Podcast viewer in iTunes
Jun 29th, 2005 by Karen
So I got home last night and my computer had downloaded the newest version of iTunes with podcast support. I’ve been using iPodder to keep track of my podcast subcriptions. Ipodder adds things to iTunes after they are downloaded and it seems the latest version adds the “Podcast” grouping to them. I really want to see how the podcast support works in iTunes. However, I quickly discovered that there isn’t an clear easy way to import all of my existing subcriptions into iTunes. iPodder allows you to both import a list of feeds in OPML format and export a list of your feeds in iPodder as OPML.
Does anyone know how I can import my big list of podcasts into iTunes without retyping them all? Beyond the importing issues, additional podcasting support looks great. I have lots of questions about how it works though and haven’t had much a chance to play with it yet. The preferences for how the podcasts interact with your iPod are under the Podcasting linke rather than the iPod link. Something I wouldn’t have easily discovered. However, it seems you can set up how you want your podcasts to go on your iPod and don’t have to create a special playlist for your podcasts and tell your iPod to grab it. This is a major advantage since I’ve had to find ways to trick the iPod into pulling my new podcasts via SmartPlaylists. Very happy to see that podcast support is making it into the mainstream.
The addition of podcast support to iTunes has me wondering “what’s next?”. Will Apple make a tool so users can create podcasts more easily? I know you can use GarageBand to make the MP3 but what about those people who don’t know how to turn those MP3 into the podcast feed by uploading them to the web and creating the appropriate RSS feed?If you have a blog and use something like Wordpress it isn’t too difficult, but what if you want to solely podcast? I’m also working if Apple will add screencasting support next? Like everyone else I’ll just have to wait and see.
This one might work. There’s a couple other ones out there too I think:
http://log.hugoschotman.com/hugo/2005/06/opml2itunes_app.html
I doubt screencasting will be an option. Podcasting just makes too much sense. They already have their “New Music Tuesdays” offered as a podcast. I expect them to come out with similar ones by genre. It’s a great way to push sales and expose people to music. It’s also a way to fill up people’s iPods and is a good selling point. It’s like a free Audible. Who knows, they might have subscription options in the future so you can buy certain music automatically. I believe Audible is already starting this for certain subscriptions. It’s overall just a great delivery mechanism. Might be something you want to look into if you have a audio/visual library with public domain content.
Hmm, if Apple doesn’t develop something for people to keep track of their video snippets who will? One of the nice things about iPhoto, and iTunes is they help users to manage their personal digital collections. With screencasting gaining popularity and libraries being able to potentially offer video on demand, users will need some way to keep track of the video that they are creating and collecting. It might be advantageous for them since they already offer video (ie movie trailers) via their site. Maybe money can be made by selling relicensed video chunks. Maybe individual TV episodes that someone missed? Particularly with shows that are very episode driven where if you miss an episode you don’t know what’s going on.
The new iTunes does support videocasts/videofeeds. It also supports PDF and other enclosures. I don’t see iTunes creating a directory of “screencasts” specifically but video feeds it might pick up. I can see photo enclosures as well since not all the normal iPods support it now. I had thought you meant only screencasting in your original statement and not video in general. Screencasting is usually used specifically for recordings of monitor output as far as I know.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Podcast viewer in iTunes, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.