National Public Radio (NPR) here in the US has some great audio content and the offering got even better today with the release of a new “mix your own” podcast option. Users enter a list of categories and keywords and the NPR site dynamically generates an RSS feed you can subscribe to in iTunes or elsewhere. It’s just the latest innovation built on top of the new NPR API.
The user experience is great and we think it makes NPR podcast content immediately more compelling. You get an instant preview of what will be in your feed and it’s really easy to use.
We wish that there was an option to do keyword search as something other than a full-text search, right now any mention of your word in an article gets it included on your feed, but that’s our only complaint so far.
There’s some rights issues with a couple of the big NPR shows but that’s not the end of the world. It’s pretty great that this new custom configuration is now the default setting for the Podcasts page.
We would also love to see these custom podcasts made accessible through the great year-old NPR mobile site.
We hope the innovation over at NPR will continue fast and furious, especially now that there’s a new CEO in town. Former head of NYTimes.com Vivian Schiller was just named the new CEO of NPR last month.
