iTunes 4.9 To Support Podcasting

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.

Comments

podcasting, bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want DAB in the iPod

Reality Check

[LegendOfLink]

Yeah, Steve's kinda right on this - podcasting is neat & all, but the breathy overstatement of how it will change out lives is a wee bit overdone.

Finally, somebody with a little common sense! Honestly, how many people out there actually use the internet to listen to people's podcasts? I surely don't. It's faster to skim through articles in a blog than to listen to some amateur whine about how he thinks Walmart is the ultimate evil in the world.

Re:Reality Check

[VxJasonxV]

For those offering looking to continually offer new content, and that content that can go anywhere, podcasting is a big help.
A radio station that I help run (not on air, but the web side, backend, etc.) benefits a lot from podcasting, because not everyone can catch the live show.
So we have a 'wrap up podcast' with a few extra benefits.
So those who CAN catch the live show get it all and then some.

No, it's not as revolutionary as Internet Radio itself, but it is already quite popular and has several advantages.
A simple feature like being able to play more of your favorite media, easier is not a bad thing to implement.

Re:Reality Check

[frantzdb]

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.)

Re:Reality Check

[Bender0x7D1]

Podcasting is a fad. It is new (as in new buzzword), uses a cool technolgy (iPods) and gives people something to do. Remember (or have you heard of) the pet rock, the hula hoop, Beanie Babies and Tickle-me Elmo? People jumped on the bandwagon, spent a lot of money buying these items and then realized - "This isn't that fun, that great or that cool. Why did I think it was?"

Just put up with it for 6 more months and all the hype will die down. If it doesn't, then just make sure your own podcasts are about how podcasts are lame.

Re:Reality Check

[Jesse_132]

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.

Re:Reality Check

[c]

Finally, somebody with a little common sense!

Yeah, and I'm still in shock. I mean, a Slashdot editor with common sense? Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

c.

Re:Reality Check

[Billy the Mountain]

I'm not so dimissive. I think podcasting, even in it's current state, is cool. Just think how good it will be when some good content sources come on line. Personally, I find it a great antidote to a long commute. I've even considered developing my own podcasts teaching Perl, although I must admit it's pretty challenging thinking up useful content considering podcasts are all audio.

Re:Reality Check

[MindStalker]

And the best Gem ever!
http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/
Car Talk is available through podcast.. Fad?

Re:Reality Check

[MindStalker]

Nevermind they want you to PAY for it. :P I might pay something, but they want 14.95 a month.

Re:Reality Check

[yotto]

*Podcasting is a fad. It is new (as in new buzzword), uses a cool technolgy (iPods) and gives people something to do. Remember (or have you heard of) the pet rock, the hula hoop, Beanie Babies and Tickle-me Elmo? People jumped on the bandwagon, spent a lot of money buying these items and then realized - "This isn't that fun, that great or that cool. Why did I think it was?"*

One problem with your analogy is that podcasting (Can we think of another word for this? I hate that word. How about Poopeating? I'd rather say I listen to poopeats than podcasts) doesn't cost any money and surely doens't /require/ an ipod. I don't have one, and I listen to several weekly podcasts and am always looking for more.

Re:Reality Check

[MindStalker]

Actually there are video podcast out there. Technically I guess they arn't podcast, but they download with ipodder.

Re:Reality Check

[bheer]

Honestly, how many people out there actually use the internet to listen to people's podcasts?

Podcasts are a special case of timeshifted radio: the special bit is that they were never broadcast in the first place. And timeshifted audio has a huge market: commuters who drive or go by train and have MP3 players.

Potential targets would include sports commentary, book club discussions, book readings, tech rants (I imagine Cringely'd be popular). Now, some of this may be available on radio as well -- that's irrelevant because the target market for podcasts are the people who can't, or couldn't, tune in. And why yes, there could be people whose individual podcasts become incredibly popular (how many'd have thought Belle de Jour's weblog would have taken off enough to earn her a book deal?)

I can understand the average /.-er's reaction to hype, but there's a fine line between hype and potential: podcasting's potential is that it can remove the chokehold of a few corps (made possible by a spectrum shortage that podcasting routes around) on radio and make timeshifted 'broadcasting' a reality. And that, my friend, is big.

Re:Reality Check

[wootest]

Isn't it entirely possible that people with "blogs" can "whine about how he thinks Walmart is the ultimate evil in the world", too?

Never nail a medium based on stereotypical content. I don't listen to podcasts, and I think it's overhyped myself, but I wouldn't dismiss the availability of good content just because I can't find it.

Re:Reality Check

[numbski]

What about TWiT?

TWiT == The Screen Savers

Re:Reality Check

[kitzilla]

The problem with podcasting is music licensing: if you put music on a recording and distribute it, you're liable for ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC royalties. And this is reasonable. The composers wrote the songs, joined the association, and deserve to be paid for their work.

Who has the infrastructure to account and pay for this sort of stuff? Professional broadcasters, mostly.

This assumes the music was written by an association composer. Perhaps you have some unsigned band that has granted you permission to use their material. You're clean.

Beyond music, there's spoken word. Performances have value, but many of the podcasts I've heard were more akin to written blogs than produced audio programming.

What Apple could do here, if they're so inclined, is to swing a podcast deal with their labels. Music purchased from the iTunes store would be licensed for personal use as it is now and non-commercial podcasting. If iTunes could be retooled to record voice-overs -- and it sounds if that may be coming -- you could build a podcast within iTunes and distribute it via Apple's music store. The podcasts would be playable through iTunes.

Apple's motivation in this is twofold: it would encourage podcasters to use Apple's platform and purchase their library through the Apple Store, and the podcast songs would be clickable. Listeners could buy whatever they like as they hear it.

It's a proprietary solution, but would finesse the licensing issue and make music podcasting more accessable.

Re:Reality Check

[Pollardito]

which cool new technology did pet rocks use?

Re:Reality Check

[sprocketonline]

It's faster to skim through articles in a blog than to listen to some amateur whine about how he thinks I agree, a more life changing tool would be to have some sort of index for podcasts, so you could skip through the trashy audio to get to the rest. Splitting a large file into smaller ones would be cumbersome (if you have shuffle on, or for downloading and moving files about)

Re:Reality Check

[smallpaul]

Finally, somebody with a little common sense! Honestly, how many people out there actually use the internet to listen to people's podcasts? I surely don't. It's faster to skim through articles in a blog than to listen to some amateur whine about how he thinks Walmart is the ultimate evil in the world.

Please download a couple of episodes of Quirks and Quarks. Then some IT Conversations. Then you'll see how wrong you are. There are vast swathes of Radio that make much more sense as podcasts than as over-the-air radio (oops, you missed it, too bad!). That's why podcasting will be huge, not random ranters.

Re:Reality Check

[wza]

Actually podcasts have given me the chance to follow much more political debates; i grab em from various political blogs and i listen to them completely on the way to wherever.
Tv/radio covers about 5 minutes of important debates that are sometimes 3 hours long, and political tvshows force their guests to answers of 25 words or less; that's not good enough for me.

I hope more indepth debates find their way to the net.

Re:Reality Check

[cluening]

> Remember (or have you heard of) the pet rock

The guy made a million dollars!

Re:Reality Check

[tburling]

I started listening to Podcasts about a month ago & really enjoy them. I've two different commutes, one hour and three hours, & cannot imagine enduring them without listening to podcasts. As to music, Insomnia Radio and Coverville have opened my eyes (ears?) to the scope and quality of independent, or even 'pod friendly' music out there. Podcasting is an excellent way to have someone filter content for you, leaving some delightful tunes to listen to. Other podcasts tend to be Mac related. As a new Mac user (convert?) I value MacCast and RadioMacGuys, as well as the consistently entertaining TWiT. The content varies, from slick to earnest to hokey to inebriated. But there such a choise of programming out there, and it's so easy to add and delete feeds, it's a privilege to enjoy people's hard work. Here's one vote for podcasting.

Re:Reality Check

[Anonymous Coward]

What is going on here today?
While the parent is on topic, at least two of the other responses are apparently responses for the other Apple thread regarding Apple using Intel chips in some of their future designs. I noticed this on another thread earlier where people were talking about cuba in the thread on European nations and the song and singers contest that took place recently.

Re:Reality Check

[CrazyTalk]

Funny - I remember people in the early 90s saying the same thing about the world wide web. The fact is, you can't really tell for sure what will become a fad and what will turn into a lasting phenomenon.

Re:Reality Check

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I listen to them while I am driving or working. Some are very interesting, and some pick up news bits I never heard of.

Re:Reality Check

[pla]

Listeners could buy whatever they like as they hear it.

Umm...

