by Daniel Jacobson

The iPhone 3G S is obviously getting tons of press, as it should. The new operating system, version 3.0, is also getting a lot of discussion. The majority of the talk, however, has been focused on the really sexy stuff, like MMS, voice memos, cut/copy/paste, search, tethering, etc.

One thing that has been overlooked is speed-control on podcasts.

There are three settings with this new feature: regular speed, half-time and double-time. Why is this important? The half-time control is interesting because it can now help with jumping to a very specific point in the episode. The iPhone calls it "Scrubbing" and allows you to adjust the rate at which you scrub. There are four rates for this, including hi-speed, half-speed, quarter-speed and fine. Gone are the days of guessing where you are in the podcast when looking for the end of an interview or story. This is very cool!

And, please indulge us as we shamelessly self-promote, equally great is the addition of double-time. Clearly, this is not helpful for music podcasts. But for talk podcasts, this is tremendous. Imagine, you can now listen to twice as many NPR podcasts as you used to! Great for you, great for us.