The simplest podcast API ever

Monday, February 18, 2008 by Dave Winer.

A new service from BlogTalkRadio... 

Call their special phone number: 646-200-0000. It records the call. When you're done it creates an RSS 2.0 feed with an enclosure that's an MP3 of the call.  

The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from. I just called in a podcast from my Nokia N95, which they added to this feed: 

http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/8583429663  

That's all there is to it! No registration. They have a web page for it, but it's completely unnecessary.  

It's the new application of RSS that I wrote about on Saturday. It's brilliant because of it's so simple. 

Some people think innovation in technology is about how hard it is to implement, or how long it took, or how complex it is, or convoluted. They see innovation as wizardry. I see it differently. I'm impressed by the ratio of functionality to complexity. I like that number to be as big as possible, because the less complex it is, the fewer moving parts, the less likely it is to break, and the easier it will be for others to build on the idea. 

Hats off to the BTR guys, they've come up with something truly useful that's also very simple.  

Could it be simpler? I don't see how.