Popcasts offers birds-eye view of most popular podcasts

With all the podcasting apps and services out there, I've been wondering when a sort of "Billboard for podcasts" was going to show up. Fortunately, Popcasts has taken the first step in answering the call. Popcasts (beta) is a site that aggregates the top 10 podcasts from ten different podcast services and directories including iTMS, Odeo, iPodderX, Podcast Alley, podnova and more. They offer RSS feeds for all podcasts across all services, as well as feeds for each individual directory. It's a really handy site that's already found a home in my copy of NetNewsWire. One catch I've found so far, however, is that the iTMS lists one of my favorite podcasts, This Week in Tech, as #4, but it isn't even on Popcasts' charts. For now, I'm chalking this up to some sort of time delay or difference in how the two services rank podcasts.

Either way, I'm glad someone stepped up to the podcast chart-rating plate, and not just so we can find out who's really on top. Different services, as you can see from their charts, attract different kinds of users, and it's really interesting to see how that unfolds. If anyone has any insight into discrepancies in chart ratings, please feel free to inform the rest of the class in the comments.