Tag: directories

Treedia Powers Motorola and Podcast.com Partnership

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Well, finally after a few months preparation, along with the rest of the development of podcast.com I can talk about the exciting news that podcast.com, powered by the system we call the Treedia Feed Management Platform is to be partnering with Motorola on delivering podcasts to their forthcoming smartphones, including the the MOTO Z8 ‘MotoRizr’.

We will be providing Motorola with a managed set of podcast directory folders which their applications can access and navigate the structure of through the use of OPML managed by the Treedia system. The current structure of the system and soon, more information will be available at motorola.podcast.com

The Treedia system’s name derives from the simple idea that any media can be distributed via RSS feeds held together by OPML directory folder structures which were easy to grow and manipulate.

It’s a tree of media. Treedia!

Through the use of very simple OPML files utilizing the ‘include’ type attribute, the Motorola application can drill down and list the podcasts on the device.

Soon, I will be providing a more thorough explanation of just how simple if is for anyone to create a way to navigate this data and also the power of networking available to social media networks, given easy tools to manage the data in a way we all understand already as computer users – folders. Of any ‘depth’.

And let’s not forget that RSS feeds and the like don’t have to ‘simply’ deliver podcasts. Audio or video. They could just as easily deliver updates on a multitude of things. Leveraging the awesome opportunity available to us thanks to OPML inclusion, we can begin to connect and share our appreciation of and presentation of our media in ways we haven’t even though of yet.

But they will all be connected by a ‘semantic path’ and also by the ‘curator’ of the folders and directories and their FOAF file, for example. Not only that, but each user will be able to share their playlists of what they are listening to at the time in a variety of formats, including RSS, XSPF and M3U.

Through these playlist formats and the OPML data available for each user (and each folder), it makes it easy for us to create simple widget user interfaces for just about any connected media platform there is. Simple and easy.

Naturally, users will be able to subscribe to each other’s playlists and folders. See when these change and are updated. All thanks to simple XML based technology.

I’m still wrapping up some loose ends and doing some long overdue bits of clean up on the site and documentations and tutorials, but soon we should be able to open up the doors to a limited amount of people to begin with, pretty soon!

Stay tuned! Stay subscribed! Much more exciting news to come! 🙂

Also in the news is the new next-generation RAZR-2 from Motorola.

feed, OPML, podcast.com, podcasts, rss

An A-Z of Podcasts

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If you head on over to index.podcast.com , you will find a browsable A to Z index of all the podcasts in the podcast.com system.

Soon, you’ll be able to easily add feeds from this or the search (or anywhere!) to your own podcast directory and share the shows you like to listen to and organise them into feed folders, all with lovely OPML for you to build nice widgets out of 😉 – and we will to!

feeds, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasting, podcasts

Podcast.com Upgrade

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Well, after ages of thinking and and coding, I have managed to do a huge overhaul of the podcast.com code, mainly in the directory / feed folder rendering department.

Ever since I built the first rendition of the renderer. I knew I’d have to rethink it somewhat, to cope with many, many users without losing the very cool functionality that I have put in there (for good reason).

Now you will find that the site loads ALOT faster. A quick peek at the OPML for each folder (see the red opml icons – which may change – when you open a feed folder) will show you that we use inclusion at every level now. This helps the whole system to scale.

Also, this means that one user can now link easily to another user’s folder without breaking the ‘tree’. It works with internally generated and managed ‘feed folders’ (creating OPML) as well as external OPML.

When you view a feed, you will also notice with added a link to show ‘where’ this feed appears in our users’ folder structures. (OK.. not so many users as yet, but we hope to add to them by the end of October) Also, you’ll see a button to show single-click subscription methods will a list of chicklets.

Another cool thing you should see is that EVERY folder has a permalink url – also with some links to add to del.icio.us or digg

We want the data here to work EVERYWHERE. We have an opportunity to work with EVERYONE.

We love you guys. Now I gotta do me a podcast! 🙂

feed, feeds, mp3, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasts, rss

Evan’s Podcasting site roundup feedback

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Evan Williams, founder of Pyra – which became Blogger.com and head honcho of Odeo has got some Alexa results of podcasting sites out there and provides some feedback.

Good job. Nice to see Libsyn pumping away at the top. I really like those guys.

So, I’m not surprised to see the results for podcast.com 😉

We opened up the doors of the site back at the end of May, as an ‘alpha’, based on some of the early foundation technology we’re building, simply because we couldn’t bare to look at the old horrible greenish page that used to be there any more 😉 The feedback we’ve had has been positive.

