The other day I mentioned that I’ll be attending the Portable Media Expo and Podcast Conference (aka Podcast Expo) this week. I’ll arrive in Ontario on Thursday evening, will be attending some of the sessions, meeting people and briefly reacquainting myself with something called “sunshine” (enough about the weather already! – Ed.).

On Saturday I’ll be doing a quick demo of Feeder during Paul Figgiani’s “Podcasting and Advanced Post Production on the Macintosh Platform” session (6A). For the demo I’ll be showing a development build of Feeder 1.3 – due out next month – and this will be the first time these new features will see the light of day – not unlike the developer. 😀

Paul, who does audio production for IT Conversations in addition to The.Point Podcast, will also be presenting a session, “Audio Gear for Any Budget” for IT Conversations’ The Podcast Academy Live the day before the Expo begins. If you are attending the Expo and arrive in Ontario the day before, you’ll find a day filled with compelling sessions from some extremely well-known and respected presenters at that event – check it out.

I’ll try to blog as I go along, but I expect to be insanely busy, so that might have to come afterwards. Also it’s unlikely I’ll be answering emails on Thursday or Sunday / Monday, because I’ll be in transit and time zones are funky.

There has been some discussion on Apple’s Syndication Dev mailing list lately about an update to the iTunes RSS specification, available in the mailing list archives and FAQ.

The specification includes some new tags, changes to the namespace location and clarification on other items, and while it still needs some improvement it’s another step in the right direction and a much bigger one than the last time. It also includes useful information on iTunes submission timescales, missing image problems and tips on how to get your podcast featured on the iTunes Music Store.

All this sounds great, but I wouldn’t have known about the updated spec to ask to see it, had I not heard Madge Weinstein ranting about it in an excerpt from her show played on the Daily Source Code. We’d been promised a look at this new spec on the mailing lists, and this spec, dated October 20th, didn’t appear until requested. Anyway, thanks Madge!

The spec has not yet officially replaced the one dated 7/7/2005 but the functionality is live in iTunes and Sam Ruby has updated FeedValidator accordingly, which is great because FeedValidator practically runs Feeder’s support “department”. The changes are hardly major or screaming urgent; Feeder will be updated in due course.

To update a previous post, NewsFire 1.2 (v44) is now available and includes Feeder in the list of weblog editor applications, so anyone out there who wants to send news items to Feeder from NewsFire can now do so.

NewsFire author David Watanabe was also very helpful when he found problems with Feeder’s support for the weblog editor interface, and I rectified those in Feeder 1.2.3 earlier this week. Thanks, David!

So, a video iPod, it finally happened! I’m not sure about the idea myself, but I shall have to watch Steve Jobs do his thing and, positively glowing from RDF exposure, shall want one badly. It still looks good, regardless.

And saying that, I want an iPod nano badly too, just because, and if it had more capacity probably would get one. My poor old chunky v1 iPod (an iPod before most people knew what an iPod was!) is still going strong but is more than a bit cramped, so a nano isn’t going to solve anything. Perhaps I should just buy both for a laugh. 😀

Something interesting is that iPods can now record in stereo, which will be good news for podcasters out there tired of pressing the wrong buttons on their iRivers, which would be all of them.

And iTunes 6 already?! iTunes 5 must have been the shortest-lived version of software in the history of Appledom. Makes you wonder why they bothered.

I like Yahoo’s podcasting directory, I think it works well and I was trying to work out why. I guess it comes down to giving listeners more “say” or control over their podcasts that is more in the spirit of podcasting itself, as shown by the likes of Podcast Alley and Odeo. You can rate podcasts, comment on individual shows and add “folksonomy” tags (i.e. chosen by users rather than a predefined list).

One of the biggest ways I’ve long thought iTunes’ podcatching support is “wrong” (lousy show notes aside) when compared to Safari’s RSS support is that while it’s easy to subscribe to a podcast in iTunes, it doesn’t make it easy for you use the iTunes podcast directory with another podcatcher application such as iPodderX or one of the many podcast-aware newsreaders (e.g. NetNewsWire, NewsMac Pro or NewsFire). With Safari you can choose your RSS reader in its RSS preferences and it always respects that – no world domination stuff. 😉

But now, looking at Yahoo’s directory makes me think back again to the way podcasting was prior to iTunes and has shown me what is actually missing from the iTunes Music Store approach at present. It’s the interaction thing, making you feel a part of your favourite podcasts rather than being a layer away. iTunes has its subscription charts (a daily aggregate?) but that’s about it; there’s no way to say how you feel about something after you’ve subscribed.

Of course, it’s early days and competition is always good. 😀