Skookum 2.0.0.0
Skookum is an abdandoned, free podcaster app. It has nothing to write home about; albeit, it’s certainly not the worst one either.
The
developer is no longer in business (see for example
THIS and
THIS for more info). Sites like PocketGear
only seem to have the commercial, initial and, therefore, in no way recommended, 1.0 version
Note that you will need to use CF1SP3 (or, of course, CF2+) to run it; it crashed on me, along with throwing a FileNotFoundException, right at the beginning with an older version.
Note that, while some of the errors (see see
THIS and
THIS for additional info) may show you you need to manually install
System_SR_enu.cab (linked from
HERE) , you won’t need to do this.
Much as the developer’s long been out of business, I haven’t disqualified the app as it’s free.
Symbian
With AudioBay’s Symbian S60 version discontinued (because of Nokia’s app’s release),
Nokia Podcasting has become THE podcasting app for all S60 v3 phones. It’s generally very well done, fast at downloading and only lacking in some advanced features like channel image view.
It offers pretty nice, pre-configured choices, parallel downloading (of course, it allows for multiple selection with the Key button + the up/down arrow):
, automatic scheduling. However, it isn’t capable of parsing generic URL’s like
that of MoDaCo for feeds. In these cases, you must enter the URL directly in Podcasts / Options / Go to Podcasting / Podcasts / Options / New Podcast:
Don’t forget to set your storage card as the download target at Podcasts / Options / Go to Podcasting / Options / Settings / Download:
The chart
As with most of my generic bible / roundup articles, the focal point of this bible is the feature chart, which makes it possible to pack in as much information in an article as possible, also allowing for direct, easy comparison between the different solutions. As usual, you’ll want to maximize it and, on smaller-resolution screens, zoom out to avoid (excess) scrolling. Sorry for the size: as usual, I wanted to present a full roundup; hence the gigantic size.
The chart is here.
Explanation
Today / home plug-in showing the number of new podcasts etc. (NOT just a start / stop / pause control, with the song title, of the currently playing track!): some podcatchers also display the number / title(s) of newly downloaded podcasts (or simple articles).
Does it allow for user-def’d podcast categories?: more advanced catchers allow for organizing podcast feeds into user-defined categories. If you have more than a handful of feeds, this capability can prove VERY useful.
Feed login/password?: there are some private feeds requiring a login/password pair to only allow authenticated users to access their content. Almost all podcast/catchers support this.
Terminology used: particularly if you test more than one app, you may run into terminology inconsistency problems. For example, feeds are referred to as “Channels” by many. Feed contents are generally referred to as “items”, “headlines” or “episodes”. In this row, I’ve collected the terminology used by all apps so that you can avoid any confusion.
Support for non-supported (in general, non-MM) stuff?: here, I’ve listed non-multimedia stuff. Some feeds (for example,
the C&L feed) not only have multimedia audio / video content, but also other stuff like YouTube links, Flash (.swf) and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files etc. In this group, I’ve tested whether these kinds of files can be (manually – automatic download, in general, won’t work, except for very few titles like FeederReader) downloaded.
Download benchmarks (~20M mixed content over 512 kbps ADSL): in this test, I’ve tested how fast the app downloads to a 8GB Class 4 Sandisk card over a lower-end (512 kbps) ADSL connection. High-speed connections, of course, may have resulted in a much more pronounced difference. Just an example: over a very fast connection, NewsBreak is flying, while Viigo remains abysmal, certainly showing its file buffering / flushing algorithm is very weak.
Auto download / fetching: Supported? Refresh intervals / timestamp to execute?: Automatic podcast download / fetching is very important. In this row, I elaborate on which (or both) of the two updating timing is used: interval-based or a given, pre-set time of the day. I’ve also elaborated on the freedom of settings these parameters – that is, the granularity of the timestamp / interval setting. (Can you configure it to refresh the contents every, say, 5 minutes? Or, are you only allowed to do an update, say, at most once an hour?)
Download restrictions settable separately for each feed, as opposed to one, global setting?: Especially with sizable podcasts, it may be very important to be able to set completely different for example auto-deletion / retention parameters for individual feeds.
The storage requirements of different feeds can vary a lot. For example, there can be a feed with podcasts only taking up some 2-3 Mbytes at most (an example of these is
Heart of Space, which only offers 30-second-long podcasts taking up only some hundreds of kilobytes), while other podcast episodes can easily be 50-100 Mbyte long (an example is X-Play’s lengthier movies). This means if you have little storage space but would like to keep as many podcasts as possible on your handset, you may opt for only letting for the retention of, say, 1-2 episodes of feeds generally having huge files, while not having so strict restrictions on feeds with small podcasts. In these cases, feed-level configurability (as opposed to one, global setting) can really pay off.
