I got an invitation to join the Odeo beta
this morning in my inbox.
Odeo has three sections: listen, sync, and create. Listen lets you browse for
podcasts, sorted by popularity, age, and so on. Sync lets you manage your
podcast subscriptions, view a list of podcasts from your subscriptions that
you have no let listened to, and download the Odeo syncr, a podcast client
(you can use any client you want, however). Create is not
yet offered, but will involve creating (via flash, I believe) and
hosting your own podcast.
The cool thing about the page for a particular show is that you
can play the show right in your browser via a flash interface.
This is great for previewing, or even listening to the whole thing.
Odeo is one of these new-breed service websites. It’s attractive,
makes effective use of client-side technologies like javascript and
flash. and does one thing well, in a novel way. It’s like
flickr or
backpack;
one of those sites that
renews your dwindling faith in web developers.
Odeo is great. If it were a book, I’d give it four and a half out
of five baltzerHeads. I hold back the half
baltzerHead because I want to be able to set up a playlist of podcasts online,
and listen to it through the flash interface.