Now, for the most part, I won't go so far as to actively find and download pirated music. I suspect I fall in the minority (of people who realize they can download just about any song without paying for it) in that regard.

But this? Not actively seeking it out, sure. But passively not deleting a song I've already downloaded? It would take the honesty of a saint for anyone to actually go out of their way to pay for something they already have.

Re:Reality Check

[jamesbrown1000]

No doubt!

This, plus Dvorak maybe possibly predicting something ...

I don't know about you, but this is like Y2K times a thousand.*

* for "Team America" fans

Re:Reality Check

[kurzweilfreak]

Does podcasting allow access to lots of free porn? Porn is the true indicator of fad-ness.

Re:Reality Check

[The One and Only]

neutral point of view

Can we mod this, "+1 Wikipedia Reference"?

Re:Reality Check

[mrgreen4242]

I think the OP was suggesting that the music be only accessable within the PodCast, but the meta data include iTunes links to purchase the songs indiviually. So you could, in theory, listen to any of the songs in the PodCast, but they wouldn't be individually serachable or selectable in your iTunes library. You would have to find that particular PodCast and then scan to the song you were looking for... or you could look in that PodCasts meta data for the name/artist of that song and pay $.99 to download it from iTunes to have full (DRMed) access to it... I think it's a good idea that just might work!

Re:Reality Check

[takotech]

How about Poopeating?

You must've just watched the Team America DVD.

Re:Reality Check

[CrazyTalk]

hmm you just gave me a great business idea!

Re:Reality Check

[kurzweilfreak]

There goes my patenting chance! Bastard!

Re:Reality Check

[bay43270]

Podcasting is a fad.

You just don't get it. Podcasting isn't about blogging with audio, or time shifting radio programs. Its about distributing radio programs. If you think of Tivo as a hack that creates an on-demand system out of a streaming media, podcasting is the on-demand system that Tivo wanted to be. It's just a new buzz word for audio on demand. It is overhyped, but it isn't a fad. One day, this is how we'll watch the news on TV.

Re:Reality Check

[greylingrover]

Interesting idea Kitzilla. The only problem here is that a lot of commercial music (i.e. most) won't work as background music under a voice-over - at least not without sounding like a$$. I'm personally hoping that this podcasting craze brings more awareness to legal production music downloading, which is getting cheaper and cheaper (plug: see my site http://www.primaryelements.com/ for details ). I plan on reducing my prices soon so that any old shmoe can afford a few tunes for their production without dangerously reducing their RedBull or pR0n budget. Perhaps a special discount for anti-bushie podcasts. ;)

Re:Reality Check

[commodoresloat]

It would take the honesty of a saint for anyone to actually go out of their way to pay for something they already have.

I guess you've never paid for shareware then.

Re:Reality Check

[Paradise Pete]

Who has the infrastructure to account and pay for this sort of stuff? Professional broadcasters, mostly.

There's no need for accounting. If you're a small fry, here's how it works. One day a guy in a cheap suit shows up and says "I'm from ASCAP. I notice you play music around here. And have a television on. So you owe us $xxx per year. Now how would like to pay for that?"

Don't like his figure? Tough. Either pay it or get sued out of business. There's no negotiating. It's one easy payment.

Re:Reality Check

[pla]

I guess you've never paid for shareware then.

Once, actually, I did. To unlock extra features of the program. But no, other than that, I have not. In that regard, I appreciate the Open Source movement all the more - It means I don't need to use shareware, and therefore, don't feel bad about not registering.

But regardless of your intent, you've nicely illustrated my point - I remember reading a story a few years ago, from the author of some once-popular shareware program (really fuzzy on the details, perhaps someone will recognize this and post a link in response). Basically, he had gotten sick of people, on learning he wrote the program in question, thanking him and saying what a great program, and that they had registered it. And he would respond something like "No, you didn't. No one registered. Not a single person. Ever."


Due to anonymity in the transaction, this maps to a non-iterated example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. And as much as we might wish otherwise, only one rational course of action exists in that scenario - Defect.

Re:Reality Check

[MindStalker]

Yea I kinda realized that, why does their page say podcast then? Just trying to catch the trend, or they moving in that direction?

Maybe not.

[broller]

the breathy overstatement of how it will change out lives is a wee bit overdone

Sure. They said the same thing about the common users being able to create their own web sites. Yeah, there's a lot of noise, but the few quality content providers more than make up for it.

Re:Maybe not.

[shaitand]

common users could always make webpages, html is extremely simple. Unless you mean visual editors, I don't believe I have ever seen worthwhile content produced in a visual editor.

Re:Maybe not.

[outZider]

You'd be surprised at how many places use products like Dreamweaver and GoLive on a daily basis as part of their workflow. At my last employer, us developers used our tools, and the front end people used Dreamweaver. It supported our templating systems, and they got their work done.

Re:Maybe not.

[hhghghghh]

common users could always make webpages There was life before the web, you know. Online services like GEnie, Prodigy Online, Compuserve, AOL, those weren't always too kind to common users. Even fairly grass-roots networks like FIDOnet required quite a bit of time and money, or political clout, to set up your own BBS/filearea/echo.. Nowadays, a website comes included with just about every internet access plan. Dynamic database driven sites are just a few bucks a month, and .coms adresses can be had for much the same amount of money. There's no censorship or vetting procedure, no favoritism in listing you (unless you count paying for ads on search-engines, which themselves are a dime a dozen). Youse pays (or gets included with youse access) your webhosting fees, you gets your site online. Maybe place some ads, print or your businesscard, list in search-engines, and you're up and running. This is VERY unlike what the process to get your service online, or even just your message out, in the Olden days, before the Web. Thank Gopher and Veronica for that.

Re:Maybe not.

[version5]

The reason its an overstatement is because the current podcasting 'revolution' is happening several years after the real revolution. This is more like new internet users re-discovering something that people have been doing for years and giving it a new, Apple-centric name. In fact, there are people called DJs who put music together (professionals, semi-professionals or amateurs) into a single, downloadable form and release it on the web. Go to any DJ website, and you will be innundated with mixes, mostly made up of tracks so rare, that only a few thousand copies are ever made, mainly on vinyl. There's also an old and healthy community of radio show sharing online - this site collects tracklistings of Essential Mixes going back to 1993, most of which can be found semi-legally on your favorite p2p program. Wrapping it all up in an RSS feed is cool, but not a revolution - that happened years ago.

Mac users are getting notorious for calling revolutions on things that have been on the PC for years, like GarageBand. Sound cards came bundled with similar software as early as 1996, but that didn't stop people from claiming that Apple was going to revolutionize music-making by bringing the technology to the average user.

Re:Maybe not.

[shaitand]

What does GCC have to do with dreamweaver and/or webpage design?

Re:Maybe not.

[shaitand]

He said "make" webpages, not get the webpages they make hosted. Internet publishing is not the same as 'webpages' either, the internet predates the web but webpages do not.

Four Apple Articles in a Row?

[ThatsNotFunny]

Is that some sort of record, Slashdot editors?

Re:Four Apple Articles in a Row?

[ZephyrXero]

Maybe they should give it its own section...waittt....

Re:Four Apple Articles in a Row?

[taskforce]

If you accidentally clicked the "Apple" link on the left sidebar, use the "back" button in your browser to repair the problem.

Re:Four Apple Articles in a Row?

[AccUser]

You should take a look atthis if you think four in a row is a record. :-)

Podcasting info

[crunk]

Wikipedia article here

Re:Podcasting info

[Ziviyr]

Well, I keep mentally gagging on the term "podcast" myself. Its not like the iPods have any transmit/recieve ability at all.

Best I can think of is some guy on a boat using one of the smaller iPods as fishing bait (k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k splat).

Re:That's all well and goo, but . . .

[VxJasonxV]

Yet another reason why iTunes is great and all, but I dislike it immensely as a player.
<3 Foobar (at work) and XMMS (at home).

It's an enabler...

[eyegor]

Given that Rush Limbaugh (love him or loathe him) is going to be making his broadcast available via podcast, you could change iTunes to allow downloading DRMed podcasts on a pay-per-download or a subscription basis either through the iTunes store or a third-party source.

Re:It's an enabler...

[bill_mcgonigle]

You don't understand podcasting. It's a download-and-go system. Rush has had streams but not downloadables.

In a way, this is older technology.

Re:It's an enabler...

[Reaperducer]

Rush has had streams but not downloadables.

Not correct. Rush has announced that he will have downloadable podcasts. I believe the start date is June 3rd.

Re:It's an enabler...

[FredFnord]

Uh, however much I may loathe Rush Limbaugh, Air America is even worse.

Air America is less entertaining, more informative, and less likely to be lying to you at any given moment. It's a trade-off, I guess.

