Which Podcast Manager do you use?
bill_w
February 05, 2010 at 07:21 AM posted in General DiscussionEdit 2/8: Winners announced at Lifehacker.
Over at Lifehacker they are gathering votes from readers on their preferred podcast manager. Which led me to wonder what podcast managers our users like.
Beyond simple curiosity and perhaps finding / suggesting a better tool, it can help us in support if we are seeing lots of users using specific programs.
Personally, I use MediaMonkey to manage all of my music, and it's included podcatcher is not bad so I end up using that for most of my podcatching needs. I also like (and often recommend) Juice, because it's free and lightweight.
So, what do you use?
matthiask
February 13, 2010 at 04:01 AM
baba, most importantly, you should deactivate automatic deletion of chinesepod podcasts in itunes. you can do this individually for each podcast feed.
then, as bill_w says, smartlists are the way to go. you can do magic things with them.
bill_w
February 10, 2010 at 05:58 AM
Smart lists look like the way to go. I found this guide - may be worth checking out.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/02/01/how-to-create-a-smart-podcast-playlist-in-itunes/
pretzellogic
February 09, 2010 at 02:54 AM
Unfortunately, i've had to manually move my cpod lessons from my storage drive and into iTunes, and then manually organize them into my iPod. I assume that there's a way to have it automatically organized in some manner, but since I tend to skip around in lessons, i'm not sure that there's a way to do what I need. I'll be curious to hear what people tell you.
John
February 08, 2010 at 09:53 AM
I can tell you the one I hate: iTunes.
I've tried Songbird and Miro. Both are OK, but copy iTunes too much (especially Songbird).
matthiask
February 08, 2010 at 11:35 PM
hmm(tm). strange testimony from the host of a company highly exploiting the infrastructure of iPod and iTunes ;-)
bill_w
February 08, 2010 at 09:47 AM
Winners announced at Lifehacker:
frognotinawell: I think the benefit of these programs over a plain RSS reader is the level of control - even on Juice (the lightest of them all) you can set rules on when to download based on the length of time since publication, the number of episodes already in your library etc. Also the fancier ones like Zune / iTunes have pretty sophisticated search functions for finding new podcasts. Of course if you are only downloading Cpod these might be overkill.
frognotinawell
February 06, 2010 at 11:20 AM
What exactly does a podcast manager do? For Cpod I just use Opera as an RSS reader and download manager and to record from internet radio, Winamp 2.95 with the Streamripper plugin.
WillBuckingham
February 05, 2010 at 04:34 PM
For some reason, I could never get Ziepod to work on my XP install.
These days, I use gpodder on Ubuntu, which works like a dream. Far nicer than Juice or anything else I've used.
I want to like Miro, but it doesn't support PDFs, so is hopeless for CPod purposes.
WillBuckingham
February 05, 2010 at 05:07 PM
Yes, I don't know what was wrong with it. Ziepod looked quite nice, but it would just not install. Anyway, gpodder on linux is fine!
kimiik
February 05, 2010 at 05:00 PM
Ziepod works fine on my XP configuration and turns out to be much more flexible and practical than Juice. I used Juice for almost 3 years.
kimiik
February 05, 2010 at 10:46 AM
I use Ziepod (the Free podcatcher of Ziemantics)
http://download.cnet.com/Ziepod/3000-2164_4-10426683.html#submitReview
bill_w
February 05, 2010 at 09:24 AM
Sure, we'll see what some of the most popular are and post 'em here.
I'm with you on Itunes. At least on my Windows machines it is barely usable, constantly crashing and just really slow. I suppose the only redeeming quality is the fact it is the only media player that officially works with an IPod / IPhone. Darn you Apple!
Actually this is another plus for MediaMonkey, as it seems to be the only third-party media player that syncs *almost* seamlessly with Apple devices.
pretzellogic
February 05, 2010 at 09:08 AM
I'm only vaguely aware of podcast managers. It might be helpful if you gave a list of the top 10-15 or so podcast managers that cpod would be interested in developing for. I use iTunes, but I'm not interested in staying on the Apple bandwagon. Maybe i'd say i'd use any podcast manager that works with Windows Media Player.
bababardwan
February 09, 2010 at 12:11 AMI'd like to know how to organise my CPod lessons into playlists in itunes ,but I've never gotten around to figuring that out.It seems to me itunes will only download stuff if it's on your Home page which is one reason my Home page has so many lessons in it and is so disorganised.Anyone got any tips?