Webware

TiVo announced Wednesday that it has added hundreds of free Web videos to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs. Also, subscribers who are interested in watching video podcasts that they can't find through TiVo's listing can enter RSS feeds manually to watch the show on their TiVo box.

Starting Wednesday, subscribers will be able to watch free video podcasts from several providers, including CBS, Fox, Oprah, and more. (CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.) They can watch a single episode or subscribe to all the podcast's shows by opting for a season pass.

TiVo also announced that it will allow users to input video podcast RSS feeds to watch those shows that they can't find on their TiVo Web Video listing.

To do so, subscribers will need to use the "Custom RSS Feeds" option in the "Browse Web Videos" menu. That option will allow them to input a show's RSS feed with their remote. If it's a valid link, they can decide to watch a single episode or subscribe to the feed through Season Pass. They can also watch past episodes.

To maximize the amount of content available to its subscribers, TiVo has provided show producers with guidelines for getting their Web videos ready for the DVR. The shows must be made available through RSS (RSS 2.0 is preferred). The video must also be in H.264 format.

TiVo's inclusion of more video podcasts follows a long line of upgrades the company has made to its platform over the past year. In October, TiVo announced that Netflix streaming was coming to its DVRs. HD content from Amazon's Video on Demand service was added earlier this year. The company even announced plans to bring Blockbuster Video on Demand to subscribers. Now, TiVo subscribers can supplement all that professional content with thousands of Web shows that they might already be enjoying on competing products, like the Apple TV.

TiVo's new Web videos and the option to add custom RSS feeds are available now to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL owners.

If you're podcasting, you're probably looking for ways to make it both more entertaining and easier to produce.

That's where the Web-based apps and tools come in.

Producing your podcast

Archive.org's NetLabels collection of freely available MP3 and OGG files is fantastic. The site allows you to choose from thousands of songs, which you can download and add to your podcast. Those tracks can be your intro, outro, or bumpers for the middle of your show. It's a great way to add value to your podcast.

Archive.org has some great tracks for your podcast.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Enablr provides a really great service. Instead of making your podcasts available on just a few audio sites, Enablr makes your shows indexable and searchable by transcribing your shows to text.

For $1 per minute, the site will take your audio podcast and convert it to text, thus making all its content available to Google, Bing, and other search engines. The site gives you the transcript in three business days. Enablr claims it will increase the popularity of the show. I haven't tried it, so I can't comment. But I do think it could help some shows that discuss hot topics. It might be worth trying out once to see if it works.

Enablr will make your show indexable on Google.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Gcast isn't the easiest tool to use in this roundup, but it's still worth using if you're trying to find an online podcast-creation tool.

Once you sign up for Gcast, you'll be brought to a page asking you how you'd like to produce your first show. You can opt to record via telephone or upload tracks from your computer. If you choose the former, you'll be forced to pay $99 per year for access to the service. Gcast also lets you create multiple podcast channels if you want to produce more than one show. All of those shows will then be added to popular podcast directories.

Gcast will allow you to upload tracks from your computer.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Hipcast will help you record just about anything on the Web. When you sign up for the site, you'll have the option of calling Hipcast's telephone number and recording up to 60 minutes of audio. You can also record your show from your browser. If you're still tied to the desktop, the site will even let you upload your podcast.

But Hipcast doesn't stop there. You can have a blog specific to your show, save up to 5GB of material, and make your podcast available on iTunes and other directories. But there's a catch: you'll need to pay to do it. Hipcast charges $9.95 per month for its basic service. Its top offering will run you $49.95 per month. It offers a free seven-day trial before you buy.

Hipcast gives you three options to record audio.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Magnatune is a record label that encourages fans to use their artist's favorite song in their podcasts.

Once you go to the Magnatune Web page, you can search through the service to find the right kind of music for your show. Once you find what you're looking for, you can download it, free-of-charge, as long as it's being used in a noncommercial podcast. Those who accept advertising need to pay Magnatune a small fee. Regardless, it's a great service. And believe it or not, some of the tracks are pretty good.

Magnatune's selection might not be big, but it's worth checking out.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Mevio is a great place to go if you want to have your podcast exposed to more listeners. After you sign up for the site, you can either browse the site's huge listing of shows or you can add your own. Once you upload your podcast, Mevio will keep your episodes in the database. Users can search for it by the content of your show. It's a great way to get your content out to more people. You might not add a large number of new listeners, but then again, you just might. Mevio's mileage will vary.

Mevio is a good way to promote your show.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Podcast.com is a huge database of audio and video podcasts. Everything from basketball to music to tech is included in its database. And it's a great place to add your podcast. Doing so takes just seconds. From there, you can share it with friends, check out similar podcasts, or just move along to the next podcast directory. In any case, it's a great place to promote your show.

Submitting a podcast to Podcast.com takes just seconds.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

PodOmatic reminds me of a cross between Twitter, Facebook, and a podcast-recording platform. But it's that combination of different ideas that makes it so compelling.

