Trying Out Odeo
So, I got my invite to Odeo, Evan Williams’ podcasting service. Thus far, I’m not sure what to do with it.
The site has three portions: The podcasting portal, the syncing area, and the publishing area. While that is the order they are listed in, it is appropo, because it follows the path of my user experience.
The podcasting portal is excellent. I can’t imagine anything exists out there that is better for finding podcasts. It lists the most popular ‘casts, some of which have hundreds of subscribed listeners, and each show has info and tagging, and lets you download any individual show. You can also see a list of recent podcasts, and there are so many coming through, the list barely goes back a day. You can leave comments for the podcasts.
The sync area is where the subscriptions happen. You subscribe to a podcast program, or choose an individual show to sync up. The Odeo Syncr program is there to handle the whole thing, but I have no freakin clue what it does. It claims to be syncing the podshows, but I have no idea if they are somewhere on my computer, and they certainly are not on my iPod. The options for the program are sparse, and since the site has no documentation, there’s no way for me to figure out what I’m doing wrong. So, so far I’ve downloaded 5 shows, and I have no idea where they are, how to listen to them, and how to get them on my iPod.
The publishing area is locked off. You have to request access. So, that’s out. While finding interesting podcasts is nice, I’m primarily interested in using it to publish podcasts. I want to finally do a show for this site, while not risking all my bandwidth on them (regardless of what Odea eventually charges). If anyone close to Odea is reading this, please try to get my request accepted.
So, even though I can’t really do anything yet with Odeo, none of this should be taken as me saying the service is bad. The stuff that does work is great, the stuff that doesn’t has a great start. The whole thing just looks like it is going to make listening to podcasts real easy, and help popularize the medium. I can’t wait to see how it develops.
UPDATE: Well, I already got a response to my request, which says they’ve put me on a list for early access to the Create tools, when they are ready.
“Thus far, I’m not sure what to do with it”
summed up my first 5 minute impression
Comment by Hashim | June 24, 2005
Yup , i received my invitation for Odeo yesterday as well, and have no idea what to do with it as well.
Comment by Kashif Khan | June 24, 2005
Once IE7 comes out with all the cool RSS features, Bloglines, Newsgator, Odeo et.al are history.
Comment by Bill Gates | June 24, 2005
I got mine and need to do a blog entry about it. The interface is nice but needs work. I must say here at the start that tech support got right back to me on a couple emails they sent me.
I gave it a quick try and I can tell you:
The syncer synchs the files to an Odeo directory under My Documents.
- this isn’t documented as far as I saw. I had to go hunting on my hard drive
- not configurable
- must install to C: (or, I suppose, where ever you have Windows installed)
Most glaring omission: NO OPML import/export feature. This is huge if you already use a podcatcher. Resubscribing when you change tools is a pain and this is a must have. Tech support told me they’ll add it to the list of things to add. Were it me I wouldn’t have even opened the door to the beta if this wasn’t in there.
Searching is crap. I guess it’s good if you want to stumble upon new shows but otherwise no good for me. Example: I want to add the Daily Source Code to my sync list. Only way is to do a search first. Thing is, you search for Daily Source Code or Curry or some combination and you get back lists of shows and other things not necessarily the _channel_ (as Odeo calls them) for the show. Then you click one of them and in there you see the link you need to subscribe. Upshot: let me search through _channels_ not list of shows. Or better, give the the choice!
Then there is subscribing. When you click subscribe it queues up some random show from the past, not the latest show. I told them about this and I think they my be on it. They responded perplexed to my email. This ‘feature’ happens everytime to me so I can’t believe they can’t replicate it.
Yeah, it’s beta. Great. But some basics need to be fixed.
Of note is the fact that they’ll let you down load the source for the syncher so you can modify it if you are so inclined. It’s based on iPodder.
Ok, that was way too long. Sorry. Copy-paste to my blog.
Comment by Scott | June 25, 2005