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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: PopMcGee on Nov 21, '05 07:36:26PM

Some things I'd like to do are:
- always keep the latest 2 (or 3) episodes, delete all others
- keep all episodes for 2 weeks
- keep as many episodes of a podcast as fit into 200 MB
- keep as many episodes overall to always have 2 GB free mem on my machine
- keep until heard
- keep only video episodes (or audio episodes), for mixed podcasts
- keep only short ones (or long ones)
etc. etc., you get the idea. Now what does this tool offer? Only the distinction between "keep all" and "delete 'em when heard". That's nothing!

Additionaly, the tool doesn't make it clear whether it's turned on or off (I'm not so sure what will happen now to my podcasts tomorrow morning, to be frank).

Hope to see some far greater apps for this in the future :-(



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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: robg on Nov 22, '05 06:49:25AM

Compared to iTunes built-in capabilities, I still stand by this as fine-grained control -- what I meant was that you can control each podcast's settings, not just one lump for all of them.

But as you've seen, the author is participating here, so if you ask, perhaps he can implement some/all of your requests in a future version...

-rob.



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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: loren_ryter on Nov 22, '05 09:19:10AM

Hi, thank's for your input. Some of these suggestions could be implemented. The problem is that they would make the interface confusing and cluttered. If more people clamored for a certain feature I would definitely try to add it, but so far you are the only one.

some comments:

>> always keep the latest 2 (or 3) episodes, delete all others

You realize you could always keep the latest 1, right? Setting a different value for how many to keep, could be a global value.

>> keep all episodes for 2 weeks

This is already there. Just put in 14 (days) for the retain value for each.

>> - keep as many episodes of a podcast as fit into 200 MB

This would be another column.

>> keep as many episodes overall to always have 2 GB free mem on my machine

Difficult to implement as it would involve all your other music and your whole file system.

>> keep until heard

Might be possible, but it would be another column, and it would conflict with the function to make itunes update all podcasts, as that marks an episode as heard.

>> keep only video episodes (or audio episodes), for mixed podcasts

don't know about this one since i don't use video podcasts. i could look into it. would be another column.

>> keep only short ones (or long ones)

would be a mess. don't you find that the episode length for most podcasts is pretty close?

>>etc. etc., you get the idea.

No, I don't get the idea beyond the specific (some good) suggestions you've made. I can't just invent people's needs. I design for what's useful to me + what other people want.

>> Now what does this tool offer? Only the distinction between "keep all" and "delete 'em when heard". That's nothing!

It offers a lot more than that. Did you look at the interface or info?

>> Additionaly, the tool doesn't make it clear whether it's turned on or off (I'm not so sure what will happen now to my podcasts tomorrow morning, to be frank).

It's on when the schedule is set and off when it isn't.

>> Hope to see some far greater apps for this in the future :-(

Best of luck, thanks for your support.



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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: DocMan on Nov 23, '05 06:21:22AM

A specific example for the "keep only short ones"/"keep only long ones" idea.

Inside Mac Radio has a daily news podcast that is about 5-10 minutes long. Since it's just the news segment, it is very topical. They also have an hour and 20 minute show on the weekend that includes all the news from the past week. These have other interviews and some folk may want to save them for later reference.

So in this case you have 1 podcast where someone might want to save a podcast longer than 20 minutes indefinately, but throw away podcasts under 20 minutes after a week.

There may be other examples.

Doc



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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: loren_ryter on Nov 26, '05 03:25:09PM
You'll be happy to know that many of these suggestions have been implemented in Cast Away 1.5, just released on Version Tracker.

There are heaps of new features here, so there may be some issues remaining, but I've just spent a good deal of T-Giving weekend coding and debugging, much to the irritation of my gf. ;-) So far total shareware payments for Cast Away = $7. ;-)

  • MAJOR UPDATE!
  • Greatly improved flexibility in handling podcasts.
  • Options per podcast went from 5 to 19.
  • Separate handling of short and long episodes of a podcast
  • Separate handling of over-rides for short / long podcasts and for removing / unchecking. (Making 4 groups of over-rides).
  • New over-rides: size cap in megabytes, keep latest X episodes, and keep unheard.
  • Detailed results reporting in plain language.
  • Test mode provides ability to test settings without removing or unchecking episodes.
  • Rewrote information tab and further improvements to tool tips.
  • Resizable interface.
  • Fixed an interface incompatibility with Panther introduced in last version.
  • Added ability to immediately remove files rather than trash to avoid empty trash problems.
  • Better internal debug info that can be copied and sent to developer.


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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: DocMan on Nov 28, '05 05:20:28AM

Woot!

Thanks for the quick work! I'll have to check it out this week.

Doc



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"Fine-grained control"? Hardly.
Authored by: loren_ryter on Nov 28, '05 10:57:33AM

and, as a result of adding all the new features in 1.5, people complained the interface was too complicated (as I thought they would), so I worked all day yesterday and designed another more intuitive interface with 1.6.

I've got one more idea in mind, but need to figure out a technical limitation first.



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