Alex asked me to reblog his post on PodServer here.  So here goes:

This afternoon we had a Big in Japan meeting and the guys presented several new features, a couple of which were interesting enough to share.  So I have explained PodServer here.  So if you need to catch up do so.  For the rest of you, here goes:

Feature One: PodServer makes it easy to create, store and share your podcast by simply uploading an mp3.  Each time you create a new ‘show’ you upload it to your podcast and it becomes available to anyone subscribed to your feed.  The relationship is simple – 1 person per podcast.  What if the relationship model could be broken wide open?  That is exactly what the Big in Japan guys have done.

Imagine that you are a member of the Book of the Month Club.  Now you and the rest of the club can get together once a month to review your thoughts of the book, but what if you could time-shift the meeting?  Each of you could record your thoughts in an mp3 and upload it to the Book of the Month Club Podcast (i.e. anyone in the club could upload their mp3) and the podcast would be a combination of all of your thoughts.  This could work for public debate on topics (maybe not as well), but for limited groups it might be interesting.  Thoughts?

Feature Two: FrankenFeed for podcasts.  Imagine that you are a fan of three different VC podcasts and you want to share them with your friends.  You could send all three RSS feeds (in their long URL glory) to your friends or you could use FrankenFeed to combine them into a single VC Podcast Feed.  As you found new VC podcasts you want your friends to listen to you could simply add them to the original VC Podcast Feed without bothering your friends – they would just get the new content in the original feed.  Neat, huh?

PodServer is written with Ruby on Rails and features touches of Ajax.  Today it is deliverying ‘alpha’ podcasts and should be launched (in beta) as part of the Big in Japan toolbox next month.