Since then, we been going like the clappers, not sleeping much, slowly but surely bringing together a whole load of features you haven’t seen yet. The list of subscriptions in the directory there are basically *mine*. As in my user account. There’s two actually – a user called kosso curates the canada.podcast.com directory and the secondlife.podcast.com directory (they’re actually folders within koz.podcast.com). Soon you’ll be able to create your own version of the site and have access to a load of tools and info to get you going in podcasting, whether it’s as a listener or a podcaster. We have publishing tools too – and some pretty nifty urls and data for you to play with. Some original content too! (I can’t wait to let you in on all that 😉 )

I often use the analogy of the book industry to describe what we’re up to:

To start, we want to help people find books they want to read and let the author know what they think. Moving along, we want to help people build bookshelves to put all these books on. Then give people the tools to build whole libraries – and connect them together.

Back the other way, we naturally want to help people publish books. And help promote their hard work. Then back, we want to help teach people how to write a book and provide nice and easy tools to do so. Even further back to the core, we also want to help people make paper and ink and even research new types of paper and ink, which might make a book easier to read or understand and hopefully more popular!.

As the people running the generic domain, we intend to DO THE RIGHT THING. What else would you do with the generic domain? I left the BBC to work on this, as I’m incredibly passionate about podcasting having fiddled with building tools and systems since it started. Becoming a podcaster (but not as frequently as I would like – that’s why I’m builfing tools 😉 ). Meeting the likes of Dave Winer and Adam Curry last year was a real motivator. Still is. Respec’.
I really didn’t want the site to end up squatted or parked or simply wasted. I’m on a mission (from pod). ‘With great domains comes great responsibility’. We have some interesting things coming up soon which might perk up your ears 😉

I’ve just got back from Boston after a great time with the rest of the boys – making sure we’re all on the same playlist and getting the new hands on deck up to speed with the system, ethos and roadmap for the whole place. It’s been very reassuring.

We still have alot to do to get the site open as a public beta, where people will be able to join up and have a go at using the tools we’re putting together. It won’t all come at once. We intend to listen to what you think and iterate. We think it’s going to be an exciting resource for anyone interested in podcasting.

It’s going to be a few more weeks, but now we can all see the next checkpoint. There is no finish line 😉

feeds, grazing, Kosso, mp3, multimedia, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasts, rss

Community Podcast Directories

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Dave Winer points out one of the core reasons we have built (and continue to build) podcast.com in the way we have – forming a solid content data foundation, with easy tools – then slapping that data into a great UI, for the web, mobiles and desktop. Heads up, Scoble! 😉
‘Community Directories’ (made by real, passionate people) are exactly what you will have available at podcast.com, all with lots of lovely open OPML and RSS for you to consume and manipulate using the gorgeously easy tools we are building here for you. And IMHO, much nicer OPML management than some applications I have seen out there from the self-declared OPML centres of the Universe out there.

Soon, you will be able to log in to podcast.com, create an account – get a super hot url for your podcast directory and fill her up!

  Check out BBC.podcast.com, CNN.podcast.com – or NPR.podcast.com – these took seconds to set up.

The power of OPML inclusion will make it very easy to connect many different users’ podcast directories together to form an infinite growth of trees of directories, mashed up any way you like.

Update : Dave Winer is not allowing me to comment on his Blog Annexe – shame. My posts seem to disappear. Not totally unexpected, as he does not like me at all – but not what I would expect from Mister ‘Open and Transparent’ – The posts were relevant too – maybe this trackback will work, to his daily comment area.

feed, feeds, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasts, rss

Fresh Podcast Feeds at Podcast.com

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New icons and feeds for the directories at podcast.com

You should see a new icon over on the directories at podcast.com – it’s a green feed icon. We chose green, as it feels ‘FRESH’.

When you click a green feed icon next to a directory folder, the site will load up all the most recent entries to all of the podcasts within that folder. Here is a permalink to one of the fresh feed pages

Also, the results displayed by these icons and the ‘freshest feeds’ menu button on the left, provide you with an RSS feed link which you can use in your favourite aggregator to subscribe the latest podcasts automatically.

Eg: Here is the RSS feed for the latest podcasts from the BBC

Eg: Here is the RSS feed for the latest podcasts from NPR

Eg: Here is the RSS feed for the latest podcasts from CNN

 

Ah, the beauty of distributing content via XML. We love it!

There will be some more very cool new additions to the site coming very soon and we’re working around the clock and the globe to get the doors opened up for you here, so you can start building ‘your own podcast.com’.

Keep an eye on the development blog at podcast.com 

BBC, feed, feeds, grazing, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasts, rss