Apple's Podcast Updates
Apple has announced some extensions to RSS to add podcast-specific features. Of particular interest to me is the ability to group episodes into seasons and specify the play order of those seasons.
Users will be able to download full seasons, and the Podcasts app will know if a podcast is intended to be listened to in chronological order—“start at the first episode!”—or if it’s more timely, where the most recent episode is the most important.
This sounds great to me and I hope that podcast players other than Apple's embrace it. Diving into a podcast mid-stream is not handled well by players today. I got so frustrated by the experience that I made a service to manage my catch-up experience. I (and a couple of dozen Germans) have been using it for years, and while I'm not ready to retire it just yet, I am hopeful that I might have to use it a bit less soon.
