AOL has announced Podcasting 101 and placed a list of popular ones within its AOL Music site.
The new presence within AOL’s music site, called Podcasting 101, features a list of Top 11 podcasts, and highlights a few others on the new page. There is no massive list of podcasts like that available from iTunes, making the page more of a ‘featured attractions’ site rather than a directory.
The Top 11 lists Grape Radio at number 5. Who knew that oenophiles were such big fans of podcasting?
Among those featured are podcasts from CNN, BBC Radio, Harry Shearer’s “Le Show,” and ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ from KCRW. The podcasts in the Top 11 contain links for users to subscribe to that show’s feed or to find out more information about a show. Podcasts featured in separate windows have links to download or subscribe to them.
AOL has placed a simple three-step explanation of podcasts on the page. It describes “What is a Podcast?” and shows how to playback, download, or subscribe to them. It’s very basic information for those completely new to podcasting, and useful enough to get them started.
The company plans to incorporate podcast search with AOL Search, according to a press release, by adding the capabilities of the TVEyes Podscope search engine. Users will be able to sift through thousands of podcasts, and the search will return audio results using Spoken Word Indexing. Those results will let users sample thousands of audio clips online.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
