I just recently (yesterday) got internet and all that jazz in my home. We’ve been moving around a lot, but now that we’re settled, creature-comforts come back. I don’t have a radio in my car though, so I have depended on downloading NPR podcasts (and a few others) to help me get through the daily commute.
I have been looking at software to download the podcasts for me, but I really don’t know what to look for. I use my Blackberry to play the mp3s, or a cheap RCA MP3 player in the car, but I use Ubuntu on my laptop, I don’t know if that would make a difference in the responses.
What do you dopers use? I notice the Zune link on NPR’s website, does anyone use Zune software without actually owning a Zune? Just curious, I guess. I notice that the Zune website says that it must be installed on a PC with Vista. I would prefer free software, if possible. I’ve used Thunderbird for RSS feeds, but what should I use for the podcasts?
Do you mean you just want to download the MP3 of the podcast and then put it on some media player? You can download them with Firefox Download Helper add-on and save them where you want on your computer, and then drag them into your player.
Install the add-on and then play the podcast. Use the add-on to download; you don’t have to listen to the entire podcast while downloading–it is saved in the cache and will keep downloading even if you close out, although I usually leave it for at least a little bit.
Or are you talking about some kind of automated thingy? I don’t know how to get them to download and install in one swoop.
That may be the best solution. Right now, I just go online to npr.org, click through and find each one that I would like, then click download MP3 and then save them all in a folder. Then I put them onto the player of choice. This means that sometimes I get them too early and have two copies of the same, which is not too big of a deal, or sometimes I forget to get them and that kind of sucks when I’m driving and realize it halfway down to the University.
If there was a program that would show me when a new one is available, and download it (or link to it) - that would be great. I don’t know anything about podcasts, really, but like to listen to a few things in particular each week (Wait, Wait, Don’t tell me and Science Friday, for example).
I could be less lazy and just find out when new ones are available each week, then download them, but I like things to be automated if possible.
iTunes could work if I was using WINE, but I checked out Juice. It said the Linux version was delayed in release, but it pointed to Podnova and Icepodder. Anyone have any experience with these?
I gave up on Icepodder (really just another version of Juice) for lack of support on Linux. This was a while ago (about a year?) and in November it looks like they’re starting to address the Linux issues.
I never played with Podnova. Why create yet another online account for what is essentially a local application? Sounds like another vector for someone to data-mine my habits for targeted ads.
GPodder was pretty nice, but it kept messing with something with the downloaded files (tags? filenames?) Also there were a couple of podcasts whose RSS was broken to the points that GPodder wouldn’t deal with them, even though iTunes had no problems with them. Also, the app had no presence in the then-current Ubuntu version’s repository, meaning I had to stay on top of updates myself. Again, this was a while ago, so maybe these problems are fixed.
I’m currently using hpodder. At first I was leery about it, since it’s a command-line-only app, but it’s worked out pretty well. One thing I really like about it is that it intelligently puts tags into MP3s whose tags are seemingly gibberish data, such as was the case with Fair Game With Faith Salie (shameless plug).
Well, I found a workable solution. I subscribed to things on Google Reader instead of just going to look for them, then added the extension to Firefox that shows how many things are unread in Reader. I will try out hpodder, but until then, this may have done the trick.