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This site has been quite for the last couple of days because I was away, sampling and buying some very nice wine in the Hunter Valley. Anyway, whilst I was away Apple released iTunes 4.9.

iTunes 4.9 introduces the ability to find and add podcasts to your iTunes media library.

iTunes, from my brief interaction with the new functionality, seems to do a good job helping you organise your podcasts. Now, I don’t have a pod, so I’m listening on my desktop, but the ability to see what I’ve not listened to and have iTunes handle the file storage and deletion (if you want) is nice.

See the screenshot (click to enlarge):

Apple have extended RSS (see A first look at iTunes RSS extensions) to allow the iTunes hosted podcasts to include additional information about the contents of a podcast, including album artwork and a general description of the podcast.

For someone who listens to NewsRadio (hey look, they’ve updated their homepage) I am now beginning to have some interest in podcasts. I can find producers of good content and have my own regularly updated collection of good tech type news.

Does this mean I will move to iTunes as my main audio player? Not sure yet. Windows Media Player is nice, but Media Player 11 is not due till 2006. There is some discussion as to what people would like to see in the next version, but at the moment Microsoft are following and Apple is clearly leading.

For churches, what should we do with podcasting? Well firstly deliver our sermons by podcasts (as well as other means). Although, keep an eye on your hosting bandwidth. Secondly, one idea in my head is a mid week discussion produced by members of a church, a topical discussion on outcomes of last weeks sermon or general Christian living issues (somewhat like Opinionated).

There are still some hurdles here for church web-sites, one that is obvious – most church sites are simplistic, and adding RSS or a podcast feed would be quite a step for many webmasters.

Also, I’m a fan of accessible web-sites. Podcasts are not accessible to people with hearing problems unless you provide a transcript – which doesn’t fit with the free form discussion of a podcast.