Company: Odeo
Location: San Francisco
Status: Private Beta
What is it?
Odeo will be a a podcast service that lets users search, find, and subscribe to podcasts, as well as a tool to create your own podcasts with minimal hardware. Odeo is built on Rails.
In their own words, “Hi. We’re Odeo (pronounced like rodeo). Somewhere in an apartment in San Francisco, we’re making it easy for you to discover, create, and subscribe to fresh, independent audio content for your iPod (or whatever MP3-player-type-deal you prefer).”
There isn’t much to see yet because their product is only available via an invitation-only beta. However, there are a couple of people who’ve tested the product and have blogged on it.
From webreakstuff:
“They make it easy to subscribe to audio content of your preference by browsing categories, and check what everybody else is listening to. Additionally, they allow someone to add any show that’s not in the system yet, and if you’re actually the publisher of a current channel, Odeo makes it easy for you to take control and customize it.
Unfortunately the Odeo Studio feature isn’t up yet. Odeo Studio is, and I quote, a browser-based tool that makes it easy to record and publish. With the Studio, and a cheap microphone (or even the one built into your laptop), you have everything you need. Thats interesting, and if they do things right, that may be the feature that gives them the edge I was talking about on my previous post about Odeo and iTunes. We’ll have to wait and see.
I like how the overview page (the entry page to Odeo) lists featured content, the Zeitgeist (what people are listening to right now) and Odeo news.”
It looks like Odeo will also support tagging of content, which will be a crucial way to find good stuff – audio, unlike text, is hard to preview and so metadata is even more necessary.
Screen Shots:
Founders:
Evan Williams (profile) (blog)
Noah Glass (profile) (blog)
Relevant Links:
Odeo blog
NY Times Story
Evhead post on Odeo
Flickr Odeo Pics
Webreakstuff on Odeo
BackDrifter on Odeo
Philipp Lenssen on Odeo
iPodarmy on Odeo