It's already clear which is more important to The American People.

-fred

Sure beats the dross on airwaves...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure Podcasting may not 'change the world', but after sampling shows for a few weeks I've come up with three or four regulars that beat the pants off any of the drivel that I can find on the airwaves. These shows keep me eagerly waiting for new installments every day.

The 'long tail' of shows almost ensures that there is something out there of interest to everyone. And if I wasn't rushing out to buy an mp3 player before, I sure am looking forward to getting one now so I can fill my hour and a half commute each day by programming my own 'radio station'... commercial-free and chock full of content that totally appeals to me.

Re:Sure beats the dross on airwaves...

[FeTrut]

Care to let us in on what these four regulars are? I'm kind of curious to check out this podcasting thing...

Re:Sure beats the dross on airwaves...

[utexaspunk]

no, there appears to be a bug in slashcode...

Re:Sure beats the dross on airwaves...

[tpearson]

either that or just trolling

Re:well..

[tbone1]

so what's left for itunes 5?

Video store. They've already got all the front-end functionality built into iTunes 4, so ...

Brain storm!

[3770]

Brain storm.

Movies (not just videos).

Lyrics for songs.

Karaoke.

Mixing (be your own DJ with pitch control and sound effects).

Support for independent vendors (a band could bypass the labels and list their content directly on iTunes). It could be possible for any band to list their songs on iTunes at a price they choose. And it could be done from the iTunes client. It really doesn't have to be very complicated. ...aaaand that's where I ran out of creativity for today. Thanks very much buddy. Now I have to work rest of the day without doing anything creative! ;)

Re:Brain storm!

[larry bagina]

Mixing (be your own DJ with pitch control and sound effects).

I think they'd rather sell you Garage Band.

Re:Brain storm!

[droleary]

Lyrics for songs.

Not perfect, but iSing.

It could be possible for any band to list their songs on iTunes at a price they choose.

Never gonna happen. Last thing Apple wants is some jackass who can't carry a tune polluting their database with off-priced songs. It's $.99 to buy a song for everyone, and the consumers can grasp that a lot more firmly than the maze of licensing issues that surround alternative services.

Change out lives?

[hussar]

Change out lives?

I'm more worried about changing out the batteries.

This is huge

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. This is huge. Or at least, I think so.

The only trouble is that I have NO idea what podcasting is. Reading the article didn''t clued me in. Googling got me to: http://www.podcast.net/, a very interesting web site, that does its best to NOT clue people in about podcasting. Of course wikipedia will tell me, but, hell, how difficult is it to put a single line in the /. post to clue readers in ?

Re:This is huge

[Anonymous Coward]

how hard is a google search for "What is podcasting" , which gives you the wikipedia entry as the second result.

Re:This is huge

[Tony Hoyle]

Heck I've read several slashdot stories and still don't get the *point*. It seems to be an entirely slashdot-wide phenomena. Never heard the term outside that..

There are two types:

1. The type that requires hardware, and broadcasts your ipod within a short range using a little transmitter. Illegal outside the US. That's the one I heard of first and thought for a long time that's what the slashdot articles were about.
2. The practice of putting downloadable links for various shows/songs on a website. That's what slashdot is on about.

I don't get all the hype either...

Re:This is huge

[cozzano]

An mp3 file you can download... Honestly nothing new. I truly don't get why more people going get this

Why I like PodCasting

[Your_Mom]

Podcasting makes my life easier. I listen to quite few shows, and like other geeks, the way my work hours are soemtimes I completely forget what day it is. I often used to miss a show for a few days before realzing "Hey, it's Friday, OTH came out a few days ago" Podcasting is good because it automagically updates my iPod when the new shows come out.

Although Steve is right in the fact that, for the most part, it's the "Wayne's World" of radio. There are some good shows out there and I do enjoy listening to them.

Re:Why I like PodCasting

[frankthechicken]

In the UK we have to be thankful for the BBC. and their podcast experiment.

Just wish they would get over this pointless strike at the moment.

Re:well..

[GaryPatterson]

Ogg Vorbis support for the three people on the planet who use it.

technology changes lives ..

[torpor]

but the breathy overstatement of how it will change out lives is a wee bit overdone./i.

i dunno, since the personal broadcast media revolution came along, i no longer feed off the general concencus being mass-produed for the hive-mind by "Big Media" .. in fact, i hardly pay much attention to "Big Media" and all their benevolent sponsors, at all, any more .. they're not making money off my time, which is being spent listening to and enjoying/paying-for content that has been made by people who are much, much, much closer to me and my mores, as a fan, than "Clear Channel" arer ...

laders like jobs ridiculing this movement through generalities and slures really only shows that yes, in fact, putting mass-media broadcast tools in the hands of The People, instead of it being the exclusive domain of the vested interest/vaulted few, is a good thing ..

Re:technology changes lives ..

[ultramk]

....thanks for the perfect example of "breathy overstatement."

Last time I heard something like that, it was when a friend had just bought a Tivo.

(I have a Tivo, which I love, and I like the idea of podcasting, but let's not get silly.)
m-

where did I read this story before?

[boomerny]

Oh yeah, a few hours ago on engadget.com, along with the previous story about Apple and Intel. Looks like the submitter is just reposting headlines from other sites.

Re:where did I read this story before?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much more mac does there need to be in the world?

Podcasting requires neither Mac, iTunes nor iPod.

Any MP3 player will do, and it's in the RSS that the magic lies.

There are key differences between podcasting and archival:

(1) A podcast is not necessarily kept available long term.
(2) A podcast is meant to "magically" appear on your portable MP3 player as part of your routine syncing/charging activity.

I don't like the name either -- it wrongly implies reliance on an iPod, and gives Apple free marketing -- but I think we're pretty much stuck with it now.

Re:where did I read this story before?

[dearreid]

Um, isn't that what Slashdot always does? Links to news articles of interest around the net for discussion?

Re:well..

[baryon351]

A rewrite to fix the numerous little annoying bugs that were introduced in versions after 2.0. Things like lag on 500mhz G3s when playing music and renaming tags, or sporadic pauses, dumping the clumsy parts of the old interface - just making the same old app work how they should have.

Apple seem to be pushing ahead so quickly (and well I might add) in advancing really useful features, that sometimes the old small bugs just get forgotten, and it's only when they've accumulated over several versions that together they make an app annoying.

(cue comments on the Finder now too)

podcasting as timeshifting

[ObjetDart]

While I agree it's not going to fundamentally change our lives, podcasting *has* fundamentally changed the way I listen to radio. By which I mean, it allows me to timeshift internet radio (there's basically no good FM radio where I live.)

I get most of my new music by listening to KCRW (http://www.kcrw.org/online/). Since they are on the west coast and I'm on the east coast, a lot of their music shows are at inconvenient times for me. So, I wrote a little program that downloads the shows I like (they broadcast in MP3 format), and then I can copy them to my mp3 player and listen to the show whenever and wherever I like. This has allowed me to go from listening to KCRW only occasionally to catching every single one of my favorite programs.

Re:podcasting as timeshifting

[MichaelKVance]

Er, do you know about this?

http://www.kcrw.com/podcast/

m.

Re:podcasting as timeshifting

[ObjetDart]

Sure I do. But that's only for their talk shows. I'm talking about the music shows. KCRW doesn't podcast their music shows (yet).

Re:well..

[halleluja]

Ogg Vorbis support for the three people on the planet who use it. A lot of released games use ogg vorbis, e.g. FarCry, SWAT 4. So that's a hell of a lot more than 3 people.

Wayne's World for radio...

[chill]

Steve has just never gotten over the Video Toaster being for the Amiga and not the Mac.

Wayne's World, Perhaps, But..

[Mean_Nishka]

The easier it gets to download podcasting content, the more likely people will actually listen to it. Including this functionality in iTunes will expand the audience and make it easier for average Joe computer user to sample of the content.

It's only a matter of time before paid providers will see the value of this. Vidcasts (not podcasts) might be the killer app, but the media distribution has to begin somewhere :).

Re:Wayne's World, Perhaps, But..

[GaryPatterson]

Wayne's World, eh?

So, the iPod will 'suck' music from your computer, and now it can 'blow' music out to other users?

Just like the 'Suck Cut' (patent very pending), the iPod will soon be able to truly suck and blow.

Re:Wayne's World, Perhaps, But..

[Senor_Programmer]

Podcast is a great opportunity for radio archives.
Say you run an independent radio station. College, community, what have you.

You have a programming schedule and a good many interesting programs. For example the Atlanta local WRFG is a 50KW FM stereo community supported radio station that would be of interest to a much larger audience than local Atlanta.