After you sign up for PodOmatic, the site will ask you to pick a design for your podcast page. From there, you can start recording your shows. You'll have the option of uploading your show from your computer, selecting a file from your PodOmatic Media Library, or simply recording the show online with the help of your Webcam and microphone. Once you're done recording the podcast, you can fix it up and post it to your feed for your subscribers to listen. PodOmatic provides you with 15GB of bandwidth each month and 500MB of storage. Smaller podcasts won't have much trouble meeting those demands, but if you have a large following, PodOmatic might not be for you.

PodOmatic lets you record right in your browser.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

My top 3

1. PodOmatic: PodOmatic has a premise that makes it quite attractive.

2. Magnatune: A record label that makes tracks available for free? Awesome.

3. Archive.org's NetLabels: With so many songs, it's a great way to add some flavor to your podcast.

The developer behind Podcaster--who has excellent taste in podcasts--has a similar application that apparently doesn't anger Apple.

(Credit: RSS Player)

The iPhone developer behind Podcaster has found a way to get into Apple's App Store without invoking the wrath of iPhone Inspector No. 5.

The developer, who has a private Blogger profile but appears to go by Alex according to Uneasy Silence, has a new application called RSS Player that duplicates the basic function of Podcaster--letting you download podcasts to your iPhone or iPod Touch--but without some of the features that Apple appears to have disliked. For example, you can't search for podcasts through the app, you have to subscribe to the RSS feed for those podcasts.

Back in September, Apple rejected an iPhone application called Podcaster that allowed you to search for podcasts and download them to your device, which was a feature Apple later added to the iPhone. That was one of the first rejected apps to highlight iPhone developer frustration over a lack of communication concerning which technologies and features were forbidden from the App Store, and why.

The iPhone application review process still seems a bit nebulous, but the iPhone application business itself is booming. Apple announced two weeks ago that 15,000 applications are available on the App Store, and that those applications have been downloaded 500 million times, just six months after the store opened for business.

Podcaster lets you subscribe to podcasts from your iPhone.

Correction: The price of the app has been corrected from the original post.

Apple has told Alex Sokirynsky that he cannot distribute his Podcaster app for iPhone via the Apple iTunes store since, he reports, "it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes." This is a crime that Apple is perpetrating on iPhone users, and it is a lie, since Podcaster does something iTunes doesn't do, and it adds real functionality to the iPhone that lots of people, like me, really want.

Read more: Tom Krazit's Apple to Podcaster: No App Store for you.

Podcaster lets you sign up for podcasts from your iPhone. You can then stream them, or download them to your phone for later listening when you are offline (like on an airplane). Apple's own iTunes software (which runs on Windows and Mac PCs, not the phone itself) lets you subscribe to podcasts, but the only way to get them onto your phone is to sync it with your computer. If you're out and about without a computer (or, like me, your travel laptop doesn't have your installation of iTunes), you can't update your podcasts. And that, my friends, sucks.

Podcaster is the solution to Apple's oversight. It works well, even if it isn't all that pretty. You can search for podcasts by name, and the system will download the titles of recent episodes. If you hit play on an episode, the product streams the podcast from its source. (It uses the YouTube player, so the interface rotates to landscape mode whether you like it or not.) Or, as I said, you can tag individual podcasts for downoad--but not a whole series.

Once you subscribe to a podcast, you can view all the episodes, and then either stream or download them.

The app is "sandboxed" on the iPhone, so it has no knowledge of podcasts subscribed to from your iTunes account. Nor can you play your Podcaster podcasts from within iTunes. And it's not nearly as pretty as iTunes is. It's also got a few bugs. But it is highly functional, and useful.

And although Apple doesn't want you to have it, you can still get it, at least for now. Sokirynsky is sending it to people using a workaround Apple created to let developers distribute iPhone apps to testers. Go to www.nextdayoff.com for an e-mail form. You will eventually need your phone's UDID number, which is easy to get: See these instructions from TUAW.com.

The app is $9.95 (via PayPal donation). Sokirynsky notes that Apple has the capability to remotely disable apps, though, and I would not be surprised to see Apple turn this app off considering that it's being distributed outside of Apple's own marketplace. I also have heard that there may be a cap on the number of copies of an app that can be distributed with this workaround.

I'll spare you the paragraphs of righteous indignation I could write about how Apple is dealing with this. I'll just say: Apple, I'm very disappointed. You should do better.

PodTech, a video podcast network that had taken over $7 million in venture funding, has been sold--and the price may have been a downright embarrassing $500,000.

The news was reported this week by Eric Eldon at VentureBeat, but Valleywag's Jackson West was floating the rumor with less detail last week. And Fake Steve Jobs jumped the gun a little bit by declaring the company dead last October.

The buyer is the Los Angeles-based ViewPartner, a "communications technology company" that seems to only produce Google results about the fact that it bought PodTech. And while no financial specifics were named in the release, VentureBeat reported that the price was around $500,000. Ouch.

