I sent the iPodderX folks some ideas to integrate a media player into their application. I've sent them some ideas, but haven't heard back from them.

My main concern at the moment is with using podcasts on my Mac, not with how their application handles the transfer to my iTunes. Presently in iPodderX there is a drawer that expands to show a media reader, but it doesn't actually do anything yet. I was thinking of how the application could be made more functional if that media player were functional and if OMPL show notes could be used with the playing podcast somehow. I was thinking that the OMPL could be tied to time markers in the show so that those branches of the show notes could be shown during playback. See the screen I proposed below, showing how some of this might play with the iPodder UI. I'm not really to big a fan of the drawer for the media player.

When I'm listening to Adam Curry's DSC, for instance, he often mentions other podcasts or web sites, which are captured in the show notes. If I'm listening on my Mac, I have to browse to his OMPL notes on his site and then click through the tree until I find the matching node to click the link. Wouldn't it be cool if that branch just expanded in the iPodder Media Player when that part of the show passes the play head?

I can think of a lot of other use cases for Podcast applications, mainly taking some relevant features of RSS News Readers (especially in the area of feed management) and incorporating them into iPodder. Some of typical News Reader features might be overkill for iPodder, but importing feed lists via OPML seems to make sense. The show notes concept may be sort of a reach idea because it would require some standardization of OPML show notes, but I'd like to see that happen if possible in the future.