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Podcasting conference calls
Like many people, I use iTunes to store and playback music on my computer, blindly updating the software whenever a new version comes out. Honestly, I haven’t spent much time playing around with the software other than to “rip, mix, burn” — the original uses of iTunes. With version 4.9, that changed a little: podcasting support was added.
Over the last couple of days I have been searching around on the iTunes Music Store’s list of podcasts and have come to two conclusions: a) there isn’t much available in podcast form that I’m interested in right now, and b) finding a podcast I like will be the only reason I leave the iTunes Store enabled on my computer.
I’ll address b) first: it is very slick of Apple to tie in their directory of podcasts with the Store — I personally loathe the idea of buying the DRM‘d songs and have never had the Store enabled. This new feature will likely encourage me to leave the Store ‘on’ if I can ever find some podcasts which interest me.
Which leads me roundabout to a). Here’s what I want podcasted: conference calls. Apple has one coming up next Wednesday at 5PM ET, but I’ll probably forget about it by then. If I do remember, I’ll have to navigate to the Apple site and get to the right page and click the right banner to listen to the Quicktime stream. If I wanted to listen to the broadcast later on my iPod, I’d probably have to search the web for ways to capture audio streams… and then import it into iTunes… and then upload it to my iPod. Forget it.
Apple, just give me a conference call subscription. That way the calls will be automatically downloaded by iTunes and uploaded to my iPod. If I want to listen to prior calls, they’ll be there for me in iTunes. Other companies could do this too — maybe they’d even call you to see how they could use Quicktime Authoring and cut out the middlemen.
Until then, I’ll be here waiting.
written by Kevin in web stuff