Distinction between allowed / blocked connection types to avoid using (expensive) cellular data?: some podcatchers allow for restricting the type of connection for downloading to avoid high data bills. The majority offering this capability has the ActiveSync vs. cellular distinction.
Can you define whether to force to open a connection if it isn’t available: some (unfortunately, VERY few) apps allow for very advanced functionality like enabling Wi-Fi / BT / the cellular radio (if any) before starting the update (and, when needed, disabling them after the update). In this row, I explained this (and similar) capabilities.
Storage usage restrictable / automatic deletion of listened-to / expired enclosures?: in percentage of free / remaining storage?: this subgroup has detailed information on whether you can fine-tune the storage usage by not letting the podcatcher download stuff that would result in the storage fill up. This is a basic setting and should be supported by all podcatching applications.
Permanent storage in the file system: can the home directory be set?: better apps, in addition to storing the podcasts on a storage card (or a, size-wise, comparable entity), may also allow for setting their home directory to anything, not just a wired-in directory name like \Podcasts.
Settable maximal number of enclosures kept?: Better catchers striving for efficient storage usage may employ a deletion strategy stating the following: whenever the pre-set maximal number of enclosures becomes too small to download the newest podcast(s), the oldest one (or an already-consumed one) is deleted.
Auto-deletion of podcasts older than X days?: storage saving may also be enhanced by allowing for (unconditional – that is, not depending on whether it has been consumed or not; see on this the next row) automatic deletion of podcasts older than X days.
Flags: Already listened to? What functionalities (not listing, deletion etc.) are based on this flag?: A decent podcaster application should at least flag already-consumed media as “read”. Based on this flag (and the visual presentation), the user would have the chance of not listening to the same podcast twice.
Podcasters behave differently when it comes to the read flag. For example, NewsBreak makes sure articles already read are put at the of the headlines, should you still need them. That is, at the beginning of the headlines list, you will only see unread articles. Some other casters “only” unbold read articles. Also, some of them have the “Hide read articles” functionality.
Better podcaster applications also have even more advanced functionality based on the “read” flag. The most important of this is (mass) auto-deletion of such articles. Too bad this really basic functionality is missing from most of them.
Not listened to, but old enough to be deleted (expired)?: in addition to the pretty basic “read” flag, some casters also employ other flags like “expired”, which, in a decent caster, would allow for deleting old, but not (necessarily) listened-to podcasts.
Note that some apps do support this functionality by just offering the “Delete all podcasts older than X days” functionality.
Downloads: Multiple downloading threads at the same time to make performance better?:
This row shows whether enqueued podcasts can be downloaded in parallel. The point in parallel downloading is as follows:
- Some servers serve podcasts considerably slower than your local Internet connection. Say you have a 2 Mbps connection, while the server you’re currently downloading podcasts is only capable of serving a podcast at 500 kbps. This means 1.5 Mbps of your Internet connection remains unused.
- You may want to quickly download something while another download is in progress. For example, let’s assume you’re downloading a huge podcast when you notice there’s another, interesting one you’d like to listen to as soon as possible. In a single-threaded (simple) app, you would either need to cancel the current download(s) to quickly queue the new clip as the first one to download. In a more advanced multithreaded app, you just start the download and it downloads (albeit a bit slower because the bandwidth available may be divided up between the current downloads), without further ado.
Progress bar (or any way to see what has already been downloaded): better apps have some kind of a visual feedback showing how many bytes (and/or percent) of a given podcast (and, preferably, all the queued podcasts) have already been downloaded.
Streaming (playback without downloading the entire enclosure (first)) Supported? : better players allow for streaming – that is, playback without downloading the entire enclosure first. Note that the built-in WMP doesn’t support this; CorePlayer does.
If streamed, random positioning supported?: there are two approaches to streaming – one that allows for quickly fast forwarding into still not downloaded parts of the podcast (that is, allows for really free random access, independent of what has already been downloaded) and the simpler one that doesn’t. Naturally, the former is preferred.
Here, n/a, naturally, shows the given app isn’t at all able to stream.
Feed input (in addition to direct address entering, which is supported by all): OPML import / sync?: There are several ways of making podcast/catcher apps aware of the feeds you’d like to subscribe to. In addition to by directly entering their URL’s, one-by-one, the most important way of importing them is via OPML files.
Note that several of the apps also support
exporting into OPML files of your current subscriptions, which makes it easier to transfer your current subscriptions to another (OPML import-capable) podcatcher/caster.