If WRFG were to make programs available as archives kept for a week and updated live and also make these archives easily available over 'podcast' they would benefit from a much larger audience and the additional donations that would come along with it.

What's missing is an easy to navigate playlist for the archive that the program director can easily update through his preferred management software. There is some oportunity for OSS here for anyone willing to build features of the popular program management systems with archiving or interface to popular archiving software, and couple of clicks or automatic podcast site update. If Mr Jobs is sharp, he'll get his butt in gear to fund with his site as the default.

There are a good many independent radio stations across the country offering 'different' programming that would also benefit.

But, the biggest winners will be listeners.

Radio is for the most part a one way medium so a bit of time shift doesn't matter to listeners. Take this, the CRAP that consolidation has replaced radio programming with, and adding in the simple, appliance like, user interface of 'podcasting' and you can't help but have a winner all the way around.

There is also an opportunity for consolidating what used to be 'local' interest radio for podcast. The sources are still there, they just don't work for clear channel. Sure, the market for local programming is limited but it's there and much less expensive to serve than through station ownership.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[GaryPatterson]

"iTunes to Drop DRM"

In related news, the entire music industry has dropped support for Apple's iTunes Music Store and is suing Apple for breach of contract, loss of revenue and numerous copyright violations.

Consumers wishing refunds on their now almost useless iPods were advised by Apple store and helpline staff "Shit no! We need every cent for the court battles now! If we win, you'll get you music back, but until then we need to push this case through and put the business on the line because it's a principle dear to a few hundred geeks on Slashdot!"

The popular Slashdot website commented cryptically today "Less space than a Nomad. No FM. Lame." A few posters on the website criticised Apple for not going far enough.

One poster commented: "They should storm the citadel of the star-star-AA. Maybe with leet swords of righteousness plus seventeen, you know, for EverQuest, or maybe with those cool guns you get on Halo-2, but not the original Halo because that was just crap. The ending was better though, so YMMV. That'd be so cool, and then they'd be teh godz. I still wouldn't buy their shit though. It's not free enough for me."

Business Analysts changed the rating of Apple's stock from "buy" to "get the hell out of there! Just run and don't look back for the love of God!" This move is expected to cause Apple stock to suffer.

Darl McBride, CEO of the foundering SCO corporation has offered to step in to Apple's CEO role and bring the company back to health. "I believe that Apple can still make a case that Microsoft stole their UI, and by charging every Windows owner on Earth a simple, one-off $299 fee, we'll recoup those losses."

Noted software tycoon Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, as he was admitted to hospital suffering convulsions caused by fits of continuous hysterical laughter.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[chris234]

It uses mp3s, and you can also use other formats like Ogg Vorbis. http://www.illadvised.com/~jordy/ Open enough?

Re:well..

[slimey_limey]

I am going to switch in a few weekends. I just want that Rio Karma!

Why does /login.pl not work for me (503 Service Unavailable), but this post-comment-and-login thingy work?

NEWSFLASH

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is NOT A JOURNALISTIC SITE!

This is a tech site, BY nerds FOR nerds. If you say that nerds should have a "neutral" point of view on a tech issue, then you're living in fantasyland. All nerds have a point of view, and the editors do too. This is a way that they can express that. We don't have to take what they say as the gospel truth. This is a discussion, not an effort to set the truth down in stone.

If you want journalism, go to nytimes or something (although it's rather hard to find good journalism _anywhere_ these days).

Re:NEWSFLASH

[The One and Only]

True. Nor is Slashdot Wikipedia.

Re:Kinda stupid Ipod/Itunes question

[Chicane-UK]

There are other products which can support the iPod, depending on the OS you use. Not sure on the Mac but with regards Windows:

* With the normal iPods, there are various freeware apps including a good plugin for Winamp that let you control / update the iPod. Link for that here.

* With the iPod shuffle, you can download a small freeware app which allows you to just drag and drop MP3 / AAC files onto the player and run the app to rebuild the database on it - nice and easy :) Link for that here.

So no real need for iTunes unless you want to buy / convert music.

Re:well..

[slimey_limey]

It also wants me to metamoderate, but I get a 503 for /metamod.pl as well. :(

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[ZephyrXero]

the store, not the player...

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[generic-man]

How exactly is podcasting different from Shoutcast?

Oh, you can download stuff and listen to it later. How exactly is that different from Shoutcast with Steramripper?

So now instead of listening to what the Evil Corporate Companies want you to hear, you can listen to some random ClearChannel viral advertising campaign. Congratulations.

Podcasting is to radio as blogging is to news. Pockets of people think it's the greatest thing ever, but the vast majority of people have common sense.

Re:well..

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I've gotta say that the lack of ogg support is what keeps me from even considering an iPod. I'm in the minority, fine, I accept that. But as I see it, the question is not why, but why not?

Why not give people another option? Why not support an established, open, royalty-free format? (And why should I have to re-rip all my CDs to either an inferior format (mp3) or a proprietary one (AAC))

I realize that decoding Ogg Vorbis takes a bit more horsepower than mp3, but current iPods should be more than capable. The development costs would be a one-time expense.The only arguement I've ever seen is that few people use it. Well, Apple doesn't exactly have a history of ignoring the minority. The iPod was originally Mac only, after all.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[AvantLegion]

>> How exactly is that different from Shoutcast with Steramripper?

I download the show at anytime, instead of having to have my PC on and running for the entire show's duration?

*forehead slap* duh! ??

Podcasting is here to stay ....

[Luscious868]

I'm sure I'll take heat for admitting this on Slashdot, but I'm a fiscally conservative voter who listens to Rush Limbaugh because I tend to agree with him on those matters. Don't agree a thing with the right's social agenda, but couldn't agree more when it comes to conservative ideas on fiscal policy and limited government. No lectures on the shortcomings of the current Republicans, most of them are RINO's (Republican In Name Only) when it comes to fiscal policy and the idea of limited government. Anyway, Rush announced recently that in early June he'll make podcasts of his program available to subscribers. Love him, or hate him, he is the biggest name in talk radio and when he does something, others are sure to follow suite.

On a similar note, I'm also a Tom Leykis fan, and since I live in a suburb of Detroit (and the only radio station that carried him moved the broadcast time to 3 am), I use replay radio to record a stream of a station in Seattle that carries him live in the afternoons. I think this whole pod casting thing is here to stay. There are a boat load of great radio programs out there that for one reason or another, I'd like to listen to all or part of but can't always do so.

Re:Podcasting is here to stay ....

[Bassman59]

"Anyway, Rush announced recently that in early June he'll make podcasts of his program available to subscribers."

Oh, good, so maybe he'll stop polluting the airwaves with his ill-informed rants and get off the radio!

"he is the biggest name in talk radio"

I thought he was the biggest ass in talk radio. Or maybe it's that he has the biggest ass.

"and when he does something, others are sure to follow suite (sic)."

First, learn to spell. And, yeah, all of those right-wing talkers are all just lemmings. I'm waiting for them to talk themselves right over the cliff.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[Tsunayoshi]

You don't have to buy your music through iTunes...I still buy and then rip my cds to mp3s. I only use iTunes to buy singles where I only want one song, and not an entire album...and since my car is geared to connect a iPod to the stereo, I am not all that worried about not being able to play it elsewhere. Same with the Xbox 360 and my home stereo.

Nice...

[AyeRoxor!]

Although, he was "slightly" dismissive of the phenomena, describing it as "Wayne's World for radio".

This reminds me of those sentences from grade-school, where you had to circle all the problems with the sentence and rewrite it so it made sense.

/just sayin

Re:well..

[StrawberryFrog]

Why not give people another option? Why not support an established, open, royalty-free format?

It doesn't send revenue towards iTunes' DRMd store.

Much as I'd love to see ogg on an iPod, Apple is acting it it's own shortsighted, greedy self-interest here.

Learned his lesson?

[code_chick]

"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."

Maybe Steve's just learned his lesson, since stating that the Segway would "transform human mobiliy" and we all know how that's turned out...

Re:Learned his lesson?

[mbbac]

Steve also said of the Segway, "I think it sucks!"

Re:Learned his lesson?

[code_chick]

Good point!! Maybe we should just give it a little while and wait for Steve to proclaim it's a great idea and soon the whole world of radio will be on-board! :)

Not very hard...

[lullabud]

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.

Re:Not very hard...

[bogie]

"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." "

No Offense but that's about the most Un-Apple way I can think of doing it. Face it, Itunes not being able to monitor folders is retarded and is a glaring omission on their part. Much like their crappy mp3 encoder and how they don't make things like exporting only your ratings easy. Why if your PC gets hosed or you want to move you library is it such a process? Why can't you simply export ONLY your ratings and have Itunes reimport them at a later date? For a company that prides itself on catering to the lowest common denominator they certainly haven't made some sorely desired tasks easy to perform in Itunes.

