The ideal podcast publisher: Webjay vs Blogger-Smartcast

I’ve already created some podcasts with Webjay and some with Blogger + Feedburner‘s SmartCast. Neither of both was originally made for podcast feeds.
Webjay (put back online by Lucas after a hacker break-in) is actually a great playlist creator tool, whose ‘RSS’ converter happens to be podcast compatible.
Blogger is the most used general-purpose blogging tool, and needs to be combined with Feedburner’s inventive Atom-to-RSS feed converter to allow audio enclosures.

If you compare creating a podcast with both:

Webjay (e.g. Smoothouse October List)

PRO: zero startup time / also provides M3U, SMIL, ASX playlist support (for playing in WinAmp, RealPlayer, WMP, …) / has a playlist importer (get all the MP3 links from a page and put them into a playlist

CON: no way to add meta-data / no way to modify look-and-feel

Blogger + SmartCast (e.g. Smoothpod Mashups / Backroomsounds podcast)

PRO: meta-data (playlist/transcription/related links) can be put in the blog post body / optimal results in Google/Technorati/Feedster / maximum flexibility for adapting look ‘n feel

CON: no that trivial to set up / no ‘play-it-all-now’ functionality except when added manually

This is what an ideal Podcast publishing tool would look like for me:

• minimal set-up: no technical knowledge required – comparable with the setting up of a new Blogger blog
• adding a new post should be easy – a wizard like ‘add-the-audio-file’ – ‘write-the-text’ – ‘publish!’.

• use standard templates like

  one-person talk show (e.g. Daily Sourcecode)

  name of the host, list of topics, list of music (if any), some related links

  multi-person conversation (e.g. Gillmor Gang)

  name of participants, list of topics, related links

  music show (e.g. Coverville)

  host, playlist, guest DJ

  …

• provide download statistics for the feed and the individual files
• also provide a ‘play-now’ button for each audio file, and maybe a ‘play-complete-playlist-now’ functionality
• be conscious about audio file types (like Webjay): .MP3 can be played by anything, .AAC is for iTunes/iPod, WMA for WMP, … so you could have a ‘subscribe to this podcast with iTunes/RealPlayer/Windows Media Player/…’ choice
• automatic ping of audio.weglogs.com (and Ping-o-Matic)
• take care of directory inclusion (ipodder OPML, …)
• include tools like BlogTorrent or a point-and-click preconfigured FTP uploader for easy audio file upload
• easy access to directories of RIAA-free music
• easy access to feed validator
• easy access to podcast delivery networks (with cheap bandwidth)

Anything I forgot?