M3U / PLS support?: some apps also allow for mass-importing feed URL’s via the well-known M3U and/or PLS playlist files. (See for example
THIS for more info on these formats.)
Pre-defined, built-in library?: many of these apps have some kind of access to predefined, online libraries already offering feeds you can subscribe to.
Online search?: there are several services allowing for feed lookup based on their names. Some of the handset apps have interfaces to directly access these services.
Generic HTML page parsing if unsure about the exact feed URL?: (very) few apps allow for parsing generic HTML pages to find feed URL’s in them. (This is how most desktop browsers and Opera Mini work when they display a “This page has RSS feeds in it” type of message.)
Online, web-based, synchronizable and/or readable account?: one of the best capabilities some of these apps offer is an online account allowing for either account management (importing / deleting etc. feeds, sharing them with your friends, the community etc.) or on-line article reading via any Web browser – or both.
The former greatly simplifies subscribing to feeds (and deploying the same set of feeds to other, OPML importing-capable podcasters later).
Built-in player (if any): AVRCP: while the majority of these apps rely on external players to play even the most basic and widely used podcasting file formats like MP3, some of them have a built-in player to play them back. It’s the limitations, capabilities, CPU (and, consequently, battery) usage of these built-in players that this group is all about.
The first test in this group, AVRCP, discusses whether Bluetooth remote control, AVRCP, is supported by the player (if any). Naturally, as with most of the entries in this group, n/a means there’s no built-in player in the app at all.
CPU usage?: The CPU usage of multimedia players is of extreme importance when it comes to maximizing battery life. This is why I’ve made some extensive tests to find out how these apps behave in this regard. Please also see
THIS for more info on the well-established players.
Remembers last position (resume-capable)? And, even better, auto bookmark-capable?: with sometimes lengthy podcasts, it’s essential for a player to be able to resume playback after restarting (simple resume) or even switching to another and, then, returning to the same podcast (more advanced bookmarking capability; now, storing a “last playback position” associated with each podcast file, not just globally for the last played one).
Positioning (with already-local playback); + stands for external players with podcatcher apps without a built-in player: it’s also essential for a podcast playback application to be able to randomly position inside the already-local podcast. Note that this has nothing to do with the positioning capabilities of still-downloading and/or streamed apps, which was elaborated upon earlier.
If it does have a player, can you still use an external one?: almost all the built-in players are definitely inferior (buth CPU usage- and capabilities-wise) to those offered by other, third-party players. Therefore, particularly with podcaster applications having a low-quality player, it’s essential to be able to configure it to be able to invoke an external multimedia player to play back any multimedia content.
Channel / individual song image support: Generic channel image displayed?: This group elaborates on whether generic (non-podcast-specific) channel images and podcast-specific, inline images are supported.
The first test, “Generic channel image displayed?”, shows the podcaster app is able to display the generic image associated with a channel. This is in no way essential, just cool to have and makes it easier to easily spot a feed, particularly if there are more than a handful of them.
Album art / article display? :
Note that, with external players, this will only players that do support embedded artwork in individual podcasts; that is, NOT the built-in Windows Media Player Mobile in Windows Mobile. See the first chart
HERE for more info on this question and the compatible apps.
Mass playback / delete operations: Mass playback in a given channel?: this mass operation-specific group elaborates on operations best done in one step instead of doing the same separately for each and every headline / podcast – that is, using mass operations.
The first of the tests, “Mass playback in a given channel?”, elaborates on whether the podcasts of a given channel (feed) can be played back in order without having to manually intervene (that is, start the next one when the previous is finished). This is of extreme importance with shorter clips you’d like to see. Just a real-world example: during my last 10-hour-long bus trip, I’ve watched almost all the episodes of X-Play. These podcasts are, in general, some 2…5 minutes long. As the client (the otherwise great NewsBreak) doesn’t support mass playback, it was quite a nuisance to always having to switch back to NewsBreak (from CorePlayer playing the video) and tap (with my finger) on the next feed’s “Play” icon.
With podcaster apps capable of mass playback (either in a given channel/feed or globally, with all available podcasts), you don’t need to constantly switch back to the podcaster app to start the playback of the next podcast.
Incidentally, behind the scenes, mass playback is accomplished by using playback (m3u / pls / asx files). This is how podcaster apps instruct external players to be aware of more than one playlist items. Also, this is why some of the podcaster apps (for example, Egress) explicitly refer to creating playlist files upon downloading.
Mass playback globally (not just in one channel, but all the new enclosures)?: while the previous row discussed in-feed mass playback (without human intervention), this one refers to playing back all the clips globally, originating from all feeds, not just one. Unfortunately, as with the feed-only playback, very few podcasters support this.
