Library clips

Odeo is a place to discover podcasts…but it is much more.

You can set up an account, and discover podcasts by browsing the folksonomy.
All channels (blogs or podcast enabled website) are tagged according to users of the system…ie. the actual blog or website is tagged.
Also the posts or shows can be tagged as well…so there are two folksonomies merged into one.

When you click on a tag it shows you a list of channels, and then it also shows a list of shows.

I find this a bit confusing and would rather have the tags split into two panels, one for channels, and one for shows.

When you browse a tag, each item (podcast enabled blog/website) has a list of other tags used to describe it.

Something lacking is that there are no RSS feeds for each tag

…if this was enabled for channels you would be subscribing to a number of blog or website homepages, you would get the latest post/show from that blog/website.
Have to keep in mind that the tag may not accurately describe each post within a channel, the tags are broad as they are describing the blog/website itself, kind of like a description (just like the label you give a folder to group feeds in your RSS reader).
Instead if this was enabled for shows this would be more like the usual subscribing to the feed of a del.icio.us tag (as the tag describes the show/post, this is more accurate or specific)

You can also browse a user, as each channel has a link to the number of subscribers.

The user panel shows: produced channels section (a list of the users own produced podcasts) , and subscriptions to channels
…I can’t see the tags used for each of these channels in the subscription list, and also where is the section for tagged shows.

Each channel (the content provider eg. a blog) has a profile, latest posts, and listening station.
When you find a channel you like, you can subscribe to it, add a comment, or even download a particular show or post (queue)…I guess this is when you tag the channel or tag the specific show.

So I guess this makes it an RSS reader for podcasts (with syncr) managed by tags (creating a podcast feed folksonomy), and also a folksonomy for podcast shows.

Not only that but soon you will be able to create a podcast…this is a powerful tool that has taken all latest social software ideas and put them into a specialised offering

…even though features and functionality are important, they really mean nothing if the content or community base is lacking…good luck to Odeo!

Here is the Odeo blog.

…more

A good idea would be to also show the text version of a podcast, like a transcript.

People have made subscription buttons to put on the sidebar of their blog, which is like another version of their podcast feed (well it links to the profile, then you click on subscribe).

So having your podcast featured on Odeo is like having another version (watered down version) of your blog or website, also it is kind of similar to the promoting of your site like BlogPulse Profiles.

del.icio.us also have tags for audio feeds (including podcasts), they also have RSS feeds (you can even add a tag (+) to the system tag, to make it more specific).