Building Enhanced Podcasts with Windows Media

Related link: http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20051004_windows_media_enhanced_podc…

AAC files are the de facto standard for enhanced podcasts—audio files paired with links and pictures. But outside of iProducts from Apple, AAC is poorly supported.

This clever tutorial explains how to make an enhanced podcast with Windows Media Audio (WMA) files instead. That means that anyone with an Internet connection and Windows Media Player (even Mac users) can enjoy the enhanced playback. You’ll need Windows to make the files, but the process is simple. You simply embed URLs at appropriate points in the audio file using a free software tool. On playback, those links trigger Web pages to open.

When I tried playing these enhanced WMAs on a Mac, I heard brief audio dropouts as the pages were launching, but it was extremely cool to see the pages pop up as the announcer mentioned them.

As the tutorial notes, “The great potential for this feature is to provide people with a walking tour of Websites associated with whatever you are talking about. Many podcasts include show notes with links to all relevant sites mentioned throughout the course of the show, but how many listeners are actively clicking those links as they listen?”

The podcasts that inspired the tutorial are on this Xbox blog, so you can see and hear how it works.

Radio with pictures? What’s next?