   
   
   • be intelligent about what is on there
     
   • may need to queue for distribution later
     
   • may need to generate some sort of "format" for writing to the player (folders? playlists?)
     
   • would be great to also know what was looked at or "played" -- maybe ratings too