Its not all about being a power user either who is trying to force Itunes into doing things it wasn't designed for. Itunes is still a good player overall but it still needs work and it makes things harder then it need to.

Re:Not very hard...

[mrchaotica]

If you want to monitor a folder, use Folder Actions. Just attach an Applescript to the effect of "on adding items to, get the items, filter them to only include audio files, and import them into iTunes" Heck, you could probably even do it with Automator at this point, and not even have to write any code.

Better than a blank cassette waiting in the deck.

[momus_radar]

The name

• Podcast

might be a fad, since it's more "hip" than calling the file an archive, but I can't imagine the freedom to listen to a given radio show at a time of your choosing to be a fad.

Then again I could be wrong. Has downloading music files gone lame yet?

Wayne's World?

[Tenebrious1]

So does that mean nerdy, podcasting geeks will get hot babes?

Re:well..

[geoffspear]

Nice theory, but if that's true, why does the iPod support MP3 and non-DRMed AAC? Neither one generates revenue for Apple's store, and adding another format that no one uses is hardly going to hurt them more than making it easy for people to use music from other sources.

Supporting DRM'ed WMA files would hurt their store. Supporting Ogg Vorbis would do nothing of the sort.

Re:That's all well and goo, but . . .

[Talez]

Indeed, when will it provide a decent enqueue system?

Right click on song, click on "Play Next in Party Shuffle"

There you go.

I don't get it.

[Chelloveck]

Okay, color me clueless on this one. What's the big deal about podcasting? As far as I can tell, it's just making audio files available via an RSS feed. Is that really so life-changing? Couldn't this have been done years ago without the RSS, just by listing the files as links on a web page or even by dropping them in an ftp directory somewhere? Heck, I even remember a little something put out back before the turn of the millenium, definitely predating the iPod and almost predating RSS. There's nothing new here, except the name and the tangential link to Apple via the iPod. So really, what's all the fuss about?

Re:I don't get it.

[iainl]

Yep, that's exactly what the fuss is about. Rather than having to either work out how the living feck I set up a cron job to download said file under Windows (sorry, but I'm tied in due to a whole bunch of apps I need), or have to actively go and download it each week.

With Podder, when the RSS announces a new download, it gets uploaded to my iPod automatically so I don't miss it.

The whole "it's amazing"/"it's bollocks" argument really seems to stem from whether or not anyone actually finds any broadcasts they want to listen to. I just use it for the various BBC shows, but that's plenty to keep me going.

Re:I don't get it.

[wootest]

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.

Re:I don't get it.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Yes, I remember Geeks in Space or whatever that was. That was a great precursor to the podcast idea. What it changes is that it is a whole lot more convenient to do these things, and much easier to keep up.

As noted elsewhere, the aggregator software automatically fetches the latest podcasts on all your selected feeds and can automatically insert them into your music player's library, and thus automatically put them on your portable audio player, even automatically adding the track into their respective show's playlists. On my iPod, I just play the "recently added" smart playlist and I will be able to listen to the latest podcasts as I drive or work.

Re:I don't get it.

[edstromp]

Another huge bennefit: I can listen to internet radio at work again. Policy and bandwith concerns have always locked me out from streaming any audio at my desk. This way it's on my iPod before I leave for work. I can listen on the way, at my desk, and on my way home.

Re:I don't get it.

[slim]

I'm not sure I get it either. When do I listen to audio-only entertainment? Either when I'm in the car or at work. At work, I need music, not news or verbal entertainment. In the car, I have a sirius radio, which is commercial free. I have quite a few channels to listen to and I enjoy being programmed to so I can find out new things without customizing my entire life's intake. At home, I just can't see taking time out for audio content.

Newsflash! Not everyone is like you. "The world don't dance to the beat of just one drum", and thank God for that.

I hate to carp on about the BBC's podcasts, but these are programmes I used to enjoy listening to, but rarely got around to because I either had to be by a Internet connected computer (to stream an archive), or use traditional radio and be tied to a specific time. Now I get the content delivered to my portable player with no fuss, and that's great. Sorry, but pasting a URL into a podcast client is way more convenient than messing around with Streamripper.

And, if you can find it, there are some gems in the amateur content too.

But, if it's not for you, that's fine. Go ahead and enjoy your music, your TV and your games. Just as I'm allowed to "not get" Halo and OOP, you're allowed to "not get" Podcasting. It doesn't mean all three of those things aren't huge.

Want to know the sad part?

[kaiwai]

1) Relative to the cost of a CD, its not worth the hassle. When you can purchase a whole cd for $5 less than in the shop, *THEN* you can say there has been a push forward in the music selling front.

2) They need to make payment *alot* easier; those who will adopt iTunes will be young kids, 15 years old, make it easier by allowing them to make payments into a virtual 'iTunes account' like would would pay bills via the internet using online banking.

3) What is it with companies like Apple, operating on the internet, and still acting like they can only sell to Americans. Please, you've got a global site, how about acting global by allowing *ANY* Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary to purchase their music off the iTunes store instead of expecting them to wait for the 'big roll out'.

Re:Want to know the sad part?

[Loco3KGT]

See, you're part of the /. crowd that guy up above is mocking.

I don't know if you're aware of this but most countries have governments. And surprisingly most governments have laws. Such laws make it impossible for someone, even though they have a dot-com, to "just sell to anybody."

I'd go on, but I think I've already gone over your head.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[iainl]

I don't know about you, but my PC downloads the hour-long Fighting Talk and 30-minute Kermode film reviews from the BBC every week in about 5 minutes whenever I've turned on the PC before synching it onto my Pod without me even lifting a finger.

Both are shows that I try to catch on Radio 5 Live anyway, but I'm often not in a position to do so.

Sure, there are other methods to achieve the same result (my hi-fi's minidisc recorder on a timer not being the least), but this one is piss-easy to set up and works.

"Podcasting" may be a dumb buzzword for an amalgamation of a couple of fairly standard technologies being strung together in a slightly different way, but the end result definitely works for me.

What's the incentive?

[borschski]

Why would Steve Jobs want to drive free content via iTunes? I consumed tons 'o tunes when I first got my iPod and starting last October have downloaded free content like mad -- so much so that I don't have enough listen-able hours in a day for all the stuff on my little white hard drive device.

Here's the kicker and what Apple will have to wrestle with: my own 45 minute commute to work each way is often filled with IT Conversationsand other 'podcasts' every day and I hardly listen to my own music library anymore.

SUGGESTION TO APPLE: if Apple were to play it smart, they'd provider "podcaster guidelines" and how-to's that would do what they'd done with the UI (set the bar for quality and usability) as well as providing a way for podcasters to monetize their offerings. It could and would explode the users of Garageband and the Mac platform -- since most of the really great audio tools are there.

WILD CONJECTURE: Oh yeah...if all the rumors are true about the next step for Apple is with a video-centric platform, it would position them nicely for all the vloggers to use iMovie, Final Cut, etc., for creating great video content.

Re:What's the incentive?

[Rauser]

Still, by the fact that you own an iPod, Apple has made their buck already. Anything else is pure gravy for them.

I think that what they are going for here is keeping you firmly ensconced with iTunes, rather than resorting to other programs (iPodderX, etc.). Anytime you use iTunes there is a sales opportunity for Apple.

Re:What's the incentive?

[slim]

[...]Steve doesn't sell music[...]

Um, he does.

Is Hemos the new Michael?

[poot_rootbeer]

"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."

Dear Slashdot Editor:

If I wanted your opinion, I'd read your blog. Or you could leave comments in the discussion that follows the article, and I could read it there.

Your job as an editor is not to use story submissions as a platform for your personal views. Your job is to evaluate a submission's potential interest to the community and then step aside.

(Making sure it's not a dupe and that it contains good grammar and spelling would be nice too, but we in the /. crowd aren't too picky.)

re: Is Hemos the new Michael?

[Cid Highwind]

Dear poot_rootbeer:

Slashdot has been Hemos and Taco's "blog" since well before "blog" was ever considered a real word.

Real news sites don't publish readers commenary on the stories (or on which editors aren't doing their jobs).

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[iainl]

You mean "ITMS to use open formats". Every Podcast I've ever seen comes as a bog-standard unencrypted mp3.

Cool!

[el_womble]

As ever, Mr. Jobs is right on the money. But look at what he's doing rather than what he's saying. By providing RSS downloads into iTunes he massively raises the profile of what was previously a geek only market. If this feature is used, no doubt they'll introduce a market place on iTunes for people share and talk about the podcasts they like.

