Ping is the new social networking side of iTunes that lets you follow artists and friends to see what they are listening to, tracks they are buying, concerts coming up etc. Sounds great but how do you get your friends to find and follow you? This bit should be simple but in a very un-Apple-esque way it isn’t.

Fortunately you can just copy a link to your profile and send that to friends via email/twitter/facebook/etc.

First you need to launch iTunes and then click on the Ping icon underneath store:

You should now see your own personal profile page. All you need to do here is right click (ctrl-click) on your name at the top and then select “Copy Link” from the drop-down list. This copies a link to your profile onto your clipboard that you can paste into an email, tweet, etc

The link will look similar to:

http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=92779645 [This is my profile link btw]

and will open your web browser and should then automatically open your iTunes and navigate to your Ping profile page for others to easy hit the follow button.

The BBC has now launched a special iPhone specific web page to allow you to browse and listen to all the BBC podcasts on your iPhone.

You can simply go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your iPhone now, the site will recognise that you are browsing from your iPhone and take you straight to the iPhone-formatted version of the page.

If you go the the link from a normal web browser on your computer you will be presented with the normal full version of the page. For those of you who want to see what the iPhone version looks like in your normal browser then go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/ip/#_welcome

I’ve just quickly tabbed through the directory and started streaming the Chris Moyles podcast, started instantly from within Safari as a “video”, basically the quicktime player.

If you’d like to listen to it on the journey to work/college/etc I’ve just tried turning my wifi connection off and it continues to play. If you start listening to it while you’re at home and give it enough time to cache the entire podcast (keep an eye on the white timebar, that’s showing you download progress you can continue to listen on the move.

BBC – Radio – Podcasts – Directory

Along with my local “Computer” speakers and Airport Express “Lounge” speakers that I used to have in iTunes

the AppleTV now appeared in the drop down list of available speakers to stream music to:

I hit play in iTunes and selected the AppleTV speakers from the selection box, after a few seconds pause to connect with the AppleTV, my song started streaming through the TV speakers and surround system in my lounge.

This is great news for me as I only purchased my Airport Express to stream music to the Lounge since the AppleTV didn’t have Airtunes functionality. Now I can remove the Airport Express and put that into the kitchen, and I was about to buy another Airport Express just for that so I’ve saved £70 thanks to Apple’s free update.

There is an new option page in the AppleTV settings for Airtunes allowing you to turn the feature on/off and also set an Airtunes password:

UPDATE:
If you have your TV turned on and showing the AppleTV source, when you change tracks on your computer/laptop and stream to the Apple TV Airtunes speakers the corresonding track name and album art are shown on the TV as if you were selecting and playing the music from the Apple TV.