iPodarmy

I know it’s been a long time. Simply put—I’ve not had the time or energy to whip up a podcast.

While I don’t plan on doing any podcasting in the immediate future, I’m planning on picking it back up sometime down the road. Hang tight, if you want, and thanks for listening.

iTunes 4.9 was released yesterday and it’s pretty darn cool. It has a few minor problems, but in general I really like getting my podcasts right in iTunes like that.

However, even with the podcast directory, I don’t see iTunes as the best place to find content. I’ll be using Odeo for that.

Odeo is to iTunes in a way Flickr is to iPhoto for me. Not in the way they function really, although Odeo is alot like Flickr, but that they serve two different purposes. iTunes is my playing / catching application, and I’m hoping Odeo can be my social/network/find content application. It looks pretty good so far.

I really like the functionality of iTunes as it relates to podcasts and the social aspect of Odeo is nice too. Two great tastes??? We’ll see.

Overall it’s a nice little service/application. I wasn’t able to get into the podcast creation stuff, as that’s not ready yet, but I did take a spin around everything else. Here are my first impressions.

Notes and Observations

• The design and interface are slick. Is pink the new pink?
• It’s kind of like Flickr. You can make comments and tag podcasts with your own tags. I really like the tag based organization as it opens up a whole new way to find podcasts. This is a killer feature.
• I really like the listen features. It’s nice because it makes it easy to kind of, well, browse and “try before you subscribe.” This, again, is killer—I like to be able to easy listen to a show, before I decide I want to add it to my download queue.
• The queue is kind of neat, it allows you to add individual podcasts without subscribing. This would be good to line up new shows to check out.
• Adding a show was pretty easy and allowed for a bit more in the way of describing a show (via tags, etc.) than most other directories out there.
• You can look at other people’s profiles and see what channels and shows they are subscribing to or have in their queue, where they’ve made comments and what those are and what, if anything, their producing. This is another nice way to discover something new. You can check out what your friends or people with similar tastes have found.
• You can then add them as a contact (again ala Flickr) to help keep track of what their up to.

I think in general the most impressive part of Odeo was the way it helps you find new shows to listen to. The fact that you can tag and comment on shows, as well as listen to and line up shows to check out are like nothing else that I’ve seen. I can see those features being very useful.

I also quite liked all the user features. If they can get a community going around it, it could be a very, very good thing.

I’ve been reading recently about Odeo a podcasting service that proclaims to be:

making it easy for you to discover, create, and subscribe to fresh, independent audio content for your iPod (or whatever MP3-player-type-deal you prefer).

There has been quite a bit of hype surrounding Odeo, and based on these screenshots it looks pretty nifty. I wonder though, is it too late? Apple has said that they will add podcasting functionality to iTunes so I’m sure many will use that as their default “podcatcher.”

What about creating content? Well, I use GarageBand and Audio Hijack and contrary to some popular belief, it was pretty darn easy to get it going. I plan on doing something more pofessional down the road, and Odeo seems like it would be a backwards step for someone like me.

But who knows, it looks nice and may have some features that are of benefit that I don’t know about. One thing I wish it had was a better way to find music for podcasting. What’s out there now is pretty lame.

I wish Odeo luck and will give it a spin when it’s out, I just wonder if they were a bit too slow getting it out there.

[Via Corante & Matt May]

While we’re unable to give you blanket permission to use any ole song you want from our catalog, you may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website into your podcasts. HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time. Fickle, no?

This might end up being really big news and I for one am very, very glad to hear it. Sure, it’s a little wishy-washy, but at least they’re thinking about how podcasting and the like can actually help their business. I mean, for me anyway, the objective is to find and share great music. If there are record companies that put out good music that are willing to join in, I’m very excited about what I can legally do with my own podcasts. Oh, and they’ve got an RSS feed to help get new tracks out. Killer, that is!

You can expect some Sup Pop music in the next podcast I do.

[Via Corante & Matt May]

I’ve actually found some pretty good music over at Garageband so I was pretty excited to hear they’re making it easier for podcasters to find music to play. For me this has been the hardest part in getting my podcast going. I want to find great music, that’s legal for me to share, and then get it up so y’all can discover new stuff.

They’ve added a new Flash-based tool built specifically for podcasters to help them create their podcasts, and they’ve also made it, via their broadcast network, it much easier to find music and have people find your podcast.

All to often it’s just too hard to tell what’s “ok” to share and what’s not. Services like Garageband help and when they take the time to specifically address the needs of people like me it’s great because it means more good music more often!

[Via O’Reilly Radar]

At the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference, Steve Jobs tonight showed ipodder-like features in the next release of iTunes, supposedly available within about 60 days. I was glad to see this, since the “architecture of participation” has been the only one of the big Web 2.0 themes that Apple had seemed to be missing. He was slightly dismissive of populist podcasting, describing it as “Wayne’s World for radio”, and celebrating the arrival of professional radio stations into the market, but nonetheless, he was very high on the podcasting phenomenon, and the excitement that millions of users have displayed about it. In the Q&A, Jason Calcanis of Weblogs, Inc. asked if there was any possibility of using the iTunes music store for paid podcasting. Jobs replied that for the moment they were only considering it as free content, but that he was open to looking into it.

I see this as pretty neat. Not sure if it’s as world changing as some might say, but I know that I’d love to be able to cut out the middleware and gather podcasts directly in iTunes. Right now I’ve been using the new beta of NetNewsWire and that seems to be working fairly well, but it has problems with some casts getting them into iTunes. Losing that manual step would be very nice.

As well, I’d hope it’d make it easier for people to find, and hopefully listen to, my own content.

Podcasting is going to be featured in the next edition of Make Magazine.

[via Scoble]

Is podcasting really starting to hit the “big time?” I’m not sure, but I’ll be very interested in reading this. As a newbie to podcasting, and one who’s finding it very enjoyable, I’m always up for some new tips, tricks and techniques. It is a very interesting way of distributing content and I fully expect the buzz to continue for quite awhile now.

BMI has a monthly podcast for unsigned bands called “See It Hear First” and, yeah, the actual ‘cast is a cheesy and unauthentic as the name. Most of the music, at least on the ‘cast I heard, is pretty cheesy and unauthentic as well. It’s not “bad” really, just…well about what you’d expect from a BMI podcast.

It’s pretty obvious they’re targeting recording industry types, but I couldn’t help getting the feeling this was something best steamed out of those crappy headsets you get on a long plane flight. I guess it’s worth nothing that BMI is looking into podcasting, but as far as the actual content goes—you can probably do yourself a favor and skip this one.