1. Provide RSS feeds in iTunes
2. Provide market for podcasts
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

Podcasts are a mess right now. Even if you find a really good podcast there is no way to promote them short of word of mouth. This presents another problem, podcasts are too complicated. You can't email your buddy and mine, Joe Sixpack, a link to an RSS feed and expect them to know what to do with it. People struggle to wrap their heads around web pages, never mind RSS feeds and MP3 files.

Apple getting behind podcasts with iTunes offers this interesting technology its best hope of becoming useful - like the BBC looking at this as a way of dropping Real, infavour of freeplay

Re:Cool!

[Absentminded-Artist]

Podcasts are a mess right now. Even if you find a really good podcast there is no way to promote them short of word of mouth. This presents another problem, podcasts are too complicated. You can't email your buddy and mine, Joe Sixpack, a link to an RSS feed and expect them to know what to do with it. People struggle to wrap their heads around web pages, never mind RSS feeds and MP3 files.

You've nailed the two largest problems with podcasts right on the head. Many people will tell you to submit your podcast to a podcast listing, but how does somebody find your podcast then? Unless they are specifically looking for you, or the type of content you provide, they won't find you. I know somebody who listed his podcast on half a dozen sites and saw only a slight increase in subscriptions and no increase in hits to his website. Word of mouth is the only way to get others to hear your podcast. And viral marketing is most often a very slow process.

The other problem is that podcasts tend to be performance art or geeky. Their audience is already technologically savvy, but the mainstream podcasts won't make inroads until the mainstream audience can easily access the content. Telling somebody to use a podcast aggregator to subscribe to a RSS XML feed is tantamount to speaking a foreign language. Look at the word "aggregator"!! That's not something Joe Sixpack is even going to be able to pronounce, nevermind understand. LOL

I hope Apple does this right. I haven't been pleased with their implementation of internet radio. It fell short of the mark. Their index is not updated enough or expansive enough. They also haven't emphasized enough that MP3 streams are playable on itunes. Visit any mainstream site that offers a radio feed and you will find Real streams, WMP streams, MP3 streams and sometimes Quicktime streams. iTunes is never mentioned on the page as being able to play MP3 streams. I don't think most people know that it can. If Apple implements podcast support the way they implemented internet radio support only the Mac geeks will be excited about it.

Re:well..

[R2.0]

"inferior format (mp3)"

Yes, but Ogg Vorbis has the inferior *name*.

Between Ogg, Lame, Gimp, recursiev acronyms, and all the cutesy Linux distro appellations, it's no wonder a lot of folks can't take open source seriously.

It's changed the way I use my iPod, Steve.

[dmorin]

Here's a change, Steve. I don't use iTunes anymore, which means you don't get any of my money anymore.

Forget for the moment about the quality of podcasts out there. It's no worse than the quality of your average blog was a few years back. It takes a little while for the good ones to distance themselves from the pack and define what quality really is all about in the first place. There will always be an audience for anybody that wants the soapbox, just like always. We just need to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Everybody will find their own favorites.

The power of podcasting comes from the same delivery mechanism that RSS brings us (it's the same thing, after all, with a different payload). "Here are some sources of regularly updated audio. Bring it to me to listen to at my leisure."

Not everybody wants to listen to music on their MP3 players. I find it boring, personally. Nor do I want to constantly go out and search for new sources of interesting audio files to listen to (a regularly asked slashdot question), or pay $35 for an audio book when I could buy the paperback for $7. Podcasting opens up the door for me to have an effectively infinite amount of new content dropped onto my ipod every day. Sure I won't like all of it. That's what skip buttons are for.

Content will come, I have no doubt of it. IT Conversations is already well on the way. I listen to every keynote of every technical conference throughout the year. Sure, I could manually go and get those as they are published, but why bother? Why not just have them automatically show up on my ipod for me?

Re:It's changed the way I use my iPod, Steve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Steve is actually reading this.

Re:well..

[StrawberryFrog]

Nice theory, but if that's true, why does the iPod support MP3

Apple did not create the digital audio player market, they entered it. A new digital audio player that doesn't play the massive existing base of MP3s would be deader than a three-week old kipper. I would have thought that was blindingly self-evident.

adding another format that no one uses is hardly going to hurt them

MP3s are the bait, iTunes is the hook. A migration from MP3 to ogg just doesn't fit into that business plan. In fact, it may work against it. Before iTunes, AAC was a format that hardly anyone used. Apple would love people to migrate from old, smelly, boring MP3s to new, shining DRM's AACs.

I'd buy an iPod instantly if it could play oggs, but I'm under no illusions that this will happen anytime soon.

RSS 1.0 versus RSS 2.0

[Feneric]

It's interesting to note that both versions 1.0 and 2.0 of RSS support enclosures (and thus podcasting) but lots of podcasting software out there now only handles RSS 2.0. Hopefully iTunes will not get embroiled in the 1.0 RDF Site Summary versus the 2.0 Really Simple Syndication battle...

Re:RSS 1.0 versus RSS 2.0

[wootest]

Atom isn't supposed to push all RSS versions out of the market, it's supposed to be a powerful format as an alternative to (powerful usage of) RSS 1.0 and 2.0 but with most stuff already built-in into the default namespace. This is good for some people, makes it difficult to generate for some people (you have to provide three different timestamps for each entry, for example), but makes the job as the data format for the standardized Atom editing API much easier.

Any feed consuming program nowadays worth its name has got to support all pertinent RSS/Atom versions. I trust iTunes to not disappoint here - Apple just wrote a Syndication framework (for Tiger and Safari "RSS" 2.0) that's read any feed I've, uh, fed it, and from the get-go announced support for both Atom and "RSS" (although it's unclear which versions of RSS they claimed to support).

TechTV Lives!

[slapout]

Fans of the old TechTv show "The ScreenSavers" might want to check out Leo Laporte's podcasts. He makes his radio show available. He has also gotten together with some people from the old show and they do a podcast called This Week in Tech.

http://www.leoville.com/
http://thisweekintech.com/

It won't change the world but...

[sterno]

In the grand scheme, yes, 95% of what will be podcast is drivel nobody would really want to listen to. But podcasting makes it pretty easy to routinely listen to the 5% that's worthwhile. Furthermore, you can have podcasting "stations" that aggregate the best of the content that's out there. Because everything is done with RSS, it's pretty easy to do this.

I see it as sort of a tivo'ing of audio content on the net. Rather than everything having to be done in real time, you can get content as it's developed, and listen to it when it's convenient for you. You don't have to pay attention to how often content is created, you'll just get it downloaded automagically.

I think the long term power of this is the possibility for episodic audio and video programming to be produced by relative amateurs. Yes, most of the content out there will be worthless, but it won't take a huge investment for the truly talented to get their ideas out there. Just combine an RSS feed with bittorrent, and you don't even need much bandwidth to do it.

The web made it possible for anybody that wanted to write to publish. Now this is making it possible for anybody who wants to sing, talk, etc, to publish. It also lays the ground work for anybody doing video to publish. It's not going to be a revolution, but more of a completion of the revolution that started about a decade ago.

It's The Message, Not The Medium

[reallocate]

Podcasting is a technology, just like radio and TV. What counts is the content that's being podcast.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Google is your friend....

[telstar]

Information wants to be free!

Re:Google is your friend....

[telstar]

Yeah ... because God forbid you look past entry #1 on the results list. Entry #2:


"Podcasting is a way of publishing sound files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new audio files automatically. Podcasting is distinct from other types of audio content delivery because it uses the RSS 2.0 protocol. This technique has enabled many producers to create self-published, syndicated radio shows.

Users subscribe to podcasts using "podcatching" software (also called "aggregator" software) which periodically checks for and downloads new content. It can then sync the content to the user's portable music player, hence the portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting". Podcasting does not require an iPod; any digital audio player or computer with the appropriate software can play podcasts."

Re:Google is your friend....

[klang]

Yeah ... because God forbid you look past entry #1 on the results list.

"I'm feeling lucky" ? :-)

All about timeshifting

[useosx]

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.

I totally agree. I can listen to the Democracy Now! Podcast anytime I want. On the subway, in the car, whenever. That means I can catch up on the events of the day during otherwise wasted time. This is huge for me. I repeat: otherwise wasted time affords me the opportunity to become a more informed citizen.

Also, I visit a bunch of different new sites every day, and I find that the radio format is a much better way for me personally to take in information. I'm sure this is the same with many other people (but not all, of course). I get more out of listening to one Democracy Now! broadcast then I do reading a whole slew of print articles.

And just because most self-produced stuff is crap, doesn't mean it will all be. Someone will come up with a smart way to filter the crap out. Someone always does.

