Tag Archive for 'podcasting'

FeedForAll

Published
by
Chalupa
on May 1, 2008
in Other Software for Bloggers
. 0 Comments

Last week I talked about an RSS generator called Podcast RSS Buddy.  I said it wasn’t exactly working out for me and today I’m going to talk about one that is.  Normally I try to find things that are free, but sometimes you literally get what you pay for.  Podcast RSS Buddy wasn’t free and FeedForAll isn’t free either; in fact, it costs a little more.  The bonus is that FeedForAll gives you a 30 day trial, it’s much more sophisticated, and is a much better program for long term use.

I’ve decided to list some features instead of talking at length about them.  This program is easy to use for both beginner and advance users.  I highly suggest you check it out.

  • Easy to use interface
  • Create and manage unlimited feeds
  • Manage, modify, and re-order feed items
  • Validate your feed
  • Multiple extensions (iTunes, Dublin Core, etc) available
  • Spell check
  • Creation wizard
  • Publishing options
  • Export to HTML, CSV, or text
  • Search and Replace
  • Load and manage/modify pre-existing feeds
  • Automatic date management
  • Automatic feed repair
  • Mac version available

Podcast RSS Buddy

Published
by
Chalupa
on April 21, 2008
in Other Software for Bloggers
. 1 Comment

In my last post I talked about podcasting and I figured I’d continue. RSS feeds are something that are important to me. If you’re creating content for the internet, having an RSS feed that has accurate, up-to-date information, and is something you’re comfortable with is very important. You might remember the main reason I didn’t like podPress is because of what it did to my RSS feed.

Since I have a Joomla installation for my podcast website, I needed something to create an RSS feed for iTunes. A co-worker of mine suggested Podcast RSS Buddy. This is a cheap, somewhat easy to use program that includes five free uses, then it costs about $20 to purchase a license. This program is made for iTunes so it has the proper fields all ready for you to fill in. Having this feature is one step up from just using the auto-generated feed from your blog.

I used this tool for almost 15 months until I decided it was time to move on to something more complicated. If you’re not very tech savvy, this is a program I think would work well for you. I like to tweak things and sometimes start all over and rebuild something I’ve created. This is where I ran into some problems.

When I formatted my computer and re-installed the software, everything worked fine until I tried to import my feed. When I imported the feed, that Podcast RSS Buddy made, it couldn’t find several of my items, put several items out of order, and some of the data wasn’t correct. There also appears to be no way to re-order items within the feed. Another problem I ran into was that changing or updating the podcast information would sometimes make some of my episodes disappear. After I fixed the missing episodes, my updated podcast information would be gone. To be fair, the program is still a work in progress so there are some bugs to still be worked out.

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • Built-in fields for iTunes
  • Cheap (with 5 free uses)

Cons:

  • Data doesn’t transfer well between machines
  • Import function does not always work
  • Some bugs still present in software

If you’re wanting to just try something, I would suggest giving this program a whirl. You get five free uses. If you’re planning to be creating a podcast feed long-term, I would suggest maybe looking for another program to fit your needs.

PodPress review

Published
by
Chalupa
on April 14, 2008
in Add-Ons and Plug-Ins
. 3 Comments

For those of you out there podcasting, there sure are a lot of available tools. One easy and free way to get this done is with a blog. Links to audio files can be placed inside of your posts and the automatic RSS creation for the blog itself can serve as your podcast feed. This is a really simple way to do it. There are also some plugins and other tools you can use to do this - one of them being podPress.

I have one real podcast, Lebowski Podcast, and one sorta-podcast, Chalupa’s Movies. The first is being hosted on a CMS and the other is just my movie review blog with a few audio reviews popped in there. I installed podPress a few months ago to see how I liked it and this is what I found.

Pros

  • Inserts a player into your blog entry
  • Stats for the feed, streaming, and downloads
  • Settings for iTunes and other podcast directories
  • Customizable feed options
  • Customizable player options

Cons

  • Takes over your RSS feed completely
  • Makes changes to your feed that you can’t specify or change
  • Only one author on all posts (My movie blog has several contributors and they aren’t being credited in the feed now)
  • Annoying default image on your feed unless you have something to change it to
  • Inserts backslashes in front of all special characters that actually show up on the web and looks tacky

Even though there are some nice features to podPress, I don’t think it’s working out for me and my movie blog. I have plans of uninstalling it soon. Even though the player and statistics are nice, the changes being made to my RSS feed are just unacceptable. If any of you know of a good plugin for podcasting, let us know and we’ll try to check it out.