October 09, 2005

Yahoo! Podcasts is now in public beta. This new source for online audio programming uses Yahoo! Search to make it easier than ever to find and subscribe to audio content and listen wherever and whenever you want.

Yahoo! Podcasts offers a comprehensive directory of podcast series and individual shows from across the Web, complete with detailed search results, most popular and highest rated lists, editorial picks, and a full collection of tools you can use. These community tools include ratings, reviews, and the ability to tag audio content, or view the tags that other people add.

The web-based player makes it simple and painless to listen right through your web browser. An accelerated playback feature (IE only) lets you "scan" a program at 2x speed to get the gist of it faster. You can use Yahoo! Podcasts with aggregators like iPodder (thanks to Andrew Grumet), with desktop media players like the Yahoo! Music Engine (the integration is beautiful!), iTunes, and with the latest version of iPodder, the Windows Media Player and even Winamp. Or, you can download the shows you want to any mp3 player, such as the iPod, iRiver, Dell DJ, Creative Zen, etc.

Yahoo is already working on personalized podcast recommendations and friendly, easy-to-use tools so that anyone can create and publish a podcast or audio blog and share it with friends, family, coworkers, and the World Wide Web.

Yahoo! Podcasts beta is also available on Yahoo! Next.

Weblink: http://podcasts.yahoo.com