Buzz Out Loud Lounge: IMPORTANT: BOL Feed changes (not as bad as you think)

IMPORTANT: BOL Feed changes (not as bad as you think)

by raygun01  - 5/12/08 12:08 PM

I am in the midst of the slow process of redirecting our current podcast feeds to a new method of creation. (ie: old way - me hand coding XML... new way - blogs creating the podcast feed for me )

This <b>Friday, May 16</b> will be the day that the BOL feed is scheduled to switch to this new method. If you are subscribed to the Buzz Out Loud audio feed, you do NOT need to resubscribe to a new feed. I will have the link to which you are already subscribed to automatically redirect to the new location.

<b>BUT</b>

With the switch, there is the inevitability that some (or most) of you will open up your pod catcher (ie iTunes, etc...) on Friday after the switch to find a bunch of episodes you've already heard re-downloaded.

You can do one of two things (unfortunately, neither is very awesome):

<b>1: Do nothing.</b> Your pod catcher will simply download a bunch of episodes that you'll probably realize you've already heard, you delete them, you then live a long and fruitful life, probably forgetting that this ever happened in the first place. (in the grand scheme of things... is it really THAT bad?)

or

<b>2: You set your pod catcher to download "only the last new episode" or "only the last 3 episodes"</b> (this is worded differently in all pod catcher software). This way, when the switch happens, you won't get ALL episodes in the feed (which would only amount to around 8 episodes anyways).

Make sense?

<b>The reason:</b>
Basically, in the switch, there is no way for me to retain the tags that tell the pod catchers whether you've heard an episode or not. As a result, the info that passes on to your software telling it NOT to download those episodes you've heard won't exist and therefor, your iTunes or whatever you use will then download everything in the feed. In other words, your software will see all episodes in the feed as unheard and grab 'em all.

I realize I've told you way more than anyone really needs to know here, but I want to make sure that if this happens, at least you know about it ahead of time. It's inevitably going to happen to a lot of you.

Don't say I didn't tell ya so!