I received an invite today from Odeo for a preview of their new podcasting service. I knew enough to sign up with Odeo so I could be notified when their beta went public, but that's about all I knew. To me podcasting didn't sound very interesting. The only shows I'd listened to in the past were very geeky conversations between two people with voices not suitable for radio. Five minutes after signing into Odeo (screenshot) my notion of podcasting as simply audioblogging was shattered and I was subscribed to six channels and looking for more. After subscribing to channels you can listen to directly or queue individual shows for download using the slick provided sync tool.

Odeo's still in a very early stage of development so there are bound to be a few rough edges, that said here are my issues. The sync utility downloads files and adds them directly to iTunes in an Odeo playlist, which is nice, but some of the file names themselves don't follow any particular format and would be rather difficult to identify on my iPod without playing a sample. That's probably more up to the individual publishers than Odeo. The BBC, CBC and even Air America Radio seem well represented, but where's NPR? If Odeo's functionality and content selection this early on are something to judge by, then I'd say we're all in for a treat.

Currently enjoying the Beyond Jazz channel, nujazz, broken beats & soulful remixes. On deck, the Free Radio Sub Pop channel.

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