This is not too great a problem for most podcast creators, since they do generally only have one podcast to worry about...but...when you are in my shoes, and are looking after 29 (at last count) podcasts, RSS feeds and blogs over at The Podcast Network, that have to follow a structure and need to ensure consistency for everybody, including hosts, directories and listeners..its a whole differenet experience. Short of creating an iTunes specific feed...which i think is a silly thing to do...i suppose its back to iTunes RSS purgotory for me. :(
Now, i don't currently use iTunes as my main music player, aggregator or iPod syncing tool (and don't plan to use it in the future for various reasons)...but I do love the structure of the new iTunes when it comes to making it easy for the general public to access podcasts. The biggest issue I have (other than by tagging one) is the inability to add OPML feeds or to even at the most basic sense, export your iTunes podcast playlist so that you can use it in another aggregator.
Can anyone say lock-in???
Robin over at Podnova, has put up a blog post up that explains some of the issues really well...or you could always go and listen to what Dave Winer has to say and who he links to about the issue as well... :)
Still...well done Apple...on most fronts.
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic at June 30, 2005 2:44 PM
| TrackBack
I hear ya ;(
And yes, I can see the masses coming in, and it might seems as if this is simple enough - for simple people. Sorry, but this is what it feels for me. As a start - who on earth with more than one braincell does only one thing at a time?! Please only click here. Wait. Click here. Wait.
This one is _slow_ and not made easy. Second, the "you can only see your store" is so against the nature of podcast that it is disgusting. I spoke with a person which told me, my 'store' link - working in every other store till now, was not available for him - forbidden by access.
Yes, he can add this manually, but wasn't this suppose to be easy?
Third the absolute lacking involvment of the community - not to have them involved like in let them say what to do, but for example give them enough information and chances to prepare - is ridicolous. Unless you are one of the podshows or a big media company as it seems.
(Yes, I understand that Itunes is about making money.) Then rewriting of several things like title, not updating of the directory (or even a hint when this happens), missing ways to controll as a publisher what you are doing, doubeling existing tags just to write itunes in it ... you know what I am talking about - and I only started with one of my feeds to get me that upset ...
This looks hushy made to "just release it!!" and "podcasters loooover itunes! see how many embraced it".
But on the bright side, I am looking forward to what Microsoft is doing. This itunes release must show their podcasting team *so* many things what not to do, *so* many things to show that their is a conversation needed before one releases something major like Itunes to the market, *so* many things how not to handle directories that they can send a big thank you note to them.
Posted by: Nicole Simon at June 30, 2005 5:48 PMDo you do all the feeds by hand or have an app that churns them out?
Molly
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone at June 30, 2005 5:56 PMI need to edit all of the PHP scripts that create each XML feed automatically by hand Molly...no way of automating it over 40+ sites...oh yeah...you don't know what the other 11 sites are yet do you :)
Posted by: Mick (SplaTT) Stanic at July 1, 2005 1:44 AMWhy not? Sure the format is some what the same and could be pulled out of a DB? (I know a good one if your willing to pay, hehe)
Well I don't know about 10 of them. One of the 11 would probably be the comedy.thepodcastnetwork.com
Another would be Ashley's World (www.thepodcastnetwork.com/ashleysworld).
The others would be a guess. But back to the main point, surely most of the content would be the same, or editable via a DB with standard layout. Possibly something you could fob of to someone unskilled in programming by programming the DB entry for the db?
Just a thought.
Molly
All planned for the future Molly..the current system is not the final one we will be operating with. With the scale of what we have been putting together, and the level of control we need, we will end up tailoring a solution that meets our needs...eventually :)
Posted by: Mick (SplaTT) Stanic at July 3, 2005 10:41 PM