Redirecting
I've been tearing out my hair the past week or so (and I'm talking figuratively - see the picture) over my podcast not showing up in the iTunes feed.
I claim that iTunes is the easiest will to collect and keep track of your podcasts, what with the cut-off feature where it stops updating, and thereby clogging up your hard drive (essential for laptop users), podcasts you haven't listened to for a while, among other tricks.
Mike Versteeg disagrees with me, and having used Winpodder on my Windows XP laptop I can see the usefulness of his software. And now that I'm having issues with iTunes collecting the latest episodes of my own podcast I'm starting to rethink my aggregator loyalties.
According to Neil Dixon of Britcaster notoriety the redirection that takes place within Libsyn's servers causes delays in aggregators picking up the lastest files. Add to that the redirect that Podtrac uses to tot up total unique downloads, and the average podcast file stored with Libsyn and tracked by Podtrac is being pinged about like the ball in the final match of the Chinese table tennis championship.
So, what is the solution, anyone?
posted by mark - tartanstories.com @ 5:44 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
That damn iTunes just stopping downloading stuff made me miss a bunch of shows. I hadn't realised until last week it had stopped downloading virtually evry podcast subscription (had a moan about the lack of flexibility with it on my latest podcast). There should at the very least be a setting... somewhere...
I thought there was a setting that allowed you to turn on/off the auto switching off of podcast downloads...can remember where I saw that tho.
I don't really think there is an alternative to recommending Itunes.
Those of us that are regularly downloading podcasts can figure out for ourselves what software we like best, but I've tried to get a lot of other people into downloading podcasts and I really don't think there is a better way than if it's built into the same software they use as a music library. Get them to use Itunes as a library and they don't mind the extra click to view podcasts.
Try to tell a non-techie person about cutting and pasting feed urls or firing up a separate app to collect their podcasts - then they lose interest.
I think the best hope would be that the final version of WMP 11 includes a podcatcher - not that I think it'll be any good, just that people will use it in the same way most people use IE instead of Firefox - and a bit of competition might get Itunes to actually improve their product!
Post a Comment
<< Home