A year after giving podcasting a boost by adding a podcast directory to iTunes, Apple is shaking things up by revising their list of categories as detailed in a very long (and too long to post here) email they sent out early this morning.

If have a podcast in iTunes you probably got the email. Technical details on the change can be found here.

The changes mean that all podcasters will need to update their feeds to match up with iTunes' category structure or they risk getting lost in the directory. So ya better get a move on!

Of course, Apple shook things up when they introduced the iTunes podcast directory due to their insistence on separate, and totally new, iTunes tags in podcast RSS feeds. Luckily for folks like me the people at Feedburner were on the case and supported the changes quickly. LibSyn did the same by adding iTunes tags to their publishing tool as well.

There is a question that must be asked here though. Should Apple continue to be the entity that sets the defacto standard here? It seems to me that the players in the podcasting directory space and the RSS thinkers (like Dave Winer) should get together and hammer out a common spec that will stay consistent over a long period of time.