Thursday, 8 January 2009

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Saturday, 12 May 2007

Thursday, 7 September 2006

Dan Kuykendall’s PodPress on Behind the Mic

A while back, Dan Kuykenall downloaded my WP-iPodCatter plugin, mixed in a Flash mp3 player, some other bits and released the PodPress plugin.

He and Mike Geoghegan talk about the PodPress project in a recent Behind the Mic conversation.

Dan’s plugin is full-featured. Capital F – Full. Though he’s nicely solved a couple small problems I’ve been pondering of addressing in WP-iPodCatter, I found it overwhelming. That said, my experience with Apple’s iTunes podcast directory has been so awful all around that I have a hard time getting excited about it.

Thanks Dan.

Thursday, 17 August 2006

Tuesday, 4 July 2006

New iTunes Podcast Categorization and WP-iPodCatter

On Friday, I received an email from Apple’s iTunes Podcasting team that they’re changing the categories in the iTunes directory. So, I updated the WP-iPodcatter plugin to reflect these changes.

Like their removal of item-level categorization, I’m not crazy about these changes.

  1. There are 2 ‘Other’ categories (in Religion, Games & Hobbies). But not in any of the other categories. ‘Other’, like ‘Miscellaneous’, is an acknowledgment of an unsuccessful categorization scheme. Conceivably, ‘Other’ will have the most things in it – so filtering that category will be the challenge.
  2. These categories feel more like Apple trying to form and mold what’s in the iTunes directory rather than fostering what’s currently being published.
  3. I have no idea where to put the First Crack Podcast. Best I could do was; Business, Technology, Arts:Food. I know. Not accurate.

Then again, iTunes is a pretty worthless interface for finding podcasts, and these category revisions only make the problem worse. While doing nothing to eliminate podcasters gaming their placement with; -, –>, :: , ‘, ‘”, “”””””””””””””””””.

All podcast directories have a similar problem – trying to be the Yahoo of podcasts (hierarchical directory) rather than the Google (really good filtering). If you’re looking for good podcasts – I recommend AmigoFish or a regular web search (Google, Yahoo, etc) with “podcast” added at the end.

Wednesday, 14 September 2005

Wednesday, 31 August 2005

WP-iPodCatter Now v1.0

I’ve cleaned up a few things based on the feedback from the 0.9a version, and tweaked a couple more things. Decided “0.9” wasn’t as round a version as I’d like and v1.0 felt better.

The Biggest Changes:
– Comment-cast is now a checkbox option (there were some problems with it being supported on earlier versions of PHP)
– The non-iTunes Channel-level Category tag can now be set.
– All the iTunes categories are listed in the plugin, now more digging around for that PDF.
– all the other stuff you loved from 0.9a

Download WP-iPodCatter v1.0

Wednesday, 10 August 2005

Call for Testers: WP-iPodCatter 0.9a

Hey all, I could use some help testing the new version of WP-iPodCatter

Changes in 0.9a:

  • All variables from the replacement wp-rss2.php file moved into the WP-iPodCatter section in WordPress admin Options tab.
  • Updated wp-rss2.php file
  • Support for itunes:block at an individual post level
  • Support for itunes subcategories
  • Support for itunes:explicit at overall podcast level and individual post level
  • Enter itunes:keywords manually or use wordpress categories
  • Preview cover images within WordPress admin area.
  • Turn your comments feed into a podcast using the replacement wp-commentsrss2.php file

I’ve got it running on my dev box and will be migrating it to First Crack podcast in the next day or so.

This link now directs to WP-iPodCatter v1.0
If you’re interested, download the zip file at: http://garrickvanbure.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/wp-ipodcatter.zip

Leave all bugs and oddities in the comments.

Wednesday, 27 July 2005