PodTech's woes had been very public as high-profile employees started leaving: marketer Jeremiah Owyang, who became an analyst at Forrester; blogger Robert Scoble, essentially the face of the company; and even CEO John Furrier. It was reportedly out of money, despite having raised a $5.5 million venture round and then another $2 million from U.S. Ventures and Venrock.

The rough economy is making it a shaky ride for many start-ups, but PodTech may have suffered from additional problems: the niche of "podcasting" didn't play out the way many expected it to, instead blending into Web video and audio content alongside far more traditional programming. While a few podcasters have become stars, the "top podcast" charts at the iTunes store look a whole lot more like big media: NPR, Comedy Central, and um, the Jonas Brothers.

Not quite up PodTech's alley.

Earlier today, I sat down with Jasmine France, CNET's Senior Associate Editor of MP3 & Digital Audio and host of the MP3 Insider Podcast, to talk about free online services for streaming music. We've covered all of the ones we talked about in previous posts on Webware (see link dump below), but who knows--you might learn something new.

Also, for information on the legality of sites like these, read this post from CNET News.com's Daniel Terdiman, who digs deep into how these start-ups are avoiding DMCA crackdown to keep your cloud-sourced mixtapes safe and sound.

I've embedded the podcast below. We've also got a live version of the show on video after the break. Feel free to share your personal favorites for music streaming and discovery in the comments.

Links from the show:
MixWit (Coverage)
MuxTape (Coverage)
ThisIsMyJam (Coverage)
Pandora
GrooveShark lite (Coverage)
Songza (Coverage)

TiVo Desktop Plus 2.6 software lets you view Web videos on your TV--but they need to be downloaded to a PC first.

(Credit: Slashgear)

TiVo has added the ability to view downloadable Web videos on the company's DVRs, making good on its announcement at January's Consumer Electronics Show. The update will allow Web videos such as video podcasts to be downloaded with the same Season Pass functionality used by TiVo viewers to record their favorite TV shows. But don't expect to just punch in a URL or an RSS feed into the TiVo remote. Videos must first be downloaded to your PC's hard drive, after which they'll be transferred to your TiVo via your home network. That's a departure from Amazon Unbox videos, the Rhapsody subscription music service, and TiVo's forthcoming YouTube service, all of which are accessible online straight through TiVo's onscreen interface without the need to have a PC running elsewhere in the home. (By contrast, the Apple TV can pull down PC-free video podcasts, so long as they're indexed on the iTunes Store.)

The Web video functionality requires TiVo's Desktop Plus 2.6 software, available for download today ($25 for new users, or a free upgrade for users of the existing software). For now, it's a Windows-only solution, though TiVo says that the company is continuing "to work with Roxio on delivering equivalent functionality on the Mac platform." With any luck, perhaps the new Desktop Plus software will also swat those TiVoToGo bugs that have been afflicting some TiVo users for the past several months.

(Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office / uspto.gov)

AppleInsider has uncovered a patent filing from Apple (located here) that's a cross between what we've known as an "enhanced podcast" and the step-by-step driving directions found on the maps application that is on the iPhone and iPod touch.

In short, the design specified in the patent would let users grab driving directions (presumably from Google) and have them combined with voice activated commands that would advance the directions forward. The data would be packaged in the form of a Podcast that could be downloaded and put on the player like any other audio file.

The current system on the iPod touch and iPhone requires a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection, as well as touch input to advance the directions at each step. Presumably this system would allow the iPod or iPhone to be mounted and used in a similar fashion to a voice command-enabled GPS device via software alone. It could also signal backward compatibility with other enhanced-podcast capable devices, such as any iPod with a click wheel.

Also noted on the patent is a system for crunching the data through various servers before it ends up on the portable device. Included are servers for maps, and a text-to-speech server, the latter of which is Google has put a considerable amount of resources into, seen recently in its voice-controlled GOOG-411 mobile directory service and acquisition of online voice mail service Grand Central back in July. Despite the emphasis put on the mobile usability, nowhere in the specs is a direct line from the portable device to wireless data, as the data must pass first through a client (PC) and program (iTunes).

In the past, Apple patents have proven to be a hit-or-miss affair on upcoming technologies found in the company's consumer offerings, although a patent for a superwide laptop trackpad from 2004 ended up being a major feature in Apple's latest ultralight laptop the MacBook Air.

The usual CNET Buzz Out Loud podcast crew is operating at reduced capacity this week. Molly Wood and Jason Howell are out; only Tom Merritt is in the office. He's too chicken to do the podcast all alone, so he roped me in. Normally, I wouldn't blog a BOL guest appearance, but today we spent a good amount of the podcast discussing Web-related issues, including American Airlines' attack on Google, the Skype outage, Comcast's sabotage of BitTorrent transfers, Japan's drive to build a replacement Internet, and a guaranteed net-neutral ISP, Copowi.

Give it a listen. And if you can stand it, feel free to tune in during the rest of the week, too.

BOL subscription links:
• For RSS readers: http://www.cnet.com/i/pod/realdeal.xml
• iTunes: Subscribe