Wednesday Webcast Review: Tourcaster - Boston

Bostonist likes it when we come across a webcast that isn't your typical talk show or music show. In fact, this week we are looking at a 'cast that not only isn't your typical talk show or music show, it isn't a show at all. The 'cast we are reviewing is an informational series for tourists (or others) wanting to know a little bit about this fine city of ours. This week's 'cast is Tourcaster - Boston.

Tourcaster provides free audio tours that you can listen to on an MP3 player. Unfortunately, they require you to join/register in order to download them on the Tourcaster website. Fortunately, we found the "Getting to know Boston" audio tour on the iTunes Music Store (iTunes link) and avoided having to register for one more site.

The Boston tour consists of about 17-minutes worth of audio in 9 episodes broken down into different topic areas: Introduction, History, Attractions, Dining/Night Life, When to visit, Transportation, Getting around, Visitor information, and Conclusion. The various segments range in duration from 35 seconds to just over 6 minutes. This means that you can listen to the entire series in less time than it takes to book your plane tickets to Boston. This also means that you could re-listen to any portion of the series as many times as you wish.

The series is pretty light on content. It fails to reveal some of the more subtle flavors of this great city. We couldn't imagine it being the sole source of information for a visitor to Beantown. Where we do see this being useful is for someone who might not have made up their mind as to where they will be traveling to while on vacation. This series provides someone with enough information to make the decision to come here. From there, they will have to seek out more thorough and complete travel information.

The 'cast sounds quite professional and can be quite entertaining at times. Even though we're a Bostonian and know the city like the backs of our hands, we didn't find listening to the series to be dull and uninteresting. We think this would be a great 'cast to pass on to potential Boston visitors. Even if you are a Bostonian, it might be worth a listen just to get a chuckle at the bad Boston accent used during the introduction.