Yahoo! Podcasts public beta

Today Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Podcasts (beta), a visually cluttered website that aims to help you find, organize and rate podcasts. There are currently no tools for creating podcasts on Yahoo's site, but there are plans to add them in the future, according to Joe Hayashi, Yahoo's director of product management.

Yahoo is certainly not the first to see the value of a searchable online podcast directory, but they are the most significant and "mainstream" player to date, excepting Apple, of course. I expect that Google will follow suit in the not-too-distant future - although I'd like to see them make Google Reader usable first. With an estimated 5 million people already listening to podcasts, Yahoo has the heft and the potential to double that number without even breaking a sweat.

Lee Ott, a member of the Yahoo Podcasts team, says: "Our web-based player makes it simple and painless to listen right through your web browser. An accelerated playback feature (IE only) lets you "scan" a program at 2x speed to get the gist of it faster. You can use Yahoo! Podcasts with aggregators like iPodder (thanks to Andrew Grumet), with desktop media players like the Yahoo! Music Engine (the integration is beautiful!), iTunes, and with the latest version of iPodder, the Windows Media Player and even Winamp. Or, you can download the shows you want to any mp3 player, such as the iPod, iRiver, Dell DJ, Creative Zen, etc."

It's too early in the morning for my eyes to deal with the light blue text on the white background and the buttons and tags all cramped together, so I didn't stay too long on the Yahoo Podcasts homepage, but I did click through to a few NPR podcasts to see how it works. Clicking "Listen" launches the online player, which worked well in Safari. Already I like them a little more than I did when I saw that light blue text. Clicking the "Subscribe" button sends you to a page that explains exactly what happens when you subscribe, how to download Yahoo Music or iTunes if you don't already have them, and offers other useful tips. When I subscribed, iTunes launched automatically for me and NPR's Story of the Day was automatically added to my Podcasts playlist. It just worked, and that's becoming a rarity these days. I'm still not all that into podcasts, but I'm not unimpressed with what Yahoo is doing with it. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

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Source: http://podcasts.yahoo.com/

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Today Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Podcasts (beta), a visually cluttered website that aims to help you find, organize and rate podcasts. There...

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Matt Smoke

Before you hate too much on this new product, checkout what the rest of the blogosphere is saying about the release of Yahoo! Podcasts: http://podcasts.yahoo.com/episode?s=e98db9382f80ab8c9dc70ee10d919e9a&e=10 Episode Information: Asking the Question - Is Podcasts.Yahoo.com the iTunes Killer? Marketing Online Live Episode 11In Episode 11 of Marketing Online Live - Alex Mandossian and Paul Colligan ask the question: Is Podcasts.Yahoo.com the iTunes killer? Alex wonders why iTunes isn't a Web application and Paul suspects it has something to do with Steve wanting software on the desktop of every windows user.Technorati Tags: alex mandossian, paul colligan, podcast, podcasting, podcasts.yahoo.com, itunes, steve jobs

October 18 2005 at 3:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

barb dybwad

Is it just me, or does it not work in any of the Mozilla engine browsers I use: Firefox, Mozilla, & Camino? I get a "The playlist format is not recognized" error -- anyone else seeing this?

October 10 2005 at 1:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Eric

great! and yahoo messenger for MacOs X will be updated when?

October 10 2005 at 12:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

wheels

The web page is way to cluttered and, as others have pointed out, sloppily coded. Like the other services Yahoo! has, I wouldn't use this unless I really, really had too.

October 10 2005 at 12:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

PXLated

A little too cluttered for my tastes...of course I feel that way about all of Yahoo so rarely ever go there.

October 10 2005 at 11:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brady J. Frey

And you strip out the code on this site, great -- what if I do it proper and wrap it in code tags? new and noteworthy

October 10 2005 at 11:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brady J. Frey

What horrendous code and ugly design, Yahoo!! If not for a cluster of tables, it's a cluster of unneeded divs... what kind of coders do they hire at that place? I'd expect a multi-billion dollar company to have some of the best talent, that wouldn't put out: new and noteworthy Goodness. Bad service and bad design, it hurts the heart.

October 10 2005 at 11:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Yahoo sucks a**. Why are they still around? *shakes head* Hmm.... "Our web-based player makes it simple and painless to listen right through your web browser. An accelerated playback feature (IE only)....." Is it only me but why is IE mentioned in the same paragraph as "simple and painless". puh-lease.... get stuffed Yahoo. I'd say long-live Google but their plans for world domination have got me a little scared. And Apple, I love ya but I'm keeping an eye on ya. dualcore-pentiumM powerbooks in macworld SF 2006 okay???!! YEAHh.... :(

October 10 2005 at 11:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply