Podcasting and Planet Zune!

So Zune from MicroSoft is launched - the next evolution in the rise of the portable media player. The key question is: "What will Zune do for podcasting?".

Looking through the technical specifications, the new product has all the features to rival the current iPod platform and some more besides. Like the iPod, you can sync podcasts downloaded to your PC via an RSS aggregator but what is most interesting is WiFi capability.

The Zune website seems to suggest that content can be shared "Zune to Zune" via WiFi. Now, that does present a range of interesting possibilities for sharing podcast content in educational settings - but it also has potential pitfalls along the way for the unwary. To be fair, the Zune website does spell out that sharing files may infringe the content copyright.

One thing is certain the market profile and uptake of portable devices capable of using audio, enhanced and video podcasts is now set to receive a boost with the launch of Zune. In turn, it will be interesting to discover the extra dimensions that Zune can bring to the educational scene in practice.

Podcasts: Description Tags

With the increasing popularity of iTunes for publishing and subscribing to podcasts, more and more podcasters are creating RSS feeds that meet the iTunes technical specification.

As many podcasters will be aware, the iTunes specification includes additional tags to the standard RSS 2.0 specification that are specific to the application. However, not all the RSS feeds comply with the specifications for both iTunes and standard RSS 2.0.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the description tag. Unfortunately, the published iTunes example omits the standard description tag altogether for items (podcasts). Following this example, a podcast description will certainly show up in iTunes but nowhere else!

This is most evident in podcatcher software, news aggregators and in RSS feeds converted into HTML for web pages. Here the content for the description will be blank because the description tag is empty, or worse, not even present at all as outlined above.

If you produce podcasts and generate your RSS feed yourself or via other software, it is worth ensuring that both sets of description tags are completed with the same information - otherwise there will be some frustrated users out there!