As Doug Kaye mentions here:

http://www.spokenword.org/program/158636

there is work underway to create an iTunes/iPod agent that relays a rating up to your cloud collection, and optionally deletes the thing you have rated. I think that’d be really helpful — as Phil Windley says on the show, it’s finally a reason to /do/ the rating.

Not to take away anything from raising awareness of Doug’s new endeavor…

I didn’t see anyone mention the iTunes Agent http://ita.sourceforge.net/ which was recently updated (much improved) and is really handy for synchronizing media to USB mass storage devices. I recommend this tool.

One way to solve the “I’m using the 800# gorilla that is iTunes” and *not* using an iPod issue:

- (correctly identified by others) create a single Smart Playlist that correctly aggregates the new podcasts of interest (by way of a small collection of other Smart Playlists to get the filtering right)

- sync the aggregate Smart Playlist using iTunes Agent, to the USB storage/player

If your device supports a play-log (like audioscrobbler) and application can read the play-log and you can quickly uncheck the entries in your aggregate Smart Playlist so that what you listen to get automatically removed from your player the next time it is synchronized.

I use the Rockbox player software (http://www.rockbox.org) on an iRiver H10. I also use the QTscrobbler (http://qtscrob.sourceforge.net/) application for managing play-log data. I can post what I’ve already listened to on Last.fm (http://www.last.fm/) using QTscrobbler if I want to track usage history (last.fm calls this “charts”).

iTunes is the 800# gorilla, but feed crafting isn’t as easy as it should be, and some feeds don’t play nice with iTunes (or at least didn’t use to), so I also use the Juice podcatcher (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/) and import some feeds into iTunes this way.

I can make this work, but when someone else asks me how I do it, it’s easier to recommend that they buy an iPod or a Zune…

None of this is new and only talks about the “consuming” portion of the process.

Jon’s points about discovering and curating content are spot on. We’ll have to jump in and see what we can do with Doug’s site to make progress on these. I agree that on-line community and web services will be needed.

With regards to the process of curation, and tooling for this craft, what beyond media players that allow us to share what we are consuming with a social group needs to be proposed? If the player/catcher applications know where the content URI are, they stand to help more people get into process of contributing ratings and endorsements. But does this start down the path of empowering non-techs to curate?

*If* iTunes wanted to help with this task, they would most likely want to do this through the iTunes Store, and may not be flexible to the needs of the social groups that support it.

I haven’t experimented with the new Zune software, but I’ve heard good things about it, with regards to music management and discovery using the Zune marketplace.

I can imagine an opportunity for integration with on-line community spaces and the Zune software if podcast publishing tools can extend it for the purpose of making public recommendations explicit. I’m not readily finding Zune scripting API information, but there surely must be such an animal.

Podcatchers that aren’t players have the URI content information, but don’t sit in the right place in the work-flow. Modifying the Juice receiver as an experiment might be a good proof of concept, but may not advance a community forward.

There is an iTunes scripting API, which brings us back to the 800# gorilla again…

If this is already being done, I’d love to hear about it. Maybe a clandestine media player/ecosystem is all over this…

I feel like I’m missing something fundamental here, feel free to point it out…

My ultimate (DIY) goal was to make it so that I wouldn’t have to listen to the same podcast twice… Even if I changed devices.

(To make that happen, I’d have to probe the devices to find out which ones they’ve played… I don’t think that’s impossible, but I haven’t cracked that nut yet)

Anyway, I’m not really that happy with the results, so I like to see some other way to attack the problem (that requires less code to be written by me).

What I’d really like to see (and haven’t after browsing spokenword.org) is an API to programatically set my personal rating and/or my comments.

If I could set a rating, that’d be a pretty good indication that I listened to the podcast entry and that’d be a good signal to my other devices: Remove this podcast entry.

Anyway, do you know if there are there plans for an API?

Thank you for your time,
Daniel Fisher

All Podcasts: Podcast is true && Play Count = 0
Recent Podcasts: Playlist is “All Podcasts” && Date Added is in last day
Recent Podcasts – Limited: Playlist is “Recent Podcasts” && Limit to 500 MB selected by Most Recently Added

This method didn’t work so well when I had a non-iPod player. I really like that that no matter whether I use the player or iTunes, the podcasts get properly marked as played.

I’ll be checking out spokenword.org. It sounds like a nice tool to find other things I will like. The iTunes store certainly doesn’t fill this need.

I’ve been waiting to hear what Doug was going to do with SpokenWord.org for awhile so I’m very happy to see this happen.

Also, as a fan of yours Jon, I’m happy to see that our podcast listening habits are incredibly similar. :)

- subscribe to the podcast feeds in Google Reader
- assign a common label/folder, say “podcast”, to these subscriptions
- in the Google Reader folder settings, set this “podcast” label/folder to be shared
- subscribe to the feed for this shared folder in itunes

The big problem with this, and with any consolidated feed at the moment, is that OTA syncing from the iPhone is not permitted, as this is only supported for feeds published through the iTunes Music Store.

A lesser problem is that it’s more difficult (in iTunes or on the iPod/iPhone) to determine from what feed a given episode has been downloaded.