PodShow redesign?

[scottandtelly]

What does everyone think of it? We really love the new PodShow player, its much more sleek! :) The design is alot different, and it will probably take a while to get adjusted. But overall, its for the better in our opinion..

[WyethDigital]

The new player looks great -- both in it's clean design and the clear picture (I co-produce a video podcast, so picture is important). PodShow has now graduated from one of the butt-ugliest players out there to one of the sharpest. They've gotten rid of the ads, they've made it easier to read -- I like it a lot. I do continue to have problems with their scrub bar. For me (OS X, Safari), the scrub bar is useless. The fast-forward/rewind controls don't seem to work very well, either (only jumps it a second or so at a time).

As for the show page and the RSS data it's displaying, something's screwy there. It's only updating to mid-July and it's showing duplicate episodes. I copied the link to the RSS feed they were using (thinking something was funky with it, or it was somehow pointed to an old RSS file) and entered it into another aggregator. It was displayed fine, and is current. I flagged my podcast in the hopes of getting it fixed, or of finding out what's up.

I expect it'll be a few days before the majority of the bugs are worked out.

Eric

[Hittman]

At first glance it looks better, but why am I first presented with screens full of YouTube clips? I can find YouTube all by myself, thanks.

So I go to Shows, pick a category, and get asked if I want to download or play it. Download or play a category? Ok, I pick play. It pops up a screen with shows. Finally! And on my 800x600 screen, the popup screen is chopped off. There's no scroll bar on the bottom, it's just chopped.

From another screen, I pick Ask a Ninja. Nothing happens. I click again. Nothing happens.

At some point in my scrolling I get a popup from Firefox I've never seen before, warning me that a script is slowing things down and if I don't stop it Firefox may stop working. I decide to live dangerously.

I search for my show, Quick Hitts. It pops up a directory with RTFL Quick Jabs first, followed by Quick Hitts. Excuse me, shouldn't the show title that matches exactly be the first displayed? But at least my show is displayed second. And they've left out the last episode. And the one before that. I click "Get It" and am told I'll have to register with the site to do that. I click "Play it" and it loads up, and finally, there are the missing episodes. The description, however, is chopped off, again with no scroll bar.

I'm not impressed.

[WyethDigital]

Yeah, I gave up on PodShow's search feature long ago. The problems you mention have been there since the launch. They've actually improved, in fact. Used to be, a non-Podshow product was lucky to be in the Top 10 when searched for by name.

I have a higher screen res than you do, Dave, so I did not have a need to re-size the window. I'm surprises that it doesn't have auto-scroll bars for a person with a smaller screen.

The pop-up you got may be related to Flash 9. I get those sometimes at some other sites, like Brightcove and YouTube. I think it has to do with TCP/IP lag.

I'm gonna have to see the Ask A Ninja problem for myself, because my video played beautifully! What did you break?! :D

Eric

Edit -- The iPod version of Ask A Ninja worked for me in the player, but the PodShow page did not load, nor did the non-iPod feed load (at all).

Edit 2 -- A verbatim search of my show's title has us coming up fourth in the list. Conspiracy theories, anyone? ;)

[WyethDigital]

This bears noting: I reported a concern on my podcast because the episodes weren't updating and the feed address was old (I keep a feed at my old address just in case someone finds me at a place with an out-of-date feed).

Within a matter of a couple of hours at most, my feed is updated and my episodes are current.

KUDOS to PodShow for their fast work!

Eric

[WyethDigital]

Wyeth:

I should note that if you claim your podcast at Podcast Alley, you edit your feed details. If you change your feed, Podcast Alley sends that information to the PodShow site so people can find you. Every valid podcast feed at Podcast Alley should be able to be found at PodShow.

So, if you changed your feed at Podcst Alley, that should have added it to PodShow too :)

Have you claimed your feed yet here at PCA?

Claiming my feed requires me to enter code into our website. We are using an off-the-shelf Apple product that thus far does not allow us to enter direct code directly into the page that generates our RSS feed, so I don't think it will work.

Yes, we should use more flexible software to generate our site, but we are more interested in creating our podcast than spending time learning PhP and CSS. Our feed was and is up to date at PCA, so I was surprised that the info at PodShow wasn't.

[WyethDigital]

Sounds easy enough to me. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I think the instructions could stand a little tightening up, though. They gave me the impression that I needed to incorporate that into a blog post. I'll go claim the feed pronto.

... I just entered the code that came up after I clicked the "Claim" link into my XML code and hit the "ReTry to Claim" button. Nothing seems to be happening.

Does this code look right?

<a href="http://www.podcastalley.com/"> My Podcast Alley feed!</a> {pca-f70c282cd3bf159a7d79c8409bcd33ea}


I entered it after the <channel> tag and uploaded the edited file.

Eric

Edit -- I think I know what I did wrong. D'oh! A n00b mistake. Forgot to actually add the feed address (although the instructions don't make it clear that you have to replace "My Podscast Alley feed" with your feed address. , just says to copy/paste the code).

[WyethDigital]

actually, the code that you put in there is right!

just make a blog post and put that code in there. you can see my example of when i claimed my blog to test right here >> http://www.chrismcintyre.com/2006/11/07/another-claim-test/

add it to your blog like you do with any other blog post and then go back to the claim setup and hit the claim button.

as a note, i am updating all of the claim text. it is a little confusign rightnow, but we were excited to get it out. :)
That would probably work for most blog software then, but ours doesn't take direct code input (though I can directly edit the XML of the RSS file).

Eric