If (any kind of) mass playback is supported, audio / video distinction (unattended “Commute mode“ as referred to by FeederReader?): when you, for example, jog and, therefore, can’t watch the screen of your handset, in a mass playback mode, distinction between audio-only and video content can be highly useful. This way, you can be sure no video will be played back while in mass playback mode; only audio.
Mass deletion of all enclosures? If possible, can you do this on both globally and just in an individual channel?: in addition to mass playback, mass deletion can also be highly useful. Here, I elaborate on both global and in-one-feed mass deletion capabilities.
Filename naming conventions (for quick file system-level lookup, mass playback queuing from external players, deletion etc.): there are two approaches podcatcher applications use when downloading streams (one of them, BeyondPod, also supports both): either keep their original names (in some cases, adding a unique, machine-generated trailer/header to make sure no accidental overwriting will occur) or use a fully machine-generated name, mostly consisting of running indexes.
Both approaches have advantages. If you keep the original podcast filenames (particularly if you do this in separate, feed-specific subdirectories in the file system), you won’t need to do any lookup to find out what a given podcast really is. Also, queuing podcasts for mass playback (particularly if they’re in a separate subdirectory) becomes far easier. However, it’s prone to the overwriting problem, which may be particularly an issue with, in this regard, not very well written applications like
If you only have index-based and/generated random indexes, accidental overwriting won’t even occur. However, you may have a hard time identifying the podcasts in the file system, should you want to access them in an external media player without firing up the podcatch/caster application.
Of course, there are combined solutions as well; for example, Egress uses both a unique, random leading string to make sure no overwriting will take place and, after this, the original filename follows.
Compatibility with some real feeds: MoDaCo: in this pretty large group, I’ve presented some real-world test results on whether these podcast/catcher applications are compliant with some real-world, popular podcasts. The first of the test is MoDaCo’s, which causes some problems to, for example, Pocket Player (the fix is promised for the next version). It’s, otherwise, a pretty usual MP3 podcast. CorePlayer, which, as of version 1.2.5, has still pretty bad RSS feed parsing capabilities, is fully incompatible with this feed.
1Src Palm-powered Podcast (MP3): another usual MP3 podcast, no real catches here, except for Skookum, which can’t download more than one podcast a time, as it erroneously assumes the filename being “redirect.mp3”, which results in downloading subsequent episodes overwriting previous downloads.
Heart of Space (Mp3): another pretty usual feed. The only podcaster not compatible with it is NewsGator Go! for Mobiles: while it can download it, it can’t invoke an external app to play it back. This is a pretty common issue with NewsGator Go! for Mobiles, several other feeds are also suffering from this problem.
SpaceMusic Archive (MP3) and
(Current) SpaceMusic : no problems at all with any of the apps.
Radio 538 (AAC-LC) : now, this is a problematic feed causing issues with many apps. For example, CorePlayer has problems with the
080804 issue, while the other episodes (for example,
080811) work just fine.
Also note that it isn’t an MP3 podcast but an AAC-LC one. Therefore, many podcasting/catching apps are simply unable to play it back – or, for that matter, even retrieve it.
Classic Animation (H.264 Baseline video): switching to videos, Classic Animation is a great source of old cartoons. They have their stuff in H.264 baseline format, which means great compatibility with a lot of multimedia players (as opposed to more advanced H.264 formats).
It worked with most podcasters, except for NewsGator Go! for Mobiles, which exhibited the same trailing bug as with a lot of other feeds.
X’Play’s Daily Video Podcast : these videos are high-res (VGA, 640*480) and use a more advanced, non-baseline H.264 format meaning very few players (most importantly, CorePlayer on all mobile platforms except BlackBerry) will be able to play them back.
Tagesschau Podcast (MP3): these MP3 files are the plain audio tracks of the Tagesschau video programs. They’re different from the previous titles (but not the original “video” versions) in that they have a much more complicated feed URL. Probably this is what makes these feeds inaccessible for several podcatcher/caster apps (CorePlayer, Hubdog and the BlackBerry version of AudioBay).
Tagesschau Video Podcast (MP4 / H.264 baseline): the situation is pretty similar with the original video versions of these programmes.
Other sources of information
A REALLY cool post on desktop podcasting
VoiceIndigo for BlackBerry
What are you using to “podcatch”?
A german list
Another quick news item on the PPCMag article
A 2006 thread: RSS reader with podcast support for TyTn, any suggestions?
Mostly a FeederReader-specific thread
Note that, while some feeds (for example,
C&L) offers the capability of accessing two videos from one article, physically, they only hold one enclosure, not two (they only link to two videos). An example screenshot series:
No longer existing or plain weak applications
SmartFeed, an old, still
widely known, popular app, has been incorporated into NewsGator in the meantime.
