Having recently started producing a couple of podcasts (Drawn2Jesus and Retire2Serve), the announcement this week by Apple that they are building podcast subscription into iTunes is exciting news. The details are in Steve Jobs' keynote which is available at developers.apple.com.
The new release of iTunes coming out at the end of July will allow you to find podcasts of interest and subscribe to them directly in iTunes, all in a very transparent way. By subscribing, you will automatically have new programs downloaded into iTunes and then loaded on your iPod to listen to whenever you want. Basically, it lowers the barrier to listening by not having to use another program to do that for you.
The other thing that is exciting is that Apple appears to be adding functionality that will allow the inclusion of art with the podcasts, and allow that art to change during the podcast. Exactly how that works is yet to be released.
There are currently about 8000 podcasts. Over 6000 of these are produced by amateurs like me, and the rest are being done by radio stations and commercial enterprises. Some estimate that a year from now there will be 80,000 podcasts available.
The new iTunes functionality will go a long way toward moving podcasting into the mainstream.
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