Disclosure: As of June 1, 2008 I’ve been helping with Zune podcast submissions in the Zune Marketplace. Do you need help with your Zune podcast submission?

I’ll get back to this disclosure shortly since it’s new to readers. It’s the first time I’ve mentioned this gig in a blog post here. This news has been part of the new MakeYouGoHmm about page added last week.

Zune links
A Friendfeed everyone search for keyword ‘zune’ just led me to a new Zune feature this morning: Zune links.

To use the tool, just enter in keyword(s) and the tool will return matching links to: artists, albums, playlists, music videos, podcasts and videos. I’m curious how the playlist search works especially because I have my privacy settings set to allow “everyone” to view my Zune social settings, but don’t see any of my playlists. Maybe that will be a future feature?

Here is an example link for the the Hmmcast (stale, I know, it’s been over 5 months since last update), which I added border=’0′ to it:

Hmmcast

You will need the Zune software installed on your computer to follow that link.

As Sean Alexander, a Microsoft employee, points out, the iTunes Music Store has had this feature for awhile so it’s nice to see the Zune team add it. Sean adds:

My personal favorite, the Zune Social experience. The links take you directly to Zune Social where you preview the songs, see stats on listenership, read a review and more.

Sean also makes a good suggestion for somebody to possibly create a Live Writer plugin. Developer readers, there’s an opportunity.

Why are you helping with Zune podcast submissions?
It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to long time readers that I’m helping out in the Zune podcast area. I have been podcasting and writing about podcasting since the word was penned and this gives me an opportunity to get knee deep in podcast submissions all over the world. I also have written positively of the Zune player since launch (do a search for past ‘zune’ posts). Also, my whole family has been beta testing at Microsoft HQ in Redmond for several years, although I think we won’t be able to do that any more (?).

Rob Greenlee who is the lead for the Zune podcast area, invited me to guest co-host several of his WebTalk podcasts some time ago and mentioned that they could use my help reviewing podcast submissions. I jumped at the chance and as of the first of June 2008, here I am. If you are a podcaster and reading and need help with a podcast submission pending in the Zune Marketplace, please feel free to drop me a line either through Skype, Twitter, email (Gmail to my name works great) through the Zune Social of course or any of the dozens of other ways to contact me online where I’m currently active. I’m also regularly checking the official Zune forum podcast area and have already gone through the 1,400+ posts made there.

I’m also doing keyword searches for zune podcasts and tracking conversations elsewhere on the web (hence the genesis of this post), so don’t be surprised if I show up in your comment area if you’re talking about the Zune Marketplace podcast area and/or blog here and trackback to you.

Without getting into too much more detail, this is a contract gig for our online business and will be additional work, not something that replaces any of my current jobs. I still very much co-own an offline business and our online business and have been happily self-employed for 14+ years. I am also happy to be helping in the Zune podcast area and helping the podcast community at large, which I hope is crystal clear in this post.

Accordingly, I’ve added a ‘Zune’ category and will be adding the disclosure at the top of this post to any Zune-related posts where relevant going forward so that readers are clear of my professional involvement with the Zune team. I think you’ll see me promoting more new podcasts I’m discovering in the coming days more than writing that much more than I have in the past about Zune, but felt it was important to make the professional connections clear.

This new Zune link feature will make it easier to post direct links in the Zune Marketplace to these cool podcasts other people share with me and I discover through helping with the podcast submissions. So far I’ve already found some really well done podcasts that I didn’t know about.