I've been watching these for a while, and every time I investigate them, it becomes apparent that there's absolutely no reason for them to exist.
One fundamental problem with them is that they require you to already know what you're looking for. But if you already know, what the hell do you need the podcast sites for? For example, if I want to find podcasts about video games, I go to Google, I enter "video game podcast", and lo! I get video game podcasts, even in spite of Google's asstacular search algorithm.
Let's not even get into the problems podcast directories - every last fucking one of them - have with OPML. You may have heard of OPML. It's how you move all your RSS subscriptions around. So if you have a bunch of subscriptions in one place, you export them to an OPML file and then you can import them somewhere else.
At least, that's the idea. Unfortunately, podcast directories seem to have immense difficulty understanding this very basic concept, as well as the very basic OPML format. Some allow you to import your subscriptions, but not export. In other words, if you decide you hate them, you're trapped, sucker. Others, like Odeo last time I checked, allow you to export, but not import. Which is almost equally useless if you already have a number of subscriptions elsewhere.
Moreover, very few allow you to do a "live" export of your OPML feed without being logged in. So if you use a podcatcher to download podcasts instead of downloading directly from their site, you now have two sets of subscriptions to manage. How is this useful? Oh right, it isn't.
Some sites let you download a feed with the latest podcast from each of your subscriptions. Great idea...or at least it would be, if they hadn't fucked that up too. Guess what happens when a podcast puts up two shows at the same time? Right, you don't get one of them. Way to go. Why not just merge all entries from all feeds in chronological order? Because that would be useful, I suppose.
Of course, all the "Top N" (where N=(10..100)) lists on these sites are really great. Wait, no they're not. They're useless. I look through these and see one or two shows I already subscribe to, and ninety-eight I couldn't give a rat's ass about. It took a year for someone to hop onboard the cluemobile and realize that a smart way to figure out what podcasts people might like is to see what podcasts other people with similar tastes like. It's not like Amazon's been doing this for years or anything. (Oh, wait...) So did Apple finally add this feature? No. How about Yahoo!? (!?@?!@?) No. Odeo? Still no.
It took Dave Slusher, inventor of the "fuck you" tag, to create AmigoFish, which finally gets the right idea. I guess Loomia is doing the same thing now too. But they don't seem to understand OPML very well, so I don't give a crap about them.
Unfortunately, these recommendation engines don't really work unless a lot of people are signed up. I've rated a bunch of stuff, but when I go look for similar shows to the ones I like, I get...a list of all the other podcasts I subscribe to.
Things that suck, part two
The Bman - February 9th, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Podcast directories suck.
I've been watching these for a while, and every time I investigate them, it becomes apparent that there's absolutely no reason for them to exist.
One fundamental problem with them is that they require you to already know what you're looking for. But if you already know, what the hell do you need the podcast sites for? For example, if I want to find podcasts about video games, I go to Google, I enter "video game podcast", and lo! I get video game podcasts, even in spite of Google's asstacular search algorithm.
Let's not even get into the problems podcast directories - every last fucking one of them - have with OPML. You may have heard of OPML. It's how you move all your RSS subscriptions around. So if you have a bunch of subscriptions in one place, you export them to an OPML file and then you can import them somewhere else.
At least, that's the idea. Unfortunately, podcast directories seem to have immense difficulty understanding this very basic concept, as well as the very basic OPML format. Some allow you to import your subscriptions, but not export. In other words, if you decide you hate them, you're trapped, sucker. Others, like Odeo last time I checked, allow you to export, but not import. Which is almost equally useless if you already have a number of subscriptions elsewhere.
Moreover, very few allow you to do a "live" export of your OPML feed without being logged in. So if you use a podcatcher to download podcasts instead of downloading directly from their site, you now have two sets of subscriptions to manage. How is this useful? Oh right, it isn't.
Some sites let you download a feed with the latest podcast from each of your subscriptions. Great idea...or at least it would be, if they hadn't fucked that up too. Guess what happens when a podcast puts up two shows at the same time? Right, you don't get one of them. Way to go. Why not just merge all entries from all feeds in chronological order? Because that would be useful, I suppose.
Of course, all the "Top N" (where N=(10..100)) lists on these sites are really great. Wait, no they're not. They're useless. I look through these and see one or two shows I already subscribe to, and ninety-eight I couldn't give a rat's ass about. It took a year for someone to hop onboard the cluemobile and realize that a smart way to figure out what podcasts people might like is to see what podcasts other people with similar tastes like. It's not like Amazon's been doing this for years or anything. (Oh, wait...) So did Apple finally add this feature? No. How about Yahoo!? (!?@?!@?) No. Odeo? Still no.
It took Dave Slusher, inventor of the "fuck you" tag, to create AmigoFish, which finally gets the right idea. I guess Loomia is doing the same thing now too. But they don't seem to understand OPML very well, so I don't give a crap about them.
Unfortunately, these recommendation engines don't really work unless a lot of people are signed up. I've rated a bunch of stuff, but when I go look for similar shows to the ones I like, I get...a list of all the other podcasts I subscribe to.
Sigh.