For fans of BBC Radio, one of the popular alternatives to Windows Phone 7's built-in podcast support is the BBC Podcast Lounge. This application presents a breakdown of the complete BBC podcast catalogue based on genre or station. It is also a top-class example of how a Windows Phone 7.5 application should be written. Podcast series can be added to a favourites section and pinned as a live tile. Best of all, is that it supports background audio playback so you can use your device for other things while listening to a show.

Until this new version, the application was limited to streaming content directly from the BBC, which had the obvious drawback of draining power and depending on a reliable data connection, whether it be WiFi or 3G. However, the latest version of BBC Podcast Lounge now incorporates a download manager, so that you can download items for offline listening.

This stops short of being a full-podcasting client, though, as there's no way to automatically download new content. However, one may argue that this would go beyond the remit of an application which is more of an "on-demand" content delivery service.

For those who want to catch up on several episodes of a given series, BBC Podcast Lounge supports the selection of multiple episodes by tapping no the left-hand side of the screen, just as one would select multiple messages in the Email application.

There is a huge list of changes in this version 1.3 updates, which you can see on the developer's blog.