I see that Odeo has re-invented itself for like the third time, and in doing so they must have pulled some old databases or something because I am finding listing of my show in multiple places, tags moved around from one show to the other and no way to contact the company because their comment system is broken. Hey guys a simple support e-mail link on your site would be great!

I was really excited about Odeo when the site launched last year, As I look at how their site has evolved, I don’t understand what they are doing. I visited the site today and essentially gave up after 5 minutes, show searches are timing out, those searches that were completed were not presented in a easy to navigate manner. In my opinion they have lost the edge and the average listener is not going to waste their time. I realize they want people to publish podcast through their interface but in my personal opinion they interface is not good.

Nearly 1 am here but I wanted to get this on the street before I went to bed, I went through the Yahoo Podcast site for about an hour tonight, here are my conclusions. From a listeners stand point it will be a very good resource, people will be able to search and find specific topics they are looking for. This is based on info that is contained in show notes and how a site is tagged as Yahoo will rely on search heavily for people to find shows..

Podcasters are increasingly going to need to be very clear in their show notes so that the Yahoo Podcast site and others like Odeo will be able to index the material. One thing they have done very poorly though is they are stripping any html formatting and removing the html links from our show notes, even though people will be able to listen to my show on Yahoo they will not be able to click on the links I am referring to in the show.

As near as I can figure it anyone can add tags to a listing, I do not like this one bit, this will give people the ability to tag your site with inappropriate tags Sadly there is no way to claim your podcast. Podcasters are going to need to make sure they ping Yahoo, as the feeds I was looking at were really out of date.

The directory is pretty sad, finding a show in their directory by drilling down to it will be very painful. You are going to have to search for a site you are listening to. Finding sites in the directory will be a challenge. Yahoo has already made there presence known in the various mailing list and some of us even received e-mail lets see how much they keep talking to the community. I do want to applaud their effort to communicate though.

Using the Yahoo Music Engine the player now has a podcast selection. But it simply loads the Yahoo site in the applications browser. The interface is pretty standard with what we have come to expect with most of the podcatcher clients. One thing that is not clear is if the feedback rating we can put on podcast tracks, the question is do these get fed back to the website. The ratings system may not be as susceptible to abuse as people will have to login to their Yahoo account to post a review only time will tell. Otherwise I suppose the Yahoo Podcasting site is at a good beginning. One thing I was pretty happy to see was they list my full rss feed, and my website URL in the listing which happily they did not do anything funny with the RSS feed.

I hope they do a better job of keeping the directory squared away and will not allow the abuse that has been happening in the Apple iTunes Podcast directory. Sites are still listing themselves 20 separate times under the guide of having 20 different categorized shows. I hope we start seeing some reportable stats from them. This will help podcasters in the long run.

One thing I did see was that this directory was not dominated by Adam Curry we will see if some other podcasters get some exposure now. [podcasts.yahoo.com]

Thanks for the heads up by an alert listener, found our podcast on the front of Odeo today. Pretty cool and I am quite honored. In addition the show and some other great tech shows are featured on the Odeo Roundup!
[Odeo] [Our Show Listing on Odeo]

Looks like ODEO is sending invites 600 at a time. I have my name buried in their someplace. This will be interesting launch, and I am really curious to dig in and see how it works. I am really curious in their commercial model. [Make Magazine] [anarchogeek.com]

Of course the way I blasted them last week I am sure it will be a while before I see a invite

Update: Situation looks to be resolved be sure to read this response from ODEO they say it was a mistake, and I am surprised more beta testers did not call them out on this. Are people so immune these days that they will just let companies do what they please with their RSS feeds. Obviously they went to General Quarters after I posted this, but I wonder if anyone had said anything, if they would have continuesd re-packaging everyones RSS feeds the way it was. I am still confused on the purpose of those odeo.com replicated RSS feeds. If I get a invite to the Beta I will take a closer look.

The article that started resulted in the change!

I had a beta tester that got a close look at Odeo send me some information. Apparently Odeo is taking all of the Podcast it has in it’s current directory and creating their own custom RSS feeds.

First of all this really wrong in a big way. Here is my normal podcasting feed. http://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml what Odeo is doing, so I am being told, is creating a custom feed http://odeo.com/channel/rss/411 that has the same content of my above referenced feed (maybe) what does this do. Well it is deception in the fact that they have Hijacked my feed without permission, and are in a sense re-directing it.

Odeo is going to have to learn to play nice in a hurry, if this is indicative of what they are going to be doing, their are going to be a bunch of very pissed off people.

Odeo I am happy you listed my show in your directory, but I want you to point to my original RSS feed, “the one that I own and control”, and am responsible for. I don’t want possible listeners to this show that find me on your site to think somehow that I am a part of your network. I also don’t want you sticking in any advertising or collecting any metrics about my listeners. Plain an Simple.

Be a good citizen and point to everyones original feeds!