Cover Flow in Podcasting and Mobile Learning:   In addition to being the most versitile aggregator available, the iTunes application also provides your audiences with several ways to browse Podcast Channels to find a specific episode any number of subscriptions. Browsing the Podcast Library can be done using either the List, Grid or CoverFlow view.

Thus, authoring learning materials for podcast and mobile learning should consider how best to facilitate discovery through browsing. In iTunes, Mobile media can contain a great deal of data in addition to the primary content. These extra bits include: Title, Descriptions (short & long), Various kinds of metadata, Lyrics (or other blocks of text) and Artwork.

Text titles for both podcast channels and their episodes are especially important to browsing in List view and, so, should be carefully constructed. Titles can be supplemented by textual descriptions. Here's a screencast showing how one might browse the Podcast Library in iTunes using the List view.

Browsing Podcast Channels in Grid and CoverFlow views relies more heavily upon graphic cues than on text. Here's a screencast showing how one might browse the Podcast Library in iTunes using the CoverFlow view. As you can readily imagine, having greater control over what graphic image will be used to represent the entire channel is high on the author's list of priorities. The surest way for an author to control the image that iTunes.app uses to represent a podcast channel is to use the same album art for all episodes in that channel. Here's why.

The image that is used to represent the channel depends upon a number of factors and rules of precedence as follows:

• Album Art of First Episode
• First Frame of First Enhanced Audio Episode
• Video Poster Frame of First Episode (video only)
• Video Frame Taken at +10 Seconds on the Time Line of the First Episode (video only)
• Generic Podcast Icon

Conclusion: So, who's on first? Given that episodes are arranged by publication date and the fact that your audience may elect to download some but not all episodes, it can be difficult to know in advance which episode will be listed first in a given channel. Since Album Art has the highest precedence, you can use the same album art for all episodes in a channel and thereby control what image is used to represent the channel regardless of whether your audience have elected to download one episode, all episodes or something in between.

Other instances of Cover Flow in iTunes.app. In the iTunes.app, cover flow is also an option for browsing Music, Movies and TV Shows. The display for movies is rather straightforward, there is a 1:1 correspondence between each movie and the image used to represent it. TV shows and Music are, like Podcast Channels, hierarchical. A TV show can have multiple episodes and a Music Album can have multiple "singles." In these cases, the cover art represents the TV Show or Music Album. However, it is sometimes the case that a music title is not associated with an album. In that case, the single musical piece is represented by its own image. This is unique to music.

Cover Flow in MacOS X Finder.Outside of the iTunes.app, we find that cover flow is also used in the Finder.app in MacOS X 10.5 and later. Documents are nicely represented as thumbnails and many applications are represented by their icons. However, folders are rather uniformly bland unless the end user has gone to some trouble to customice the appearance of their folders.

Cover Flow in iPhone and iPod touch On these mobile devices, cover flow is only found in the Music.app and there, is confined to music. Audio Podcasts, which are also accessed via the Music.app, are not displayed in Cover Flow. Neither is Cover Flow used by the Videos.app where you would find Movies, TV Shows and Video Podcasts.

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