Andy Volk posted a great interactive RSS feed maker embedded right in a Yahoo! Search blog entry, that creates a feed URL for any Yahoo! Video search query. Then he provides instructions for plugging that feed URL into iTunes and seeing the results display within iTunes. From there, individual videos can be easily transferred to the new iPod. These are not necessarily vlogs or video podcasts; in fact, most Yahoo! video results are neither. So, the questionable legality of all this copying makes my head spin, but never mind that now. (Yahoo! has always demonstrated guts in the operation of Yahoo! Video.) This RSS feed gambit is exceptionally cool … but why is Yahoo!'s podcast strategy so focused on iTunes? Why doesn't this instant-RSS feed work similarly in the Yahoo! Music Engine? (I poked around and couldn't see any way to make it happen.) Y!ME is just as good a program as iTunes, and the Music Unlimited service for which it serves as a front end is certainly better (in my book) than iTMS. Same deal with Yahoo! Podcasts, which is oddly skewed toward iTunes functionality.

So, guys and gals at Yahoo!— stop bending over. Making everything compatible with iTunes? Yes. Promoting iTunes excessively and dissing your own fine products? No.