It’s not dirty, nor is it really a secret, but here’s the truth of it: Many people in the content-generating biz are rabidly interested in the popularity of their work. Check a book author’s browser history and, dollars-to-doughnuts, that author has visited Amazon at least once a day to see how many places his or her title has moved in Amazon’s rankings. Technorati will likewise be found high on the list of the serious blogger’s bookmarks.
Thanks to the presence of podcasts at the iTunes Store, podcasters have joined the club. You, as non-podcaster, may not have visited iTunes’ Top 100 Technology Podcasts page because, well, you likely have healthier ways to stroke your ego, but I guarantee that those whose podcasts do (or may, one day, if Leo Laporte would just retire for crying out loud and give someone else a friggin’ chance) appear on this page have nearly worn the poor thing out with their constant visits.
But pity the poor podcaster. Why? Because, while the iTunes Store may look like a browser, it doesn’t offer this most important browser feature: No bookmarks. There’s no obviously easy way to get to those all-important ratings pages.
“Ah,” you say, “why not create a playlist and drag podcast into it? That works for music tracks.”
It does but this doesn’t. Try to drag a podcast or one of its episodes to a playlist and you get bupkis. And it makes sense. Unlike music tracks, which Apple hosts, podcast links are simply pointers to material somewhere in the great Internet mash. Servers and addresses change as often as Paris Hilton’s partners. Plus podcast episodes eventually scroll away into nothingness.
So, what are these poor souls to do? If they simply wish to see if anyone has praised their work in the form of a comment they need do little more than choose their podcast in the Podcasts entry in the iTunes source list and click the little arrow that appears next to the Explicit or Clean tag. Doing so whisks you to that podcast’s home on iTunes.
Regrettably, you can’t bookmark a rankings page this way. But hope is not lost. Simply right-click (or, okay, if you insist on sticking with a one-button mouse—and really, it’s time to move on Mac users—Control-click) on a link to the ratings page you wish to visit and choose Copy iTunes Store URL. Open your web browser, create a new bookmark, and paste that URL into the bookmark. Now when you wish to view your worth through the world’s eyes, select this bookmark in your browser. iTunes will launch and take you to the page linked to that bookmark.