Cast Away - Gain control over iTunes' podcast aging
Nov 21, '05 10:11:00AM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 8 out of 10]
As some of you may know, when the whole podcasting phenomenon first started, I wasn't the biggest fan. In the months since I wrote that bit, I'd say my thoughts on podcasting have become somewhat more positive, but I'm still not a big convert. I have, however, managed to accumulate a few subscriptions to interesting things. My problem, as noted in the original writeup, was that I just don't have much time to listen to them. And that's when I ran into an iTunes limitation on podcast management -- basically, you only have a global setting for handling your podcasts, and there are no "by date" options available to control retention. Since I don't listen regularly, I found myself wanting to keep some older podcasts, while trashing others. For instance, I only wanted to retain my 'funny video' podcasts for a few days, but I wanted to keep every episode of Science Friday.
Enter Cast Away. This $7 shareware app gives you fine-grained control over your podcasts. You tell iTunes how long to keep each podcast, how long to keep them active, and whether or not to archive the podcasts before removing them. Once everything's set the way you like it, Cast Away will set up a recurring task to update your podcasts at the same time each day.
You can read more about Cast Away in today's Macgems article at macworld.com. I found the program to be a useful and relatively easy to use...though I really think Apple should (and probably will) incorporate something like this in iTunes in the future. But for now, Cast Away gets the job done...
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20051121070141392