As a recovering iPhone user, I’ve spent the past month and a half learning the ins and outs of everything Windows Phone 8. For the most part, it’s been a great experience. Most of my high usage apps from iOS exist on the Windows Phone 8 platform, and those that don’t typically have good third party solutions.
There are plenty of podcast apps in the store, but I really don’t want to use them. Why? There’s built in podcast subscription functionality (US only, sorry Europe) and it’s pretty solid for the most part. It’s better than Apple’s subpar offering.. this one doesn’t crash – I can say that at least!
The biggest problem I had though, being a podcaster, is that I had no idea how to add my podcast to the directory. I poked around on the Xbox Marketplace, various Microsoft websites, and even downloaded legacy Zune software – nothing gave me a good answer. I was able to submit the RSS feed through the Zune software, but that seemed to go absolutely nowhere.
This week, though, I finally came across this post on Microsoft’s support forums:
In short, there’s this guy to get in touch with. It’s not officially published anywhere, but if you talk to him – he’ll hook you up. Sound shady? Yeah. But is this guy hooked up? Yeah. One quick email with all the vital information (Podcast Title, Author, URL to RSS feed, URL to logo) to podcasts [at] microsoft.com, and my podcast was listed within mere hours.
Be nice to him, though – I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there who are trying to submit their podcasts (or their favorite unlisted podcasts) to him.
And to Rob – I know you’re just a part of some screwy system, but thank you for your help!