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The Rodeo, thoughts on Odeo
Odeo, in case you didn’t know yet, is the new project by Evan Williams (of Blogger fame), Noah Glass and their new company of talented developers. Odeo promises to bring podcasting to the masses by simplifying the process of getting your audio material out there, and by allowing people to subscribe to their interests on audio feeds. So now I’ve seen it, what’s it like?
Lets start with their promise
Odeo’s goal is to make podcasting easy for everyone. And they do accomplish that. 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.
The Odeo Syncr
The syncr is a nice touch. Its a little application that sits on your computer and “syncs” the audio content that you subscribe to with your computer, so you can then transfer it to your music player (or, heck, play it right there). There’s only one thing that got in my mind with the Syncr. There is no reference at all to any kind of version number with the app. This should be taken care of unless this version will be used for ever and ever (which, face it, it wont).
People should be notified of updates to the Syncr itself, because even if it is a simple application, it is the “middleware” between the odeo online system and your computer. Its a fundamental part of the whole application, because without it, you won’t actually be downloading anything; and I find it hard to believe that there won’t be any bugs found in the first couple of live months.
Update: In the comments, rabble notes that the Syncr does notify the user when a new version has been released. I also just noticed that the About window does show a version number (mine is 0.34 right now).
Usability / Interaction review
Odeo is a nice-looking web application. It is simple and comprehensible enough to make sure a beginner can explore the whole system easily. 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. I would, however, have the news on top of the Zeitgeist if the content on there will be of some benefit to the users of odeo. That, or maybe having the headlines on the sidebar linking to a news item page. I find that news for the system are more important than the current listening habits of users in terms of front page visibility (even if that’s something people can easily argue on).
Tags / Categorization: Odeo has some tag choices that are on the sidebar, and a “tags” page so people can look at the whole tag universe. However, there’s no real point to a full tag page if it doesn’t apply the same principles of a tag cloud (more frequently used items get bigger in size), because there’s no real sense someone can make out of a page that looks like this:
This is no means of categorization if there’s no real visual feedback on how important each item is. Tell me now, is a podcast with the keyword “bong” as important as a tag with the keyword “music”? The tags page should show exactly that.
Browsing: The “listen” page is where you’ll be spending some time, and I believe it needs some changes. I like how it shows the featured channels, and the Odeo top 10. But there’s something obviously lacking here, and that’s a tag cloud with, say, the 20 most popular tags on the system, so people can keep up with the most explored topics. I feel that is only natural. Apart from that, it looks pretty good.
Overall usability: The system is pretty tightly conceived. It doesn’t need over 5 clicks to get to where you want to go, and it gives you ways to go just about anywhere on the system in one or two clicks. I also like how the whole functional space is divided into 3 main options (Listen / Sync / Create), which makes it easy for you to serve your purpose fast when visiting the page.
So the final showdown
I like it. I like how it works, and I like how it behaves, even if its still a beta. I also believe it is ready to be launched, especially given how I believe development on the web2.0 should be. I do believe they have played the right cards with the syncr option and the studio (even if that’s not live yet - not for everybody anyway) because that’s what will make a difference with iTunes on the competitors panel. So my final saying is, go Odeo!
This whole article highlights what I believe to be the strong and weak points of Odeo as a web-application. Hope that was an interesting read.
[...] er, 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 pr [...]
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