The
Windows Mobile version (as of beta3) of the otherwise very nice and famous
Doppler is pretty much useless and far inferior to any of the products in the chart. Still, a quick elaboration, should you still want to know why I don’t recommend it.
First, unless you have a lot of built-in storage, in Menu / Options / Settings,
you’ll want to change the default podcast download path, \My Documents\My Podcasts. Finally, after a double-click on the feed,
select Menu / Download podcast. Trying to update feeds / podcasts has always resulted in constant problems; then, also
Aborting download… has stalled and required a manual, forced task kill. Therefore, it seems the only way to download the podcasts is via the built-in Internet Explorer (that is, fully manually – which is in no way recommended; after all, podcatchers exist just in order to avoid doing this),
you can manually tap the link after double-tapping an article.
PiP (also see for example
THIS) has been discontinued in the meantime.
Pocket Podcasts 1.0 is also pretty weak and requires a desktop-side server; this is why (on purpose) I’ve left it out.
Appendix: the Microsoft Zune
The desktop client of the Microsoft Zune allows for podcatching and synchronizing – just like Doppler, Juice and iTunes (and unlike WMP 11). I found it useful to include this section in this guide as
1. after all, the Zune is a portable device :)
2.
Microsoft promises "Zune store integration", which is quite a bit similar to that of Nokia’s on-device music store solution. One can only hope Microsoft also makes the podcatching and synchronizing capabilities of the desktop Zune version 2+ available for Windows Mobile clients as well – even if "only" on the desktop side, and not natively on the Windows Mobile clients (unlike, say, the way Nokia implemented their Podcasting app).
The desktop podcatcher component of Zune has no timing capabilities (it starts downloading new episodes as soon as you connect or wirelessly sync your Zune, which also starts the Zune app on the desktop), which may be a bit disappointing, particularly if you have a lot to download (which may also greatly slow down the desktop) and/or have a slow connection and, therefore, need to wait a lot for all the new episodes to download. Nevertheless, it has a very simple and logical interface, which is really easy to use, while still offering advanced capabilities like feed-specific retention and synchronization settings (the ability to set the number of episodes to store on the desktop / on the Zune, from 1 to 10 and including all).
It also has a built-in search, should you want to avoid having to directly paste the feed URL's to Zune. All you need to do is just entering the name of the podcast feed (like "modaco") to the search input field. It found most the English and German test podcasts. It, however, didn't contain anything Finnish from
THIS list, not even English-language ones like
Radio Free Finland. I needed to add these feeds, then, one by one.
Unfortunately, it doesn't support OPML import – not even in the current, just-released, 3.0 milestone version. It didn't have problems with parsing any of the directly entered URL's, unlike some of the tested apps.
Some screenshots (of version 2.X; the latest, 3.0 version isn't at all different when it comes to podcatching):
(General settings)
(Feed-specific settings)
(Main podcasts screen, showing all the subscribed feeds on the left and the episodes in the middle; the state of the current download etc.)
(sync group-view, also showing the total space)
(Just Syncing-view)
Unfortunately, the Zune client does have its share of problems. For example, it entirely lacks MP4 (m4a) chapter support (like the ones in the enhanced MoDaCo podcast feeds or the Tiesto feed). Not even the just-released 3.0 desktop/device software fixed this.
Also note that Zunes can't update traditional podcasts over the air (only the newly (in version 3) added channels, but these channels can't be manually created) without the need for syncing with the desktop Zune software. Yeah, I know podcatching (with everything involved: incompatible feeds, incompatible formats can't be natively played back on the Zune etc.) isn't at all trivial; still, I would really welcome full podcasting client support as opposed to the pre-made, no-user-channels-possible channel syncing currently supported. Microsoft could, for example, just port the podcatching code from the desktop software to the device firmware. It's pretty solid and dependable; again, it was able to sync to all the feeds I've thrown at it not necessarily present in Microsoft's library.
(Some other, Zune & podcatching-related articles:
How to manage podcasts in the Zune software: this is the current one; also applies to 3.0.
Some examples of old, outdated, pre-version 2 tutorials:
How to Manage Podcast Content With Your Zune and
HOWTO: Podcasting with a Zune. These are, again, outdated; now, there is absolutely no need to use an additional podcatcher in addition to the desktop-side Zune app. (This is also reflected by ExtremeTech's initial article
Zune: iPod Killer or Half-Baked Flop?). Note that it was with the release of Zune 2 a year ago that podcatching
has been added to the desktop software.)
Follow Us
RSS Feed
Follow on Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
