Wed 28 Feb 2007
Podcasts & Lyrics
Posted by theGoodWitch under accessibility, mobile computing, museums, technology
[5] Comments
I’m in a quandry. I’m producing podcasts for my favorite museum and I want to make them very accessible. I’ve taken the time to add the transcript for each podcast to the lyrics metadata of each mp3…only to discover that the most current iPods deny me the joy of seeing the transcript/lyrics.
A cheesy solution is to dump the transcript into the rss feed for the podcast in the description. It doesn’t feel symantically proper…but it does allow even ancient iPods (like my iPod mini) to access the transcript.
So, at the moment, I’ve doubled up. I want to leave the transcript in the lyrics because that is semantically correct. But I have to put the transcripts in the description if I want anyone to actually see them on their iPod.
What do you think? Should I keep it doubled up? Or should I just put the transcript in the description?
And of course, I’ll be talkin’ to Apple asking them about their plans to solve this problem in the future.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Of course, Apple does not comment on future product releases, but I can tell you that I added it as a feature request: <rdar://problem/5031105>
February 28th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Ahhhhhhh….my hero! Can’t wait to see you next week :-)
March 1st, 2007 at 4:52 am
I don’t know much about iPods, but would SMIL be an option? The interpretation of SMIL in different media players varies, but I once succeeded to run it in QuickTime. Try to open the file in your text editor and you’ll see the XML, although your application would be less complex.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Martin, SMIL is an option to ponder. At this point, iPods don’t support SMIL but that doesn’t mean they won’t. I just found a podcaster in Manchester who is using SMIL with podcasts. I’ll let you know what I discover from my conversations with him!
March 7th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Oooh, yes, I had one of those…I had Marvel Action heroes in my Viewmaster!!! Hahahahaha…..(now, I’m just a big dumb kid again!) :D
Oh, just thought I’d say: Virb has gone LIVE.
Oh, and you’re on the screenshot image for my Flickr notice about it – see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattrobin/414139229/
;)