“Hoping to tune into the latest craze in digital media, Yahoo Inc. is introducing tools for finding, organizing and rating “podcasts” — the audio programs designed to be played on Apple Inc.’s iPod and many other portable music players,” Michael Liedtke reports for The Associated Press. “The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which operates the world’s most visited Web site, plans to begin testing the new service today at http://podcasts.yahoo.com [Note: URL does not currently work, we did find this: http://audio.search.yahoo.com/ ]
“Although it can do several things, the free service focuses on making it easier for people to sift through the tens of thousands of podcasts currently available on the Web to find the programming best suited to their personal interests. ‘We intend to be the most comprehensive source for podcast content,’ said Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s chief product officer,” Liedtke reports. “Yahoo isn’t the first Web site to search podcasts. Specialty Web sites such as Odeo.com and Podcast.net already do the same thing. But Yahoo is the first Internet heavyweight to tackle the task. ‘We feel like we are really getting ahead of the curve with this,’ Ralston said.”
Full article here.
Yahoo is not the first “Internet heavyweight” to tackle the task. Apple’s iTunes Music Store has offered tools for finding, organizing and rating podcasts since June. iTunes users have everything they need to discover, subscribe, manage and listen to Podcasts built right in. More info here: http://www.apple.com/podcasting/
Related MacDailyNews articles:
McNamee: In one day, Apple won podcasting war, ‘Google whiffed on it’ – August 01, 2005
NY Times: Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting and put another feather iPod’s cap – July 28, 2005
Apple iTunes podcast subscriptions top one million in first two days – June 30, 2005
Analyst: iTunes 4.9 helps Apple by bringing podcasting to the masses – June 28, 2005
Apple releases iTunes 4.9 for Mac and Windows with podcasting features – June 28, 2005
Ya who?
Nice one Dave!
MW based – As in “based on a true story”
The Yahoo site is up now. Looks appealing but you’ll need a Yahoo account to participate. I never got one of those so somebody else will have to report on the deal.
I do see that you can both listen and subscribe to many of the same podcasts as are listed in the iTMS podcast section. We’ll see if they can keep up with Apple’s industrious publishing efforts in regard to podcast presentation. They’ll need to work hard at it, for sure.
The way I see it, this is only gonna help Apple. iTunes has a “Subscribe to using URL” feature so if you find a good podcast on Yahoo, you will still probably be going back to iTunes to subscribe.
Hmmm, still buggy. I tried to subscribe to a podcast and it just takes me to a screen telling me what is going to happen. But I could not find a link to continue and finish the process. They do mention iTunes though. Here is the content of the help page I get stuck on:
“First off, this podcast is FREE – so the next screen will not ask for your billing information. When you subscribe, however, you will be asked to download a small file called a .pcast file that contains information about the podcast. This file tells jukebox software like Yahoo! Music Engine, iTunes 5.0, and others to keep tabs on this podcast and to go fetch new episodes for you whenever they are ready. Now you can listen to and enjoy your podcast”
Heh, I just tried it again with Firefox and now the page renders correctly. Evidently they have not made this Safari friendly – which is A Bad Thing™.
Anyway, I went through the whole process and you can choose to open podcasts you find with iTunes – which is A Good Thing™.
err .. once I tried the URL from Safari instead of NetNewsWire, I could listen to the podcasts without a Yahoo login. Interestingly, a browser based Yahoo branded player appears and whadaya know, it’s using QuickTime. hmmm .. maybe that’s just cause it’s originating from my Safari browser?
Anyway, how will the non-Mac public at large get these podcasts onto their iPods? I can save them via QuickTime Pro. How do the other folks do it? Anybody know?
They equally promote Apple iTunes next to their own music software on their help pages. I find that interesting, indeed.
gwm, you were just clicking “listen”. If you click subscribe it downloads a pcast file which you can have be automatically opened with itunes in the podcast section.
Of course that is assuming you are using a browser other than Safari since the subscribe feature doesn’t seem to work correctly with Safari. Speaking of which, if other people can try this and confirm on it, I think we should nail Yahoo on this issue. This site should be made compatible with Apple’s browser.
Yahoo! will probably do a good job, here. They have an excellent portal with good mail and search services, and their toolbar (for those who use such things) is available for Firefox on OSX.
Although they have traditionally ignored Apple altogether, as did all the (now extinct) portals, they are showing some signs of playing nice – and they are Google’s only real competition.
Their ‘Local’ search engine is very nice, too…
Yeah, I was indeed clicking ‘Listen’. When I click ‘Subscribe’ in Safari, all I get is the Yahoo login page. That’s as far as I can go ’cause I don’t have a Yahoo account.
I’m about a stubborn sucker, eh? ahaha
“But Yahoo is the first Internet heavyweight to tackle the task”
Do you notice how those “heavyweights” are becoming more and more afraid of mentioning Apple or iTunes in the same sentence as their products. I think they are afraid that Apple will steal their thunder, however small the aknowledgement could be. They are afraid that their customers will find out that Apple makes a similar product which their customers would immeditately associate as much better since it is from Apple. I guess that I can’t blame them. Look what happened to Motorola with their ROKR cell phone.