Just like the Facebook pages that Apple has set up for iTunes and the iTunes Trailers Twitter account, Apple has just set up several Twitter accounts for iTunes, which cover Music, Podcasts, Movies and TV Shows.

First, the Music account, twitter.com/iTunesMusic , will provide information on "new releases, pre-orders, iTunes LP, exclusive offers and more."

Second, the Podcasting account, twitter.com/iTunesPodcasts , will provide a "Podcast Episode of the Day, from iTunes Podcasting."

Next, the iTunes Movies account, twitter.com/iTunesMovies , doesn't contain a description, but does contain one tweet so far, and it looks like it will be used for Movies on the iTunes Store.

Finally, the iTunes TV account, twitter.com/iTunesTV , which contains no tweets yet, will provide "Official TV updates from the U.S. iTunes Store on Twitter."

Will these accounts make a impact on what you discover in the iTunes Store? Let us know in the comments below!

Like milk, podcasts will spoil if left unused for a period period of time -- at least in the mind of iTunes. iTunes will automatically unsubscribe from a podcast that hasn't been listened to within the last 5 updates, and more than 5 days have passed since an episode was played.

The rationale, as Apple states in the documentation for podcast providers, is to "minimize unnecessary bandwidth costs for both the user and the podcaster," as well as making it more likely that episode downloads align with the actual plays of the episode.

But I like the option of being current on all my podcasts, as well as being selective about which episode(s) I want to listen to. And being the rebel that I am -- using a two button mouse in 2001 while everyone else was still control-clicking -- this means that I will sometimes not listen to a podcast within these set parameters.

In the past, iTunes would keep me in check by forcing me to manually click on the exclamation mark next to each podcast to resume updating the podcast. Needless to say, this became a chore after the 10th click. You can also select all your podcasts, right-click and choose "Update Podcast" to force a global update, but why do three steps when AppleScript is there to reduce those to one?

iTunes will keep me in check no longer, as Doug Adams (of Doug's Scripts fame) provides a solution for this issue with his Update Expired Podcasts v2.0 AppleScript -- which batch updates each of your podcasts. You could even set up an iCal alarm that runs the script every day to force a fresh set of podcasts.

Update Expired Podcasts v2.0 (download link) is donationware, and is available for download at Doug's Applescripts for iTunes site (link). It's finger clickin' good.

Have you ever been listening your iTunes library and wondered why a song played more than one time? Duplicate songs in your library can be very annoying, and waste precious space on your hard drive. In this TUAW Tip, I'm going to show you how to get rid of duplicates using a built-in feature in iTunes.

In iTunes, click the "Music" category under the Library section from the selector on the left. You should now see all of the music items that are in your iTunes library. Now click File > Show Duplicates. Any duplicate songs that are in your library will show up, and you will be able to delete the ones that you don't want any longer. To hide the duplicate song list, click the "Show All" button at the bottom of the window (or click File > Show All). You can use this same method for Music, Videos, and TV Shows. It will also work in any playlist.

Using the built-in iTunes feature is nice, but it can be very time consuming -- especially if you have thousands of songs, videos, or TV shows. In this case, you can use an application like iDupe (which costs $8US). iDupe gives you a ton of options for deleting duplicate songs in iTunes.

Do you know another way to delete duplicate iTunes songs? Know of another application to delete duplicates? Tell us in the comments!


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and TUAW Tips sections!

This Sunday night at 10 PM EST, Michael Rose, our consumate Talkcast host, will once agin be out of town, so I'll be taking his place. Hopefully, we won't run into any of the technical difficulties we ran into last week.

We'll be taking open calls and discussing the top stories of the week, attempting to answer any of your questions, talking about Apple rumors...oh yeah, and we'll be giving away schwag (including some software) for correct trivia answers.

To join the conversation and try your hand at winning, just log onto TalkShoe, either with or without an account, by using the shiny new browser-only client (no downloading required and no registration needed). Just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. You can also listen in on the Talkshoe page or call in on regular phone or VOIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID: 45077.

Here's a clever concept that I would never have dreamed up myself in a million years: iTunes ringtone podcasts! The idea is this: you subscribe to podcast that delivers ringtones to iTunes and allows you to sync them directly to your iPhone. I gave it a try, downloading one "episode" and sure enough it was immediately available for iPhone syncing. There aren't a lot of ringtones at this point -- just variations on the teen/mosquito high-frequency buzz -- but as a proof of concept, it's very neat indeed. Hopefully others will pick up this idea and run with it. I'm not a big ringtone aficionado personally but I know a lot of people will love this -- especially for well chosen ringtones sampled from real life.

Thanks, Klaus.

I picked up Awaken with the recent Macheist deal, and with it I planned to do something I've been thinking about doing for a long time with iTunes: try and figure out a way to wake myself up with a short roundup of the daily podcasts I never seem to find a time to listen to during the day itself.

Getting your Mac to play a playlist on demand at a certain time isn't hard at all (Awaken will do it easily, or Alarm Clock 2 will do it as donationware), but the tough part is getting your podcasts rounded up into a playlist so you can hear all the new shows all in one go. What I wanted to do was create a playlist that contained one of each of the daily podcast shows that iTunes had downloaded for me most recently, and to have that playlist update as the podcasts did, so that every day I had a playlist full of new show episodes set to play one after another.

Easier said than done (and it's not even that easy to say). But I got it done, just by manipulating a few iTunes smart playlists. Here's my short tutorial how.

After our week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, the TUAW talkcast crew is back in action tonight. Join Christina Warren, Lisa Hoover, Dave Caolo and yours truly for a rundown of the week's top stories and previews of our upcoming gift guides.

