The New York Times > Technology > For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting

The New York Times > Technology > For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting: "The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing.
That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city's Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting - the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts."

My initial reaction: with XML syndication, myriad feed aggregator clients, etc., what role would an intermediary service have for podcasting? Then I read on:

"... Odeo, which is scheduled to make its formal debut on Friday at the Technology, Entertainment & Design Conference in Monterey, Calif., was founded by Noah Glass and Evan Williams, two pioneers of the Web logging, or blogging, movement.
Mr. Williams, who is 32, helped found a maker of Web logging software, Pyra Labs [creator of Blogger], which he sold to Google in 2003 for an undisclosed amount of stock, and then stayed at the company until last October. He predicts that podcasting will repeat the steep growth curve of the text blogging phenomenon - which went from only a few thousand blogs when he entered the field in 1999 to more than 7.3 million today."

Definitely one to watch...