Techniques and systems for supporting podcasting

Abstract

Improved podcasts and techniques that facilitate their use are disclosed. The improved techniques can pertain to creating, publishing, hosting, accessing, subscribing, managing, transferring, and / or playing podcasts. According to one aspect, a client application can subscribe to podcasts and then automatically monitor the podcasts for updates to be downloaded. In the event that user interest in a podcast becomes inadequate, downloading of further updates can be restricted. According to another aspect, a podcast can be subscribed to through use of a portable subscription file. According to still another aspect, podcast feeds can be enhanced to include segment elements and other metadata.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to podcasts, and more particularly to acquiring and playing podcasts on portable media devices. Background technique [0002] The media player stores media resources, such as audio tracks, that can be played or displayed on the media player. An example of a portable media player is the iPod media player available from Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, CA. Typically, a media player obtains its media resources from a host that functions to enable a user to manage the media resources. In the process of managing media assets, users can generate playlists for audio tracks. These playlists can be generated on the host computer. Then, the media resources in the playlist can be copied to the media player. As an example, a host can execute a media management application to generate and manage media resources. An example of a media management application is manufactured by AppleComputer, Inc. [0003] Podcasts are often use...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Management of such dynamic media assets is complex

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