Yesterday I had a phone call with Doc Searls (about which he blogs) and while I was giving him some technical podcasting support, at one point we were talking about iTunes as a podcatcher. He was talking about not getting episodes that way for a long time, and I realized something simple. All this time I’ve been pissed off at Apple for screwing up the rollout, I had a stopgap available to me. I added an URL rewriting rule to my Apache setup and now any attempt to fetch the default (Bittorrent) feed by something with a User-Agent that begins with “iTunes” will get the MP3 feed instead. Completely fricking simple and suddenly, it should all work again for everyone, even the ones subscribed to the default feed.
It sucks that I have to do something kludgy like this, but at least folks will not find their subscription to my feed silently fail anymore.
Not being too technical. All this podcatcher stuff leaves me kind of anxious. The most reliable method for me is to directly download the mp3’s from each site. In general, Apple has made things easier, I think…..but there is a lag time between the show and when ITunes will find it that bugs me. I have also had mixed results with Bittorent files.
Sorry for a random comment off subject matter. But here it goes: Saw a great film this weekend with my wife. “Grizzly Man.” This is a new documentary from the great German director, Wernor Herzog (“Aguirre: Wrath of God”). Awesome….it is an accounting of a kind of radical ecologist, Timothy Treadwell, who goes off to live with Grizzly Bears in Alaska. I won’t say more, but very well done and, like usual with Herzog….he really makes you think. Kind of an expose’ on the chaos and violence that is, unfortunately, the natural order of things.
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