“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
