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iTunes 4.9 To Support Podcasting

Posted by Hemos on from the well-of-course-it-will dept.

WaRrK writes "O'Reilly Radar are reporting that in a demo at D: All Things Digital Conference, Steve Jobs showed off iTunes 4.9, which has support for iPodder like functionality. Although, he was "slightly" dismissive of the phenomena, describing it as "Wayne's World for radio". Also, whilst currently only supporting free content, they are not ruling out paid for podcasting in the future. iTunes 4.9 should be available within 60 days." Yeah, Steve's kinda right on this - podcasting is neat & all, but the breathy overstatement of how it will change our lives is a wee bit overdone.

4 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Reality Check by frantzdb · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know about individuals' podcasts, but real radiostations are doing it too. It's the easiest way I know of to get time- and space-shifted radio shows.

    (You've got to love the nutral point of view of Slashdot articles.)

  2. Re:Reality Check by Jesse_132 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just like blogs, there are gems. Plus existing programs work better as podcasts than broadcasts.

    IT Conversations (Doug Kaye project), is a top notch Podcasting source. (ok, it was around before the rage about podcasting, but podcasting made it integrate with my life).

    Public Radio Fan also has a list of many podcasts that were radio programs - enabling you to listen to your favorite programs on your own time.

    I hope all of NPR's programs become available as podcasts as I enjoy listening but don't live on their schedule.

  3. Not very hard... by lullabud · · Score: 4, Informative
    How hard is it to write a process that looks for updates to the music collection on the hard drive?
    It's not hard. All you have to do is drag your music folder onto iTunes and it'll merge. Try `open -a iTunes ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/ ` in a cron job. It'd be even easier with spotlight's mdfind. So, I guess the answer to your question is "not that hard."

    Personally, I think that party shuffle is a *fantastic* enque system. You just have to have all your music in the iTunes database already. After all, iTunes is a database, not just a player like Winamp or XMMS. If all you want is a player then yeah, you probably won't like iTunes. If you want a music database that lets you generate playlists based on database queries then iTunes is more your style.
  4. Re:I don't get it. by wootest · · Score: 4, Informative

    The big deal:

    Programs using an RSS feed to get URLs to audio files, downloading those, and cooperating with your jukebox software or your music device directly to, as another commenter said, "make audio magically appear" on the device. This is a) convenient, so people like it and have a bigger chance of using it, b) chock full of 'hot' technologies (RSS, automated downloads, digital music), so tech columnists and managers like it, and c) enables a wider range of people to be broadcasted. It also works better now than it would have a few years back, since audio can be heavy to download, and more people have faster connections now.

    It's automated, it's refined, it's buzzword-heavy for those who like that and people get it without a lot of explanation. Like a lot of technologies it's not new but brings the concept to a wider audience. I think it's overrated myself and not worthy of the label great, but I can appreciate that these things make it good.