Is there such a thing as IMAP for podcasts?

I own a desktop, laptop, iPod, smartphone and a web-client all downloading StackOverflow Podcasts. (among others) They all tell me which episodes are available and which are already played. Everything is a horrible mess, ofcourse. My iPod is somewhat in sync with my desktop, but everything else is a random jungle.

The same problem with e-mail is solved by IMAP. Every device gets content and meta-information from one server, and stays in sync with it. Per device, I can set preferences (do or do not download the complete archive including junkmail).

Can we implement the IMAP approach for podcasts? Or is there a better metaphore/standard to solve this problem? How will the adoption-strategy look like?

(by the way: except for the Windows smartphone, I own a full Apple-stack of products. Even then, I run into this problem)

UPDATE The RSS-to-Imap link to sourceforge looks promesting, but very alpha/experimental.

UPDATE 2 The one thing RSS is missing is the command/method/parameter/attribute to delete/unread items. RSS can only add, not remove. If RSS(N+1) (3?) could add a value for unread="true|false", it would be solved. If I cache all my RSS-feeds on my own server, and add the attribute myself, I only would have to convince iTunes and every other client to respect that.