Hey iPhone users – would you want to download podcasts via an app on your iPhone?

Well Apple Computer Says No. (via podcasting news)

It’s not like you’d want to download podcasts via the device directly, I mean it’s not a device with WiFi or HDSPA is it? Oh, wait…;-)

OK I’ve had my difficulties with Apple in the past*, that aside as a podcaster this does boggle the mind…I would like people to download my podcasts from wherever they are, whatever device they are on, and iPhone app to do that can do nothing but good (rather than those spammy Facebook-style one-podcast-only apps which annoy me, as of course only pro or semi pro podcasts can afford to develop those).

I suspect maybe Apple is launching their own app to do this…stopping all rival apps is not really beyond Apple with their history.

Really I’m starting to wonder if Apple really cares about podcasting at all…it seems to be sidelined you know?

* full disclosure: Radio Clash was banned or unable to get my feed onto iTunes for 2 years, with no explaination, part of the reason we never had the big ‘spike’ of listenership others had – so I have experienced being outside that particular ‘wall’ – it’s not nice. I hope Apple sees sense about this app.

I’ve culled several podcasts I don’t listen to anymore. seem to be dead or podfaded off my PodSquid and ITunes…I’m running out of diskspace and I won’t ever have the time to listen to these…apologies if you, as I know quite a few of you read this or listen to RC, are one of those whose link has suddenly gone.

TBH I listen to podcasts less and less now…so it makes sense to stop downloading the ones I don’t have time for and reduce it to the core ones I listen to.

As badpauly correctly points out, there are serious caveats about the Genius feature in the new iTunes 8 and iPods. Submitting information about your whole library to Apple? Okaaaaaay. Yes Google does that and everyone’s running around like their Large Hardon Collider is on fire. Apple does it with shiny shiny colours and a big press launch and everyone’s like ‘do the shuffle shake? ooh how high?’ (hmm how soon is it before someone gets beaten up for ‘shuffling’ their new iPod – I give it about a week. Yes that gesture means something very different here…).

I have another thought – iTunes is increasingly becoming a record company, especially now the Apple Corps suit is now sorted. Telling what songs your iPod should play or recommends in your library gives Apple quite a lot of power – a power of suggestion; it’s one thing playing that new album, another if it keeps coming up in Genius or Shuffle mode…forcing it into your conciousness. That could make them a lot of money – it’s one thing having your album there, but to have it coming up regularly in Genius mode, that’s pure power.

And call me paranoid but I’ve wondered about the Shuffle algorhythms and suchlike in iPods – notice that some songs come around more frequently than others – and the 2nd song is usually a new one? There’s more than pure randomness there, for sure.

Also an addendum – today (Saturday) I fancied one of the new 16GB iPod Nanos, not sure I can afford it, I probably can’t but it doesn’t matter – the ‘available immediately’ last Tuesday was bullshit, the Apple stores don’t have any until next week. Well at least I avoided spending any money…

OK you techno-g33kz out there can help me – I have been creating video podcasts but having nothing but problems, because although if you follow Apple’s specs for video that will play on an iPod, it still won’t work depending on what software you use (does this sound familiar? And people wonder why I have a dislike for Apple – it’s like QT Pro encoding, it runs really fast if you upgrade to Pro, and use their presets – yet runs slow even then encoding from other programs..hmm).

Sadly the best encoder I don’t have a copy of *ahem* and is really really slow – the first video podcast I did was created using the rough n’ready export function of After Effects – really slow, needs literally 10′s of Gbs of space otherwise it balks out, but weirdly the most compliant. How odd).

Anyway as I don’t have a video iPod or Zune I’d be really grateful if some of youse fling these files at them and see what happens (and yes surprisingly Zune does mp4 and m4v, at spookily the same specs LOL).

And can you let me know what iTunes (if you use that) says if you (right) click and say ‘Convert for iPod’ whether it says ‘No conversion needed’ or tries to do so, and if the original file works regardless.

Video podcast – encoded by QT Pro, Mp4

Video podcast encoded for iPhone, m4v

Video podcast encoded by Videora – 5G iPod, 320×240

I won’t include the iTunes created version. It seems to think everyone wants a m4v file at 640×480 HQ at 110Mbs. Nice. Thank you Apple for your bloat-friendly AppleTV-stealth-supporting specs. I’ll let you know when I win the lottery and can afford the bandwidth/file storage, mmmkay?

Thanks in advance – I’m this close actually dropping support for downloads/devices and going YouTube only, ironically that’s far easier, unless I can find a solution.

And they wonder why video podcasts didn’t take off like YouTube? I think their answer is right here in this post….

EDIT: I think I partly worked it out – strangely old MPEG-4s seem to not need being recoded – looks like only certain sizes or certain types (?) of H264 files are supported, but I’m still interested whether the iPhone ones work with iPods too. The first one should be the most compatible – or is it?

And yes those of you who’ve had problems playing it on your iPod try that one – it’s a new (not H264) version.

I’ve upgraded the site to WordPress 2.6, and sadly that means the old http://www.mutantpop.net/radioclash/rssfeed.php link is not working as it should – so now it should redirect nicely to:

http://www.mutantpop.net/radioclash/rss2/

So those of you on the old feed, can you change it? Thanks.

This does not affect those of you who subscribed via iTunes store or are using the Libsyn feed. It might affect those poor leeching websites that repurpose this blog as their own (altogether: AAAAAHHH). Also just checked and iTunes 7 PC does redirect you to the proper URL, even on existing subscriptions, so iTunes users should be OK unless you’re using some ancient version.

And depending how stoopid your podcatcher is, they should get told via the wonders of HTTP, 301 redirects and .htaccess to move along to the right feed (for the moment). But you never know…so use the new URL (which I know some of you have been using for years – the rssfeed.php was a legacy hack from when I was using autogenerated feeds from MP3s and didn’t have a blog!)