Sonic Walker

With version 4.9 Apple has introduced podcasting into their popular iTunes application. Apple has released their official specifications on what you need to do in order to publish your podcast in the iTunes Music Store. Dave Winer has more on his Really Simple Syndication site.

Apple has defined a namespace for podcast information. Just took a brief look. Some of it is non-controversial. Some of it is.

1. Their category element is a duplicate of the existing RSS 2.0 category element, although more verbose. I love the part where they say it’s okay to duplicate information, in other words we’re funky and we know it. I suggest ignoring the itunes:category element, their software seems to work fine without it (Morning Coffee Notes is listed, apparently, we don’t have any of their extensions, nor do I expect to add them any time soon).

2. Same with author. RSS 2.0 has an item-level author element. They don’t say why they reinvented this, giving theirs (again) the same name as the core element, indicating that they probably knew it was there. (The RSS 2.0 element is a mail address, but a person’s name is easily included in a mail address.)

3. It would have been really smart to review this stuff with the community before releasing their software.

4. All this is based on a ten-minute read, so take it for what it’s worth. If you think I’m wrong, say so (no doubt many will).

5. Further, I think it’s kind of a bad idea to use a trademark in the name of a namespace. I think Apple may regret doing this. Also their competitors, already objecting to the use of “pod” in the name of the category, may further object to supporting information with a trademark of a competitor as its name. Come on Apple, we can do better.