Furthermore, the arena is not just open to radio. Any kind of recorded audio--old lectures are also available. Say your favorite mathematician gave a famous lecture in 1986. Guess what? You can listen to it on the subway. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[jacksonj04]

Podcasts have their 'tuning' information distributed over RSS, so instead of having to look up the appropriate times, hook up Winamp, keep your system online, start/stop Streamripper at appropriate times and then move the whole thing to the MP3 player of your choice you just point your Podcast Aggregator (iPodder for a prime example) at the feed and it grabs the latest ones automatically.

Re:well..

[prichardson]

First of all, the only DRMed AACs are from the iTunes Music Store. The ones you rip yourself are as DRM free as MP3s.

Secondly, Apple wants people to use AACs because they sound better. People are going to rip their music as AACs (the default in iTunes) and it's going to sound better than music from P2P (almost all MP3s) and their non-iTunes-using friends. This is going to make them think "wow, maybe this Apple stuff really is better; I should tell all my friends" even if it's subconsciously, and then Apple wins.

Finally, what's so great about OGG anyway?

podcasting torrents

[benow]

Podcasting is somewhat interesting.. simple, but polled... no different than rss, really. Major problem I found with it is the large hit on the server... a large file requires n times the size to download (where n is number of listeners).

Torrent pod casting requires a more complex client, but eliminates the problem. Torrent is downloaded, then download of torrented (large media) file starts, distributing the download over the network. A torrent casting video podcast would be a thing of beauty, especially when paired up to a collaborative media metadata backend (ie dyn website). RSS torrents are already supported thru azureus, as is i2p anon transmission layer... tho configuring such a thing is tricky. There is much progression in the torrent space, all of which applies to subscribable torrents.

A dedicated app (perhaps even re-packaging the azureus libs, large tho they are) would be quite useful, reducing the tech barriers. Further use optimization would be nice (ie the 'copy and paste rss url' must go... replaced with click to subscribe or, a standard selection of rss's from rss'd list of rss's which can be managed in app).

Podcasts are interesting, but limited, don't rule out something based on the technology, tho, especially if made easier to use.

Re:podcasting torrents

[slim]

iPodder (currently what one might describe as a "reference implementation" of a podcast client) already supports torrents as RSS enclosures.

My guess is that most podcasters don't use it because of the massive number of potential downloaders for whom bittorrent might not work because of office firewalls, home NAT routers, etc.

Other options: archive.org will host your Creative Commons media for free; using a Coral cache may reduce your bandwidth usage.

Re:well..

[yotto]

People want you to use OGGs because they sound better. People can rip their music as OGGs and it's going to sound better than music from P2P (almost all MP3s) and their non-open-source-using friends. This is going to make them think "wow, maybe this open source stuff really is better; I should tell all my friends" even if it's subconsciously, and then free software wins.

Sublease a clue if possible

[kaiwai]

Interesting, and silly me, I have the Parallel Importing Legislation right in front of me, in regards to New Zealand. Oh, and silly me, I can import it without restriction.

Oh, and how am I part of that 'crowd' when in actual fact, I have no problems with Apples DRM policy - Apple have to protect the IP of these companies, or they can say good bye to their contract. Unlike *YOU*, I'm don't throw everyone in the same basket. May I suggest you pick up some comprehension skills before the next time you reply.

Re:podCast for Lauguage Learning

[johnrpenner]

i enjoy podcasting every day. :}
learning a language is tricky, and berlitz tapes are boring.
downloading a three minute podcast each day is a great way
to learn or keep fresh on a language -- the one i've been
enjoying most is the way this podcaster from munchen
uses language -- the musicality of it.

annik rubens - schlafloss in munchen

what makes it so good for learning a language, is:

1) because it is largely speech oriented, you get more
dialogue to work with than regular radio which often uses
dialogue as a seguay between musical segments.
a three minute chunk is manageable for a daily thing.

2) unlike live radio, you can rewind, and catch words
and phrases that you missed.

3) it stays fresh unlike stale old language learning tapes.

podcasting really has opened up the language for me,
because it can be hard to find good local speakers, and
these are already encoded as mp3s so you can take it around
on an ipod.

in diese sinn...
roland.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[generic-man]

How is that any more significant than just putting up a web page, offering MP3 downloads, and waiting for the bandwidth bill to bite you in the ass?

Hooray, you can have a program that downloads files on a preset schedule. I think I'm going to invent a program that downloads my new e-mail and call it Mailcasting. Can I get on Slashdot for that?

Steve is totally missing the point

[Ravensign]

It's about the time-shifting, not some guy narrating Warhammer games in his basement.

I wasnt to do what I do with my PVR, and listen to high quality radio on my time and terms.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[Bassman59]

Fat binaries are great for the transition phase, but don't do anything for old apps. If I just started my DTP company and plunked down $7500 for various software packages, I would not be happy to hear that none of it will run on the next Mac I buy. Just as they emulated the 680x0 on the PowerPC - which is still available under Classic - they would need to emulate the PowerPC under the x86.

Whoops -- wrong thread, dude.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[standards]

In totally unrelated news, Microsoft improved its DRM - and now it's only $1.99 for a song encoded with Microsoft's technology.

"Our customers wanted rights, and we delivered where others have failed. For a nominal $1.99 per song going to Microsoft, you can rest assured that Redmond will have the finances to continue to innovate"

Re:well..

[Xypheri]

Yeah.. not like them "professional" types with excel, iWhatever, and the slew of NX XP NT MX FU G5 etc...

Re:well..

[rinks]

I'm out of mod points, so I'll just have to agree with it in post. It sounds silly to blame a name for something not being as successful... or not. Ogg Vorbis? Granted, mp3 and AAC don't sound glamourous, but they at least sound... I don't, know... serious?

AAC != proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

AAC isn't proptietary at all. Check out the wiki page
AAC is more or less the audio part of MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, depending on the version you're using. Last I checked, MPEG-4 isn't any more proprietary than MP3.

changes

[zogger]

The article submitter and Steve Jobs are wrong on this. Podcasting has changed society a lot more than say segways have. Steve Jobs is right on some things,completely wrong on others. For instance, the mac mini is not selling just because it's small, it's selling more from the fact that finally you can get an entry level mac at a more reasonable price. People would be buying just as many mini towers with a normal form factor at 500$ from Apple if they would just release one.

Personally, I think once someone has been a millionaire for 20 years or better they lose track of how much money a dollar is. Steve Jobs has that "no clue" syndrome, same as the hollywood movie guys and the record guys. "No clue" of what things cost because to those multi millionaires living in rich society surroundings on the left coast all the time most everything in the normal consumer appliance/do dad area is so cheap as to be indistinguishable from near free in their POV.

And the reason why podcasting is taking off is because people can actually create and share content, they aren't restricted to the blather the commercial entities spew forth-and it *really is* mostly blather.. Steve got no clue on sharing, hollywood got no clue on sharing, mainstream broadcasting is starting to get a clue but they will want to podcast 50% commercials like always.

Hugely successful podcast example

[autocracy]

http://thisweekintech.com/

Previously featured on Slashdot, I think. It's basically the old Screen Savers crowd. Very good stuff.

Re:well..

[GMFTatsujin]

OGG playability was at the top of my list when I bought my new music player. Open firmware didn't hurt either.

Go Neuros!

/me is not a shill.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

[slim]

A lot of posts seem to be deriding podcasting as being purely the audio equivalent of a personal blog. While there are certainly plenty of such podcasts, there's plenty of professionally produced material (the BBC output is just one example), and enough high-quality amateur stuff to fill the average person's commute.

The problem is the same problem mp3.com had (and Creative Commons/etc. music still has) -- when you've got a massive morass of mixed quality media, how is the consumer supposed to know what to try out and what to skip? With text you can skim-read, and sort that way. With audio, the selective process is more time consuming and pretty much impractical.

iPodder.org has a directory which has exactly the same problem as mp3.com. PodcastAlley tries to solve this by collating votes, but this just ends up promoting an "elite" of mainstream content, which only helps the mainstream consumer.

I don't know how to solve this, but there there is some promise: Adam Curry's show contains a lot of promos for other shows, and that's a good way to hear about podcasts you may wish to try out. I guess that's the next best thing to word of mouth.

After all, how do you decide what TV shows to watch? Trailers, reviews in the media, and word-of-mouth, right?

Re:well..

[mr100percent]

AFAIK, not all the iPods have the processing power to decode Ogg.

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[galfridus73]

Leo Laporte puts "This Week in Tech" (TWiT) out in multiple formats: MP3, OGG, and bookmarkable AAC (via BitTorrent). Chris Pirillo puts his show out in MP3 and WMA.

Most folks, I'm sure, put their podcasts out as MP3 so they only have to host one file, not 2 or 3.

