July 11, 2005: Just updated iTunes to 4.9 so I could see how they handled Podcasts. As you can see in this image, they've had to shoehorn Podcasts into the iTunes store, with some significant UI lameitude (e.g. a currently-playing podcast will stop playing if you leave its page). That said, I find this implementation much more compelling (for music) than a web-based format like ODEO. I want to prefer the latter, but having the Podcasts accessible via iTunes is far better for the key scenario in my life called "listening to music at work." The bad news, though, is that iTunes does almost nothing to help me separate the good from the bad. And in a Long Tail situation like this, it's all about the finding. I'm thinking that's where ODEO will really shine.

Note to podcast software designers: I don't want to manage subscriptions. And please remember that the basic podcast mechanism (download a file onto a device) is a temporary hack, not a feature.