Questions

[Dave]

Hi, I have a couple of questions and I wasn't sure where to post them. If there's a better spot, please feel free to point me there or move the thread.

First question: Is there an RSS just for the audio stories?
Second question: Is there a way to configure the RSS so it only picks up new posts and doesn't drop a hundred or so old ones in my feed every day for some reason? I don't know if it re-drops things people comment on, or what, but the EP RSS is starting to become more of an annoyance than a convenience.

I have only recently started using RSS (I used to do it all by hand, but the number of casts I follow makes that impractical) and while it is generally much easier, I find that some feeds are more recalcitrant or ornery than others, and as a newbie I have no idea how to make adjustments, or even if such a thing is possible.

Any advice, or links to advice, would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Heradel]

What are you using as a podcatcher?

[Dave]

Uh... Flock?

[Listener]

If you have an Android device, get Doubletwist (it's free), put the RSS feeds into that, and sync them that way. Then get the Podcast Player app and use that to listen. It has its drawbacks (extremely simplistic interface, and you have to navigate your folders to load podcasts), but its huge buttons and shuttling function more than make up for it.

[Wilson Fowlie]

Dave, you may need to use dedicated podcatcher software.  It downloads the attachments (the podcasts, plus the PDFs from the soundproof episodes), but not the text of the blog posts.

There are at least a few free podcatchers out there.  The two names I know are Juice (the one I use) and Miro.  Juice is pretty good, but old (hasn't been upgraded in about 5 years and has a minor glitch or two - nothing that can't be worked around and I'm willing to do so since I've been using it before the glitches were exposed by recent changes to podcasting software).

I haven't used Miro myself, but I hear good things about it.

[Dave]

Yeeeeah, I don't have any devices, or extra software, and I really would rather not need them. Podcatchers are indiscriminate, I don't want to get every episode of the hundred or so casts I follow, I wouldn't have time to listen to them if I did. Guess I'll just stick to doing it by hand =\

Thanks for the tips, anyway.

[Wilson Fowlie]

Yeeeeah, I don't have any devices, or extra software, and I really would rather not need them. Podcatchers are indiscriminate, I don't want to get every episode of the hundred or so casts I follow, I wouldn't have time to listen to them if I did. Guess I'll just stick to doing it by hand =\

Please allow me to clear up at least one misconception I see here.  A podcatcher is only as indiscriminate as you want it to be.  Juice, for instance, has a "Catch Up" button, which allows you to tell it to set all (except the most recent) of the episodes as 'already read'.  Once you do that, it only gets the episodes that come out after that (unless, as occasionally happens, the podcast resets its server and the podcatcher gets confused about which episodes are new).

That said, I'm not trying to change your mind, just point out that that one particular reason for not getting a Podcatcher may not apply.  I do sympathize with not wanting extra software.  It took me quite a few months of manual downloading before I adopted Juice myself.

Also: Wow, how do you have time to listen to a hundred casts even without the back catalogues?  I follow maybe 10 and have trouble keeping up just with them!

[Dave]

In this case, by indiscriminate, I mean that podcatchers will get every episode of every cast, whereas I purposefully skip downloading some episodes of some of the casts I listen to because the listed topics for that episode do not interest me.

As for the "hundred or so" casts, I was, perhaps, hyperbolizing slightly. Although I do listen to a lot and I do have trouble keeping up with them.