I randomly found the “AmericanRhetoric.com”:1 today, and I’m glad that I did. It’s an archive of some of the greatest American speeches from America’s past to present. Check it out for a free history lesson.

In my quick review of the site, I couldn’t find any automagic way to link it to iTunes, but you can easily manually add the speeches to a playlist after downloading them. Looks like the speeches are all in .MP3 file format.

[2(JFK at Rice University)]http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkriceuniversity.htm

[1(AmericanRhetoric.com homepage)]http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbank.htm

If you’re looking for some interesting podcasts, you might try “Stanford on iTunes”:1. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and they’ve steadily been adding more and more content.

Using iTunes as a distribution platform is a great way to get content out onto the internet in a way that “a lot”:2 of users are familiar with. However, there is one huge problem — it’s proprietary. Why is this a problem? Well, as Jon Udell “notes”:2, you can’t link directly to a file in the Stanford iTunes store (I tried, as suggested at the bottom of Jon’s post, to Right-Click -> Copy iTunes Music Store URL, but that command doesn’t seem to capture anything). And what’s even worse for people that don’t own an iPod, the Stanford audio files are encoded using Apple’s non-DRM .M4A file format. If you want to listen to these files away from your desktop, you’ve got to have a iPod or convert them to .MP3 (which is painful, but doable).

But even with the proprietary problems, there’s some great, free content available at Stanford on iTunes, so check it out.

[3(Jon Udell on Stanford iTunes madness)]http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/01/15.html#a1371

[2(Apples Q4 2005 earnings)]http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/jan/18results.html

[1(Stanford on iTunes homepage)]http://itunes.stanford.edu/

Even though “podcasting”:1 isn’t mainstream yet, it’s about to get a big boost towards mainstream thanks to Apple. During Steve Job’s keynote at Apple’s WWDC conference, Mr. Jobs announced that Apple will soon be supporting podcasting natively within its iTunes client. Since Apple controls over 80% of the downloaded music market (legal market, that is), this is going to bring podcasting to a large number of people. Hats off to them for recognizing and supporting this trend (you know, instead of suing somebody for using the word “pod”).

Oh, of course Apple is really going to make it easy to find and download podcasts — something that isn’t exactly obvious right now. Currently you first need to find a podcast that you want to download. Then you need to download it. Then if you like it, you have subscribe to it. And in order to subscribe to a podcast, you have to find and download a podcasting client.

All of this hassle is going away in a future version of iTunes. iTunes will allow you to find, sample, subscribe and manage all of your podcasts. That’s pretty cool.

Hey, but don’t take my word for it. Check out Mr. Jobs’ demonstration which was part of his keynote “here”:2. The keynote is worth watching for the news about Apple’s switch to Intel, widget demo and some other interesting stuff — and the fact that Apple *blows* everyone out of the water in marketing. That is, the keynote is slick, slick, slick.

[2(Steve Jobs keynote at Apples WWDC conference)]http://stream.apple.akadns.net/

[1(Wikipedia on podcasting)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

Over on David Kaye’s (the “ITConversations”:2 guy) “Blogarithms”:1, David recently “wrote”:5 about “Podscope”:3. Podscope is a search engine that allows you to textually search the audio content of podcasts.

For example, if you search on the term “_China_”:4, Podscope will search the podcasts that it has indexed for mentions of the word _China_. It also creates an audio snippet that contains the word you are searching on. You can play the snippet directly from the browser. The snippet is also labeled with the time the mention occurred during the podcast.

Although the service is a little rough (hey, it’s in beta) and not perfect, it’s far better than nothing.

[5(Davids post on Podscope)]http://www.rds.com/blogs/doug/index.php/archives/2005/04/20/podscope-is-cool/

[4(A Podscope search on "China")]http://www.podscope.com/search.php?q=China

[3(Podscope a Podcasting search engine)]http://www.podscope.com

[2(ITConversations... home of cool, tech audio content)]http://www.itconversations.com

[1(David Kayes blog)]http://www.rds.com/blogs/doug/index.php

Broadcasting podcasts? That just sounds strange.

Traditional radio stations have been feeling pressure from MP3 devices, satellite radio, the internet, etc. In a move to try and combat this assault, Infinity Broadcasting’s KYCY AM plans on airing podcasts starting May 16th as reported in the “WSJ”:1 today.

KYCY — I couldn’t find a “real” web site link — is an AM station based in San Francisco, CA. Podcasts will be broadcast (there it is again) from noon until 8 p.m. There are no plans to compensate podcasters for their shows, but at least it will give some podcasters a little exposure.

Surely this is a sign that podcasting is going mainstream.

[1($WSJ$ -- An Infinity Station Tries New Format -- Wall-to-Wall Podcasts)]http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111465060635319067,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace