Journal: News & Comment

Apple's new "itpc" podcast URL prefix

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This is news to me, but perhaps not to others. I just got myself a copy of iLife '06 from Apple, and I have to say that iWeb in particular is pretty slick. Yes, while the HTML it outputs does validate (yay), it is extraordinarily poorly structured, using a series of <div> tags instead of proper headings and such. But hey, 1.0.

What I do find interesting is that if you publish a podcast with iWeb, Apple includes a Subscribe link that has something new. Previously, to subscribe in iTunes you needed an iTunes Music Store podcast directory URL, which took you to a podcast's page in the iTMS, where you could then subscribe. Here's the link that appears on my podcast page today:

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73799388

But in iWeb, your podcast page Subscribe link button is something much friendlier—the RSS feed's actual URL, but using an "itpc" (iTunes Podcast, I presume) prefix, which just subscribes you in iTunes. That will work with ANY podcast feed (or other feed, I presume, though what iTunes might do with it is another question), whether it's in the iTunes Store or not. In my case:

itpc://www.penmachine.com/rss/podcastmp3.xml

If you're already subscribed, it just takes you to your subscription in iTunes. I haven't yet tried to figure out how to map itpc: to another program, like NetNewsWire or Juice Receiver. But it could be done, and makes one-click subscribing much easier, since podcasts have their own prefix instead of just https:

Now, this probably runs afoul of some process for creating these things, but I think it's an improvement over the old iTunes Store method.

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