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Do any of you guys subscribe to enough podcasts that you use an aggregator (aka podcatcher) to keep track of them? I really only listen to one podcast frequently - after taking a long time off from listening, I've started to get back into it now.

Unfortunately, the catcher I used to use, Juice, just doesn't want to play nice on my Windows 7 64 box for some reason; even after tweaking the config to specifically make it work, it seems to have a lot of trouble actually downloading the queue of files.

So, my question is, do any of you have one that you use and like that works in Windows 7 and isn't iTunes? Or, do you have any questions about podcasts, I guess, since this is a pretty specific topic otherwise?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Do you know much about running/hosting your own podcast? That's what I'm currently interested in, actually.

As far as listening to them, all I use is my iPod/iTunes, so I'm of no help there.

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Games on the Go
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy: Four Warriors of Light
Baldur's Gate

Too much to play, so little time!

Greg

Quote (Perigryn @ 10th April 2011 12:50)

Do you know much about running/hosting your own podcast? That's what I'm currently interested in, actually.

I know a bit, from a theoretical level. I've never actually done it myself, but really, it's not much more difficult than hosting your files somewhere and setting up an RSS feed that then gets updated every time you put a new episode online, and I have done a lot of that both for CoN and other projects, like in the CoN news and fanart sections.

It's a bit hard for me to give specific instructions given my familiarity with web publishing - I don't want to be too pedantic or not pedantic enough, because I don't really know how much experience you have or how much you want to learn. If you're really serious about your broadcast but don't want to do the tech end, you might want to just look at a podcast hosting provider, though it's bound to cost you.

Otherwise, there really are just two things to do. One is to have your files online so you can point to them, and the other is to make a customised RSS feed. RSS feeds are pretty easy to make, because they have a pretty specific format that you need to follow to the letter. CoN has a few feeds, of course, but Podcast feeds are special because you need to also point to the audio file that contains the broadcast (I think that NPR does a good job of making clean podcast RSS files - see http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510053 for an example, though you might need to right click->view source to see the actual RSS XML language).

To get listed on iTunes, you need to have all the itunes-related content in your RSS; otherwise, you can skip that stuff and just fill in all the big chunks of information. At the top is the meta info about your broadcast, such as what it's called, what the homepage for it is, etc. Then come a series of <item>s, and each item describes one specific show in the series. Always have the newest ones at the top, and make sure that the file shows up properly for web browsers (of course, exactly how to do that is beyond a simple tutorial, but if you end your files' names with .rss or .xml and follow the general structure of the example I gave, most browsers and podcatchers will get it).

The URL to the RSS feed is what you give users who want to subscribe. They then take that URL and stick it into their podcatcher or browser of choice, and that's pretty much it.

Long-winded, I know, but hopefully that helps. I can help you more directly if you need it.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 11th April 2011 22:47

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?