A couple of days ago I noted del.icio.us system tags. Yeah, okay, I didn’t go into detail, but I also didn’t have the big picture. So, okay, certain filetypes on del.icio.us get their own specific tag, for instance, .mp3′s. An .mp3 gets the tag: “system:filetype:mp3,” which means you can search del.icio.us for anything with that tag and find bunches of mp3′s. Or movies. Or, uh, pdf’s, whatever.
Here’s where it gets seriously sweet: del.icio.us automatically creates an RSS enclosure feed for each of those tags, so…
This URL: http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3 will take you to a del.icio.us page filled with the latest .mp3′s tagged on del.icio.us. You can add a delimiter, say for podcasts by adding a + and your delimiter at the end. You can string as many delimiters as you want. So the URL for .mp3 mashups would be http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3+mashups.
No, really, it’s cool. Just give me five more minutes!
As I was saying, del.icio.us automatically creates an RSS feed for the system:filetype tags. You just add “rss” before tag in the URL, thusly: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mp3+mashups, and now you have a feed to which you can subscribe that will automatically download the tagged filetype.
So, what you have is an easy, hands-off way to automatically find and download all of the coolest new stuff found by people on del.icio.us for you. I’ve tried it in NetNewsWire and it looks like it should work fine. I’ve also tried it in iTunes and it works great, even with video. Granted, iTunes is not my favorite for podcast subscriptions, but this is pretty cool. Just look in the “Advanced” menu, choose “Subscribe to Podcast…” and enter your link in the field. iTunes will download whatever it finds, based on your podcast downloading preferences. You can even use iTunes to play the videos it downloads. Participatory Culture.org made a bit of a splash recently with DTV which does, basically, the same thing. It has a few more features than iTunes, but I think there are some who are going to wonder why they should have two apps that can subscribe, download and watch video when they can have one.
And then, of course, when the fabled video iPod appears, you’re going to need to move your subscribed videos with iTunes anyway, so…
I’m still geeking out over it.
Technorati Tags: computers, del.icio.us, geek, Internet, iPod, Mac, P2P, podcast, podcasting, RSS, technology, television
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