I’m getting kind of fed up with both iPodderX and iPodder. I had been using the former until I did an upgrade to one of the 2.2.1 series that went completely haywire and redownloaded things over and over. I backtracked to an older version, which worked for a few days and then just stopped.
I had downloaded iPodder, which seemingly at random appends nulls to the end of the URLs I paste in so that the RSS checks would fail because there were “%00” trash appended to them. Now, when I try to run it, it pops up some window with a Python traceback error for half a second and then the whole thing dies. I’m quite disappointed in both of these projects right now. I’m seriously considering shutting both down for good and going back to my get_enclosures script.
Personally, I still use get_enclosures 🙂
I just got into the whole podcasting thing this week. I’m amazed at what’s available, but also amazed at how poor the tools are. Podcasting isn’t going to be ready for the masses until we can get these basic things straight.
I just got into the whole podcasting thing this week. I’m amazed at what’s available, but also amazed at how poor the tools are. Podcasting isn’t going to be ready for the masses until we can get these basic things straight.
but as long as some of them repeat downloads, reread xml files without proper 304 handling etc, the possible damage is much higher than people using the mp3 directly or just use the bittorrent files.
In my case I am thinking about switching over to just torrent files – and for the end users add good documentation how to use the torrents.
concur on the frustration dave, however it is part of the process, especially w/ new dev & open source…
i do think that the development team is making headway, but w/ each push of new code, more potential errors do seem to raise up…
on the mac, v1.1.2 fixes the %00 bug, but what i found is that i then had duplicate feeds generated between the state db and favorites.txt checking process…
so i started over by clearing and adding all my feeds back in – yes, cumbersome 🙁
but, necessary to try to help w/ the product development – i’ve started using the sourceforge bug feedback system “every time” i see something strange…
since i use both the mac and win client of ipodder – i can state that the win version (v1.1.3) is more stable and predictable…
don’t know what that means really – just an observation…
hang in there – and consider adding your voice to the fray in sourceforge, even if minimally…
you are a developer after all – your input would be well received there, even if it’s just via 1st person comments/rants such as this post 😉
Every version of ipodder or IPodderX that I download leave me with a question mark hovering over me. They insist on downloading what they want when they want… not what I want when I want it. I have found problems with them downloading casts multiple time. I also want to read the blogs that go along side the casts but neither do the news aggregator well enough (or at all) Personally I am holding out for Brent Simmons to be adding podcatching to NNW 2. In the meantime, I am continuing to use my applescript that downloads all the flagged podcasts in NNW. Its sad when my hokey applescript is doing better than these projects.
Mike, I do feel for the development teams. In a lot of ways, this influx of attention is unfair to them. One isn’t usually under such pressure to be fully polished a few weeks after creating a new type of app. My thing is just that when putting new features in causes serious regressions in the standard behavior, there is a problem. iPodderX didn’t have a hiccup, it went from usable to unusable in one point release.
Scott, when we first started this and I wrote get_enclosures, my belief was that moving this functionality into the aggregators was the right place to do it. If NNW would do the basics of the iPodders, get the enclosures and add them to my iTunes playlists, that would be all I used.
Nicole, the if-modified headers in the RSS requests are one of my personal hobby horses, not just for iPodders but for every kind of aggregator there is. I think that is the bare minimum of etiquette for consuming an RSS feed is to know not to fetch it if nothing has changed. That said, I noticed from developing one of these tools that a disturbing number of feeds do not set the Last-Modified header on their web servers, which breaks it from the other end.
Have you tried doppler yet?
http://www.dopplerradio.net/
Its not perfect.. but it might be a good alternative for you.
Join the doppler beta team to get your hands on the newest version:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/directory.aspx?&Column=ActivityPercentile&Direction=DESC&Page=&ST=doppler
Robert, a .NET based application is one that I can’t use I’m afraid.
Erwin of Doppler told me that they will try to integrate a more native bt in the coming versions but for the moment you can have Doppler use an external bittorrent – which would be quite satisfying.
I was running some version of iPodder Lemon which just kinda stopped working. On my new iMac G5 I thought I would try the latest version of iPodderX. It set up nicely and I like the Directory feature for setting up feeds. And that is what I did, subscribed to my usual feeds and having plenty of breathing room on the new machine grabbed a few more I was interestd in. They all subscribed nicely and downloaded, but when I went back the next day to add another feed it crashed iPodderX. Tried a couple of more times with no success. I haven’t run the actual application in a couple of days, fortunately the scheduler continues to run and I’m getting the content I subscribed to.
I too believe it is a just a matter of time before this kind of functionality is built into the aggregators. I’m not sure in the long term what the iPodders are going to be able to do to differentiate themselves from a standard aggregator. One thing I think they could do would be the ability to customize delivery of each podcast. As things move forward with the new medium I can forsee the need to download content on different schedules. Some things you might want to check hourly, others daily or a couple of times of day, and still others maybe only once or week or so.
Best of luck with the iPodder crews and I’ll hang in there with y’all for a bit yet.
Well, I might be biased a bit because I wrote it, but BashPodder has been said to work on Unix/Linux, MacOSX, and windows (with unix utils installed). Check it out!
I have also written a audio aggrigator. Nothing fancy and I haven’t incorporated bittorrent yet. I’d be glad to let anyone take a look at it.
shivesster@gmail.com
tough (though i’m sure fun) job the developers have, especially given the rapid adoptation curve of podcasting…
i’ve personally standardized on ipodder for both mac and win, and have put my feedback and testing emphasis into it…
i especially like product development that has a user-2-devloper feedback loop and an interative lifecycle – which is what i hope becomes of ipodder as it progresses…
Dave… I have had the same experience on my new XP box. The 1.1 dies with a Python error. My experience with DopplerRadio has been solid, but it does not support torrent files yet. IPodderX needs to support the PC.
Sorry to hear about all the issues with iPodderX 🙁 We just put out iPoddeX 2.2.3 which after a gambit of testing we think has solved all those problems, then some.
I agree there is a lot of stress of the developers to get something newer and better out and keep up the pace that we had in the first two months — thats dangerous as both teams found out with there last release.
Anyways, I hope people that had issues with iPodderX previously will give iPodderX another shot with the new version.
Dave:
Patrick Ritchie (http://radio.weblogs.com/0101131/) is working on an iPodder-like tool for Radio UserLand. It uses the existing subscription and aggregator system combined with some simple Windows or Mac scripting to get them into your iPod or similar device.
Email him for details….
Steve
thanks to a conversation on egc, i’ve switched back to ipodderx for my mac/osx choice @ home