Yesterday Apple released version 4.9 of iTunes. The big change was built in support for podcasts. I've been using iPodder and have been pretty happy with it, but I'm giving iTunes a go just to see how it compares. The integration is bound to be nice, but I'm not wild about the podcast directory in Apple's Music Store. I'm hoping that I'll be able to manage my podcasts more automatically.

One thing for sure, having built-in support for podcasts will make the medium much more mainstream. Doug Kaye reports that yesterday, because of the release of iTunes 4.9, was IT Conversation's biggest day ever: 378Gb. A sign of things to come, I suspect.