More on Yahoo! and podcasting

Jan wrote about Yahoo's beta podcast service a few weeks ago, and now some new details are beginning to emerge about how the service will grow, and where it may be going next. TechWeb News is reporting that Yahoo is currently busy with a tool that will make the development, distribution and retrieval of podcasts simple enough for even the least geeky among us. More after the jump.
 
[Via Micro Persuasion]

Joe Hayashi, senior director of product management at Yahoo, feels that most users have trouble with distributing their podcasts. Specifically,
with RSS and XML enclosures: "People have a personality to create the audio, but they fall down on understanding the technology from XML to RSS or iTunes tag. Broadly speaking, those are the challenges."
He's right, of course. Recording the audio is the easy (and fun) part.
If the popularity of podcasting is going to reach John Q. Nongeek, the entire process needs to be as easy as pie. It's Yahoo's hope to come up with this solution.

I'm kind of hoping Apple has a similar project in the works. As I've said before,
I'd like to see an iApp added to the iLife suite (iLife '06, maybe?)
that does just this. Record your audio, browse your iPhoto or Movies library easily for inclusion in an enhanced or video podcast, export to iTunes,
the iTunes Music Store, your own blog and/or .Mac with a click. No having to worry about the enclosure, compression, etc. It seems like a natural addition to iLife.