To join in live, visit our Talkshoe page for call-in info. You can also join the show in listen-only mode from any phone by calling (724) 444-7444 at 10 pm ET, entering the show ID (45077) and then pressing 1#. Hope to hear you there!

The iPhone mobile music store doesn't serve up podcasts, so where are you gonna go for a fresh hot bowl of Auntie Beeb? Why, to the BBC itself, silly. The BBC's radio labs blog just announced a new iPhone-savvy webpage that offers simple phone and iPod touch browsing.

If you're on a touch or iPhone, you can just go to bbc.co.uk/podcasts and save yourself some extra typing. The site recognizes when you're visiting from an iPhone and they plan to expand this service to other hand-held devices.

Thanks, Chris

Last week's TUAW Talkcast, recorded live, featured the debut of TUAW's new team members Jason Clarke, Lisa Hoover and Nik Fletcher, and the swan song of our departing colleague David Chartier. It clocks in at 40 minutes and 28 MB. You can pick it up from our RSS & iTunes feeds, via direct download here, or via download and streaming over at Talkshoe.

Since we've got a little Apple event tomorrow, we're going to be doing another Wednesday night talkcast on 9/5; since we want extra time to discuss the new goodies, we're moving it up one half-hour to 9 pm ET. Follow the link to Talkshoe for the schedule.

For the weeks to come, we are thinking about alternate times and dates for the talkcast, either to allow participants from far-flung timezones or to permit everyone to use free nights and weekends on their cellphones when they call in. You can answer the polls below, or comment here to provide your input.

It's that time of the week again folks - the TUAW Talkcast is once again upon us! Our regular host Michael Rose is taking the week off, so I'll be taking the hosting reigns for the night. Join TUAW bloggers Dave Caolo, Erica "iPhone Pwner" Sadun, Mike Schramm and myself for a discussion on the week's big news, hopefully some live Ask TUAW where we field your questions and yet another trivia contest for a TUAW shirt! After the show is done, we'll open up the lines so everyone can chat before calling it a night.

To participate or listen in on our TalkShoe-powered Talkcasts, register (free) at TalkShoe.com. This will give you a pin you can use to call in with a regular or VoIP phone. If you want to text chat with us and other participants, you'll need to download and sign in with their java client as well. If you can't be with us tonight though, don't worry - as usual, we'll provide the recording for download and via our TUAW Podcast feed (RSS and iTunes) within a day or so.

It should be another good show tonight, so we hope to see you all there!

Add ESPN to your list of major media outlets who have designed a portal specifically for the iPhone. While they might have had an easier time customizing their PodCenter with podcasts and downloadable media for the iPhone (after all, they were already halfway there with a PodCenter), they win absolutely zero points for the URL you use to get there:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/iphone/

If you know of a better way, please sound off.

As far as the iPhone-ified UI, ESPN did a pretty good job. Shows are listed descending by date, and tapping on a specific episode presents a logo, brief description and the ability to stream the episode. ESPN has also launched a few new shows for this rev to the PodCenter, though I can't get a single one to play yet. For now, I'll chalk that up to growing pains, since this iPhone UI more or less just launched today.

[via iPhone Alley]

Poor Apple TV - the iPhone has been outshining the handy little media hub, and Jobs arguably might not have helped matters by calling it a hobby (though, personally, that makes me optimistic for its future). Fortunately, last100 has compiled a very, very thorough list of Apple TV resources that spans reviews from various industry sites, dedicated books, blogs and wikis, how-to tutorials for converting video, podcasts and, of course, the burgeoning hacking industry that has surfaced. If you're looking for a useful springboard into the world of the Apple TV, this is by far the most comprehensive resource I've seen yet.

[via Apple TV Hacks]

MacRadio, the home base for a few Mac-related podcasts, has announced they're going to facelife the entire site, and instead turn it into a hub for all sorts of Mac podcasts-- a "podcast portal for the Mac world," as they say. I sure thought that was the Podcasts tab in iTunes, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, to kick off the redesign, they're offering a beta, in which you can give feedback and help them build the site the way you want it. There's a FAQ up on what's happening, if you're interested, and they mention that they're looking for people running all OSes and browsers. Oh, and apparently everyone who tests the beta gets a free t-shirt, as well as a chance to win more prizes. Pretty slick. Help MacRadio become better and win stuff!

[ via IMG ]

It's been a while since we've written about Übercaster, the all-in-one tool for recording, editing and publishing podcasts, but that doesn't mean its developer, Eberhard Rensch, hasn't been hard at work on it. Through updates over the last couple of months, Übercaster v1.1.5 has gained a ton of handy new features and polish, such as:

• Delete and Close Gap: Instantly re-join two pieces of a track after cutting out a portion of the middle. A big time saver when editing out the false starts and other mistakes.
• Reset Playhead on Stop: An option to automatically return the playhead to its original starting point. Another huge timesaver when reviewing a specific clip.
• Split All Tracks: Splits every track at the playhead, regardless of which tracks are selection.
• New PleasantConnect version: An update to the Mac OS X kernel extension included with Übercaster that allows for pulling off tricks like recording Skype conversations in separate tracks, with you on one and any caller(s) on another.
• New progress bar in Dock icon: This is great for a real-time yet unobtrusive display of a podcast's upload progress.
• Sparkle integration for automatic updates: Andy Matuschak's popular Sparkle framework has made to Übercaster, providing wonderful automatic software updates that so many apps are enjoying.

This isn't all though; there are far more new features and bug fixes listed in just the last two updates than I can fit in this post, so check out the Übercaster changelog or grab the latest version yourself. If that updated kernel extension can fix my problems and allow me to record multi-track Skype conversations, Rensch will certainly be seeing a $79.95 purchase from me.