This hint allows you to create your own personal podcast channel for iTunes using Folder Actions and either web sharing or a file sharing service like Dropbox. Here is how you can do it.
From now on, you can use your personal podcast to keep track of where you are in longer audio files, like radio recordings. It also works with iTunes-compatible video files.
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one. If you're not a Dropbox user and you'd like to thank Lutzifer for this hint, you can sign up using his Dropbox referral link. This will get him a bit of extra Dropbox storage space.]
- Create a folder inside the Sites folder in your home directory (if you want to use web sharing), or withing your Dropbox/Public (for Dropbox users) folder, and call it myPodcast or something similar.
- Create a text file inside the Folder containing the following code, and call it myPodcast.rss:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0"> <channel> <description>My personal podcast</description> <link>http://www.nolink.com</link> <title>My Podcasts/title> <pubDate> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:35:02 +0200 </pubDate> </channel></rss>
- Open AppleScript Editor, paste the following code, and save the script under Library » Scripts » Folder Action Scripts:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items set the_folder to POSIX path of this_folder -- Adapt the set base_url part to match the url of either your web sharing -- address and the folder or your public dropbox folder and the subfolder. -- You can get the url by using the "get public link" function on the dropbox home page. set base_url to "http://dl.dropbox.com/u/XXXXXXX/myPodcast/" as string repeat with i from 1 to the count of added_items set this_item to (item i of added_items) as alias tell application "Finder" set theName to the name of this_item as string end tell set theUrl to do shell script "python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of (theName) tell application "Finder" do shell script "cd " & (the quoted form of the_folder as string) & ";export LANG=EN_US;echo \"$(head -n 6 podcast.rss)\" >> newPodcast.rss;echo \"<pubDate> $(date +\"%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z\") </pubDate>\" >> newPodcast.rss;tail -n $(($(wc -l < podcast.rss) - 7 )) podcast.rss | head -n $(($(wc -l < podcast.rss) - 8)) >> newPodcast.rss;echo \"<item><title>" & (theName as string) & "</title><enclosure type=\\\"audio/mpeg\\\" length=\\\"$(ls -al $" & (quoted form of theName as string) & "| awk '{print $5}')\\\" url=\\\"" & base_url & theUrl & "\\\"/></item>\" >> newPodcast.rss;tail -n 2 podcast.rss >> newPodcast.rss;rm podcast.rss;mv newPodcast.rss podcast.rss;" end tell end repeat end adding folder items to - Control-click on the folder you created, and choose Configure Folder Actions from the pop-up menu. In the next dialog, choose the above script as Folder Action.
- Open iTunes and add a new Podcast. Insert the above base_url and add myPodcast.rss
From now on, you can use your personal podcast to keep track of where you are in longer audio files, like radio recordings. It also works with iTunes-compatible video files.
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one. If you're not a Dropbox user and you'd like to thank Lutzifer for this hint, you can sign up using his Dropbox referral link. This will get him a bit of extra Dropbox storage space.]
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