Odeo + Syncr = Podcast heaven

I’m kind of glad that I’ve just now jumped on to the podcast listener bandwagon. If I had jumped on sooner, I probably would have lost interest within a few days. Late last week I happened to find myself on the Odeo webpage. There wasn’t much on the page other then a pretty layout / logo and the following snip:

Somewhere in an apartment in San Francisco, we’re [Evan Williams & Noah Glass] making it easy for you to discover, create, and subscribe to fresh, independent audio content for your iPod (or whatever MP3-player-type-deal you prefer).

I was intrigued. That simple white star enclosed within a pinkish circle and minimal description beckoned for my registration information. But then it hit me. The service was still in beta. I completed the only option available and entered my email to notify me when the service was ready.

I received an invite to register for Odeo late last week. Try and keep yourself from posting in the comments requesting an invite. The “invite” was sent from the Odeo service itself. Since registering, I’ve found myself spending the majority of my Internet time perusing through podcasts on Odeo. I’ll highlight some of the aspects of the service including screenshots of various parts of the Odeo interface.

Upon logging in, you are presented with the Odeo Listen page. This is the main page from which you can navigate to various parts of the service. Along the top of the page are three simple options: Listen, Sync, and Create.

At the time of posting, ‘Create’ was not yet live for general beta users. ‘Create’ will be the Odeo podcast creation service allowing podcasters to publish their own content. If you do receive an invite, contact support and let them know you wish to use the Podcast creating service. Podcasters will be able to utilize a browser based podcast studio, post via their mobile or landline phone, and / or utilize Odeo’s feed creation & hosting services.

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The main page lists featured channels, an Odeo zeitgeist (what people are listening to now), and Odeo news.

You’ll find podcasts organized via tags.

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The ‘Sync’ section the control panel for a users account. ‘Your Queue’ lists podcasts that you have chosen to download with Syncr (a small little application for Windows & OSX which downloads podcasts). ‘Your subscriptions’ lists feeds that you’ve subscribed to. ‘Past Downloads’ lists podcasts that you’ve downloaded recently to your desktop. ‘Syncr Settings’ provides a few options for the Syncr software. From here you can dictate what media player podcasts are imported into, if you want Syncr to automatically download queued podcasts, and how often you want Syncr to download from Odeo.

What makes listening to podcasts through Odeo so simple is the vast collection of podcast links. The collection grows with each day. If a particular feed is not yet listed in the directory, users can add feeds.

Odeo also allows users to listen to podcasts directly through the web interface. This option is great for users wishing to listen to podcasts without having to download them to the desktop. Also great for times when you wish to drown out the background chatter from the person in the next cubicle.

Odeo does the dirty work so listeners can kick back and enjoy the show(s). Remember that this service is still in beta. There are a few bugs here and there that still need to be ironed out. One particular bug that I noticed was an Alvin Chipmunk like playback when listening to a few channels through a browser.

Update: Odeo support explained the chipmunk effect. This is a known issue with some podcasts that are not encoded at a standard sample rate (44.1, 22.5, etc.) There are a handful of them out there, and we’re working on providing a solution to make it work normally. Hey, it’s a good sign when support questions are answered within an hour or two. That means Odeo is in active development.

You must enter your email address at http://odeo.com if you wish to be notified when the service becomes available. Please don’t ask for an invite. This is not an invite only service like Google Mail.

If you want to stay updated on Odeo’s progress, check out the Odeo Blog here.