play podcast inside gmail

Friday, May 2, 2008

A new GMail feature lets you play MP3 files right inside the GMail homepage without having to download the MP3 song or open an external media player. You can use the Gmail MP3 player to embed MP3 files into your website or blog.

When you receive an MP3 audio file as an email attachment, click the play button and Google will play the audio file for you in a Gmail popup window.

The GMail Mp3 player is actually the Google video player that's playing the audio file. In fact, you can play any MP3 files from the embedded Google Video player without even having to login to GMail. Here's the secret URL:

http://mail.google.com/mail/html/audio.swf?audioUrl=MP3_URL

To embed MP3 songs in your Blog or website, use the following Google Video Player wrapper code:

<div style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab" width="500px" height="27px" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://mail.google.com/mail/html/audio.swf"> <param name="FlashVars" value="audioUrl=MP3_URL"> <param name="quality" value="best"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#EEEEEE"> <param name="scale" value="noScale"> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"> <param name="salign" value="TL"> <embed id="Player" scale="noScale" salign="TL" src="http://mail.google.com/mail/html/audio.swf?audioUrl=MP3_URL" wmode="opaque" quality="best" bgcolor="#EEEEEE" width="500px" height="27px" name="Player" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"> </embed> </div>

Remember to replace MP3_URL with the actual location of the MP3 file on the web and play it inside Google Video. Odeo also provides an MP3 player that you can put into blogs but with Google, you can change the size of the MP3 inline player, background colors and autoplay mode with the parameters - backgroundColor=0xEEEEEE&autoPlay=true

The song shown in the Google MP3 Player screenshot is actually the 6kb Yahoo! Song. Like Odeo, you can embed any MP3 song or podcast via the Google Gmail MP3 player in your website.