Podcast fever? I’m over it. I’ve been over it since I found out what a podcast actually was. If you get excited when you hear the word ‘Podcast,’ remind me to not show the trick I do with my penis where I swing it from side to side to make a slapping sound against my legs. You would explode with excitement if you saw that. Trust me.

I got a call the other day at about 7am from a client. This happens every once in a while and always pisses me off. At first I think ‘Wow, shit! Thank you [client] for waking me up so I can enjoy the expensive drugs and booze I consumed last night for another minute and a half!’ But then the hot ass bitch sleeping next to me gets mad and my happiness turns to anger and my anger turns into sleepiness.

I rejected the call and hit my voicemail when I woke up around 4pm. It was a non-porn client which made me extra excited about listening to the message. ‘Hey, Simon! I was thinking earlier and I want to do Podcasts on our site!’ Wow! You are a fucking genius. You have really been keeping up with the latest technology trends and you about to profit from all of that work! That’s what I was thinking, but then I remembered that podcasts suck and that God does not like Podcasters. I know it may not be fair, but that’s just what God told me when I talked to him last night.

So I called the client back and explained to him why Podcasts are not cool.

A Podcast is just an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) file with a link to a media file (usually .mp3). It is NOT streaming media despite popular belief, and it is NOT anything amazing. RSS 0.90 has been around since 1999. The technique of linking to media files through RSS feeds, called enclosure syndication, has been being used widely since 2001.

RSS is an XML format used for syndicating websites and web content. XML has been around for a really fucking long time. Don’t even get me started about why AJAX isn’t cool.

Ok, so we have established that a Podcast is nothing new. You have to encode your media as an mp3, and the mp3 format has been around for a long time. Then you have to link to your mp3 using an RSS feed, and the RSS format has been around for a long time as well. So there must be something else that makes Podcasts cool, right?

Wrong. Like I said, Podcasts are not streaming, so the end user must download the entire file in order to listen to it. That’s not really that cool. If you have an mp3 and you have a place to post the mp3, why not just link directly to the mp3 so the user doesn’t have to fuck with opening with the RSS feed and saving the link?

Podcasts can be useful for a series of media files that are regularly posted because once a user saves the link to the RSS feed in iTunes, he doesn’t have to fuck with visiting the website to see if a new file was posted. But is that really all that cool? Not really. Plus, about 99% of Podcasts are incorrectly used.

Most Podcasts simply include links to one file that will not be updated thus making them completely useless. This happens because a lot of web authors want to be trendy so badily that they will use any new technology even if its use in context is completely unnecessary. Don’t believe me? Look at how a majority of developers use AJAX.

So we have established that Podcasts aren’t cool. Thus, no need to get excited when you hear about them. But you can check out that penis trick i mentioned earlier if you are interested.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 12:40 am and is filed under Technical Writings, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.