intertwingly

Apple has released their PodCast Specifications.  I note three places where the specifications deviate from their sample, in one case, significantly so.

• Spec: <itunes:explicit> There are 2 possible values for this tag: Yes or No
• Sample: <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>

• Spec: <itunes:duration> The tag is formatted: HH:MM:SS
• Sample: <itunes:duration>7:04</itunes:duration>

• Spec: <itunes:image>
• Sample: <itunes:link rel="image" type="video/jpeg" href="http://www.itunes.com/podcasts/everything/AllAboutEverything.jpg">All About Everything</itunes:link>

Other thoughts:

• Given the rather constrained set of permissible values for itunes:category, validation can be a significant value add here.
• I like the way the specification clearly states that a number of elements are not to contain HTML.
• I also note with interest that this specification encourages the use of utf-8.  Perhaps a warning is in order if the itunes namespace is encountered and the encoding is other than utf-8.