'News' News Articles

Updated Category List

geoff — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:27:55 GMT

The AllPodcasts.com Directory now uses the new category list published by Apple. Let us know if you find any problems.

The end of timeouts when searching?

geoff — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:08:50 GMT

Hopefully I've addressed all the problems that were causing timeouts on searches and viewing the newest episodes and newest series. Bad searches that return lots of data will still be slower than good searches, but at least things should no longer break.

Now I'm off to tackle some of the other performance issues on the site. Wish me luck...!

Stability problems should be fixed

geoff — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 19:19:52 GMT

You might have noticed we've been having some pretty severe stability problems for the last week or so. Sorry about that.

The good news is that they should all be fixed now, and the serarch functionality should be back better and faster than ever. We're running some new code that's been optimised based on the high volume of data AllPodcasts has generated.

If there's anything still broken, please let us know. Otherwise it might never get fixed!

Odeo now pingable via PingAll

Geoff — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:36:23 GMT

Before I forget to mention it again, Odeo is now one of the directories pinged via the PingAll page. Those fine Odeo folks dropped me a line to tell me their directory was pingable (I hadn't noticed).

If there are any more pingable podcast directories that want to be added to PingAll, please let me know.

New View Of Listings

Geoff — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:36:19 GMT

The directory view used to be based on the categories chosen by podcasters themselves. It turns out that's not such a good idea, since so many podcasters are bad at choosing categories.

So this new view imposes a taxonomy on podcasts. At the minute it just uses the iTunes categories, but that may change over time. If you like seeing the poor choice of categories that some podcasters use, the old view is still available.

AllPodcasts now searchable from KBCafe!

Geoff — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:04:29 GMT

Randy from kbcafe emailed me to let me know that AllPodcasts.com is now one of the search engines it uses for its meta searches. It's pretty slick. You can even do podcast-specific searches from the site!

Every Podcast, Subscribable

Geoff — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 20:18:39 GMT

I just added some one-click subscription code to AllPodcasts.com. It's pretty neat.

The upshot of it is that every podcast feed linked to from this site is now one-click subscribable. Basically:

If your feed already has the one-click subscription tags, that's great.
If your feed doesn't, some code here adds them for you.

I really hope this boosts one-click subscribing and encourages more podcasters to put the tags in their feeds (so I don't have to!)

Let me know what you think,

Geoff

PingAll! Now Supports iPodder.org!

Geoff — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:10:31 GMT

The directory at iPodder.org is now pinged when you use PingAll! That means you can ping 6 directories for the price of one.

Also, there's now an XML-RPC interface to the PingAll! service so that you can automate your pinging.

New PingAll! service

Geoff — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 16:22:53 GMT

The new PingAll! service is now live and open to the public! Instead of having to manually visit all the different podcast sites to announce your latest episode, you just need to come to this one and let PingAll! do the rest.

I like the AJAX-driven interface, and I hope you do too - if you like it or hate it, let me know.

One major disappointment when I was writing this web application is how few podcast directories out there are pingable. It seems like everyone and their grandmother has created a podcast directory, but disappointingly few can be pinged with updates. Most seem to require registration of some form, others just don't present any way to ping (and I'm very flexible there - I can already ping through HTTP GET, HTTP POST and XML-RPC, and I'm open to other reasonable suggestions).

I'd like to be able to make this PingAll! a one-stop shop for podcasters, so if you have a favourite directory that we don't currently ping, get them to implement an interface for us to call. After all, it's in their interest to work with fresh data too!

Here's the list of podcast directories I can't currently ping:

podcast411 - broken DB
castregister - requires registration
digitalpodcast.com - requires additional metadata
experiencepodcasting.com - requires additional metadata
gigadial.net - documentation a bit intractable - no obvious way of pinging
ipodderX.com - no way to ping?
kedora.net - requires registration
loudpocket.com - "experiencing technical difficulties"?
theovernightscape.com (New Time Radio) - no way to add?
pccaster.com - requires registration
podcastdirectory.com - no way to ping?
pocketcasting.com - requires registration and additional metadata
podcast.net - requires additional metadata
podcastalley.com - requires additional metadata
podcastbunker.com - couldn't find any way to add/ping a podcast.
podcastcentral.com - no longer accepting submissions.
podcastcharts.com - requires registration
podcasthost.com - 'add podcast' option gives you the option to download as a vCard? WTF?
podcastmania.com - is no more.
podcastpickle.com - requires registration
podcastingnews.com - requires registration
podfeeder.com - requires additional metadata
podfeed.net - requires additional metadata
podtower.com - requires additional metadata
potkast.com - requires registration
wolfdatasystems.com - requires registration

yahoo.com - no way to ping

If it's listed above it means I tried, but I just couldn't find a way to ping them. Nag them, not me!

Podcaster Bookmarklet Mania!

Geoff — Wed, 18 May 2005 18:30:20 GMT

Even more bookmarklets!

There are now a whopping 16 bookmarklets available for podcasters! These cover viewing RSS/OPML, validating RSS, searching, directory lookups, and indexing feeds.

My favourite is the "View Auto-Detected RSS In Web Page" bookmarklet. Picture the scenario - you're on someone else's web page, and the little orange icon in Firefox tells you they have an RSS feed. Now, with one click of the bookmarklet, you can view their RSS feed in HTML. You don't have to subscribe, you don't have to view the source, you don't have to add a live bookmark, and you don't have to fire up your aggregator.

One click, and you see their feed in a readable way. (And if they're a podcaster, you can click on enclosure links to download or play the MP3 file, without firing up ipodder!)

I think it's really neat. Let me know what you think, or if you come up with any improvements.