Apple pushes Podcasting into the mainstream

This morning, Apple released a new update to their popular music software, iTunes, with support for Podcasting. They also updated their iTunes Music Store with a directory of podcasts that users can browse through and easily subscribe to.

While podcasting has received a lot of attention from those who closely follow new web technologies, it's still a relatively new and experimental development in the world of consumer generated media. Until now, there hasn't been an elegant solution to keeping track of podcasts. Apple's support of podcasting in iTunes brings it to the forefront and will have a significant effect on making it a viable alternative to radio. Podcasting might be as much of a disruptive technology to radio as blogging has been to mainstream text media.

The question arises, "How will people be able to track and analyze podcasting content?" The technology isn't quite there yet for being able to translate audio files into searchable text, at least not on a large Google-esque scale. As podcasting gains popularity, it will be interesting to see how the market develops for services that can capture and analyze podcast content.