Podcast is oldhat to us, but new/mystery to others

[Absentminded-Artist]

Two things:

1. I recently had a slightly difficult time getting the webmaster of a popular Country artist site to understand that linking a MP3 to a website doesn't make that MP3 a podcast. He was initially insulted by my suggestion he include an RSS feed to make the file a true podcast. Fortunately, there were plenty of links at http://www.ipodder.org/ to share with him that showed him how RSS is the magic ingredient. It wasn't that he couldn't roll RSS code; he was a competent coder. He, like most of the public out there, was simply misinformed. Let's face it, RSS is wicked geeky and trying to explain it to somebody is often an exercize in futility (See the end of Josh's vlog on the subject - lesson #4). After all, isn't Really Simple Syndication such an obvious sort of technology that you wonder why somebody had to invent it in the first place? ;)

   But if you want to see how completely the public misunderstands just what the heck a podcast is check out Bill Gate's first podcast as an example. The MEDC site refers to it as a "Video Podcast", but on film they just call it a podcast, so if you are new to podcasting then this is what you are going to think a podcast is: a video broadcast via WMV. Obviously there's a slight problem here in that podcasts are audio enclosures via RSS and vlogs are video enclosures via RSS. One could argue that this is a simply an exercize in semantics, or one could argure that Bill & Co. are once again trying to embrace and extend a technology/term for their own purposes. But the main result is that the common guy isn't going to have a clue about any of this. He only knows what he is told.

   So, IMO, iTunes adding podcast support is a really good thing. This will help solidify the meaning of the word "podcast" before more confusion sets in. (Of course, if Steve & Co. are also embracing and extending...)

2. As for podcasts being "Wayne's World for radio", sometimes that is the case. If I have to download another walk to the (backyard shed, park, bigwig meeting, etc) soundseeing tour on Daily Source Code I will scream, or just not subscribe anymore. Vlogs can be just as bad. I've seen some kid animate her Barbies in a sordid romance, a guy video tape his trip home from work, and somebody wash their dirty sink to music. Not winning content by any means. However, like anything out there, there is crap and there is gold. And then there's the whole realm inbetween. YMMV, but podcasts are turning out to be an alternative form of entertainment. Don't write them off before trying out some of the more interesting ones. I wouldn't recommend sampling them at random if you don't have the time or patience to filter out the dross.
   
   I know that tech podcasts get covered here a lot. Maybe some of you might enjoy these music podcasts:
   • http://carmenrasmusen.com/audio/idolupdate.xml - Carmen Rasmusen of American Idol fame gives the inside dope on what happens after the cameras shut off.
   • http://feeds.feedburner.com/BitzOfBrin - a thirteen year old girl talks about getting into the music biz and tracks her progress. She's not bad at all.
   • http://composerplanet.com/speechless/index.xml - Speechless covers instrumental music from rock to electronica. Very fascinating stuff.
   • http://www.coverville.com/index.xml - Coverville is a popular podcast featuring covers of well known music done by obscure and well

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[Moofie]

I wonder if it has something to do with having a good, consistent user interface, and some clever marketing.

I don't understand who's peeing in your cheerios. Why does this idea make you so mad? Is it bad that people get value out of it? Should they stop?

Re:well..

[DA-MAN]

Between Ogg, Lame, Gimp, recursiev acronyms, and all the cutesy Linux distro appellations, it's no wonder a lot of folks can't take open source seriously.

I agree 100%, had i named the format it would have been the Open Audio Format or oaf!

This is all bull.

[soupdevil]

AAC doesn't sound as good as mp3 to my ears, at least as long as the mp3 is done at alt-preset-standard or higher, by LAME. I stopped listening to the AAC (and mp3) files ripped by friends and family in iTunes because my LAME mp3s and my FLACs, and my OGGs sounded so much better.

Re:This is all bull.

[Gulthek]

That's weird. Have you done a true double-blind (or even blind) test?

Do you have a need to feel superior to your poor iTunes using friends and family?

What's left for iTunes 5?

[beetle496]

How about complete re-development from the ground up using xCode2 and Cocoa? It is a dirty little secrert that the current version, something that would be very popular with the blind, is largely incompatible with VoiceOver. http://www.macvisionaries.com/

Nerd alert

[commodoresloat]

Say your favorite mathematician gave a famous lecture in 1986. Guess what? You can listen to it on the subway. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

Anybody listening to a 20-year old math lecture on the subway deserves to have their white headphones and their lunch money swiped.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[AvantLegion]

>> How is that any more significant than just putting up a web page, offering MP3 downloads, and waiting for the bandwidth bill to bite you in the ass?

To the provider? Not much.

To the user? It means I don't have to constantly check 20 different websites for new downloads that I have to manually download and import into my music player. I have all of that done for me, while I sleep, and I grab my iPod in the morning and go.

It's not that hard to understand.

Uh, to answer your question...

[piecewise]

6 million people listen to podcasts

And you can bet integration with iTunes will make this number explode.

Podcasting and the idea behind it is bigger than you think. It's a pretty evolutionary way to broadcast, be a radio show host, distribute cheaply and quickly news/gossip/whatever, and all in a cool way (iPod!).

It's also a market opportunity. You know, I'd like to subscribe to a Bright Eyes podcast. Whenever a new song is avail on iTunes, it automatically buys it, downloads, and it's there waiting for me when I wake up.

It's in its infancy still, but it IS a big deal. For those on the side of the road, you too will be driving soon. :-)

Re:Uh, to answer your question...

[FredFnord]

6 million people listen to podcasts

And you can bet integration with iTunes will make this number explode.

News flash: piecewise predicts that 6 million people will explode when iTunes 4.9 comes out!

Can you at least tell us what country, so I can arrange to be elsewhere?

-fred

WWW = Waynes World Web

[shodson]

Yeah, and there's this over-hyped craze called the World Wide Web, which is just a bunch of amateurs posting web pages about whatever crazy topic they feel like it. Give me a break...

Re:well..

[Trurl's Machine]

I realize that decoding Ogg Vorbis takes a bit more horsepower than mp3, but current iPods should be more than capable.

What makes you so sure? People who develop Linux for iPod tried to implement Ogg Vorbis on iPod and they claim it is not possible, at least not in real time (but probably this is what you mean). You can boot Linux kernel on iPod, but if you try to use it to play OGGs you get - what they nicely describe - "about 80% of real time". If you can do it in 100%, please join their effort.

Conspiracy Theory

[smallpaul]

Perhaps Jobs does not like Podcasting because people who listen to Podcasts listen more to talk (e.g. Quirks and Quarks, IT Conversations) and less to music. Furthermore, a device focused on podcast listening requires very little memory (you delete them after listening) and a very simple user interface (you're usually selecting from just a few "channels"). A podcast-oriented chip might add a few dollars to the price of a cell phone and would be as utilitarian as an FM radio (probably dominated by science shows and right wing nutjobs) rather than sexy like an iPod. For podcasting to be interesting to Jobs they would have to find a way to work in music, DRM and ITMS, as some here have proposed.

Re:Another person doesn't get it

[hobbit]

Yeah, and how exactly is a PVR different from a video recorder?

Sincerely,
Someone who gets it.

Like Monkey Radio!!

[Delilah Jones]

Music broadcasts are great!

http://www.monkeyradio.org/

This guy totally got me into a genre, called Trip Hop.

24/7, man.

It rocks.

... Feynman, Chomsky, Watts ...

[Slur]

I particularly like the Feynman 6 easy pieces lecture series, Noam Chomsky, and especially Alan Watts. Are they podcasts? Not necessarily, but I get them off Acquisition (e.g., Limewire) and put them on my iPod.

Actually...

[FredFnord]

Actually, just for the sake of completeness, it is a dependent clause and not actually a sentence at all.

You can start a sentence with "although," but it has to be something like the following:

'Although he was slightly dismissive of the phenomenon, he later recanted and said that podcasting was the greatest thing since the PowerMac G4 Cube.'

Alternatively, you can weld it onto the previous sentence, thus:

O'Reilly Radar are ['is', in the US] reporting that in a demo at [the] D: All Things Digital Conference, Steve Jobs showed off iTunes 4.9, which has support for iPodder[-]like functionality, [a]lthough he was slightly dismissive of the phenomen[on], describing it as "Wayne's World for radio".

Then it just becomes a run-on sentence.

Sometimes you just can't win.

-fred

Re:well..

[FredFnord]

...deader than a three-week old kipper.

In my admittedly limited experience, a three-week-old kipper tends to have gone right through 'dead' and back into 'alive' again, albeit in a different kingdom.

-fred

Re:Wish it read "iTunes to use open formats"

[bmxbandit]

Bill who???