Default Podcast Feeds in RSS Bandit - Dare Obasanjo's weblog

October 14, 2006

@ 04:16 PM

I'm in the process of putting the finishing touches on the infrastructure code for downloading podcasts in RSS Bandit. The main things left are handling the uncommon cases such as password protected enclosure files and resuming downloads if the application is restarted. I should be able to make some progress with UI integration by the end of the weekend.

The current question I've been trying to figure out is what podcast feed(s) should be in the default set of feeds when a new user installs RSS Bandit. My original plan was to go with Ask A Ninja but it seems there's some weirdness in the feed where some enclosures are Flash files while the others are Quicktime movies. The feeds I'm currently considering are

Which of these do you think is a good fit for the typical RSS Bandit user? Are there other podcasts I should be considering?

Update: It seems there are even more problems with the Ask A Ninja podcast. It seems the service hosting their podcast files (such as this one) rejects HTTP requests from the Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). I'm not sure what to do about this problem since there doesn't seem to be a way to change the User Agent string in the HTTP requests sent by the BITS client. :(

Categories: RSS Bandit

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Saturday, 14 October 2006 19:15:23 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I might be in the minority, but I hate it when programs come pre-loaded with default junk. Aggregators pre-load feeds by default, browsers give me a bunch of "favorites" and so on.

About the only case where I find it acceptable is if it's one or two items directly related to the software. So my answer here is unless there's a RSSBandit podcast, you shouldn't have any podcasts in the client by default.

Aaron B. Hockley

Saturday, 14 October 2006 23:08:56 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

How about DotNetRocks.com?

Haacked

Sunday, 15 October 2006 00:01:30 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I agree with Aaron. I prefer not to have any predefined stuff in there. I would accept it, if you ask people to pay you to have THEIR feeds in RSS Bandit as default to pay for your work. But the first thing I usually do if there are predefined links in software, is to spend some time deleting them ;)

About B.I.T.S.:
"BITS version 3.0 is included in the Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" operating systems."

Umh... Does it work with XP, then? How about using cURL as an alternative for those problematic servers?

Dominik Deobald

Sunday, 15 October 2006 00:19:10 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Dominick,
BITS 1.0 is included in Windows XP. However it is only BITS 3.0 which ships with Vista and Longhorn Server enables you to control what HTTP headers are sent and even then I'm unsure it allows you to control the User-Agent header.

Dare Obasanjo

Sunday, 15 October 2006 06:25:54 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I think TWiT's a must.

Jim Roos

Sunday, 15 October 2006 11:54:52 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Hi there I am a Rss Bandit Fan I tried Finding the latest CVS EXE download but the files available seem outdated. Can you please provide a appropriate link to a noob here. Also does the latest CVS support the new Blogger Comments just like Wordpress comments for each post :D.

Jacob

Sunday, 15 October 2006 17:15:59 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I vote for ze frank, but I agree that it might be better to have less pre-installed feeds. One or two would be enough to show the features of RSS Bandit.

Tim Misiak

Sunday, 15 October 2006 23:54:12 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

How about PodcastStudio.net? It is by the same guys that run GeeksWithBlogs.net out of Kansas City.

Tim Hibbard

Monday, 16 October 2006 05:36:34 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

TikiBarTV! (http://www.tikibartv.com/)

It won't just appeal to techie folk.

Chris Slatt

Monday, 16 October 2006 15:19:25 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Clearly, my Daily SearchCast podcast. Hey, Scoble likes it. But like Aaron, I tend to prefer not to have defaults of anything. And like Aaron, I'm probably in the minority.

Danny Sullivan

Monday, 16 October 2006 22:15:35 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I agree that defaults should be minimal or at least configurable during installation. Especially for those of us who are bandwidth impaired.

Nathan Hartley

Tuesday, 17 October 2006 03:25:25 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

www.themonkeybox.com

www.thedicetower.com

I seriously suggest some defaults should be there.

Matthew

Wednesday, 18 October 2006 00:31:45 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I would suggest
-geekbrief.tv
-Hanselminutes
-dotnetrocks (as a previous poster mentioned)

MIke

Wednesday, 18 October 2006 10:24:41 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

How about the BBC Daily NewsPod?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/newspod/index.shtml