Friday, July 20, 2007
How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed and How to Subscribe to a Podcast.
This has been a long time coming and I know my parents need it as they always seem to forget I have a blog:
Firstly, What is an RSS feed?
An RSS feed (forget what the acronym means as not even the experts can agree on that) is basically a file on the internet that stores the "meaty," important portions of several articles. This basically includes the title, date published, a snippet of the text (sometimes the whole text) and a link to the actual webpage that the post is on.
Every time I make a new blog post, or the BBC puts up a new news article a new entry is added to the RSS feed with the "meat" of the post. What having a separate file for this does, is allow you to get the content of the post without having to go to the website and get all the graphics, ads, and other stuff involved with a webpage. Dial-up internet users and Eastern Bloc European Countries, rejoice!
You can find RSS feeds by this icon:
Next, How to Subscribe?
This gets a little more tricky, but bear with me. Unfortunately RSS feeds are still kind of a nerdy concept so the magic standardized crossover between computers and RSS feeds hasn't been developed yet. This means you'll need a third-party program (translation, you'll have to install something). What this program will do will allow you to put all the feeds you want to subscribe to in a single place. It's like having all the content of the webpages you visit in a single glance without having to visit them.
If, you have Firefox, congrats, you've already installed something that will read and store RSS feeds. Wherever you see that icon above or a link that says "Subscribe to My RSS Feed!" you can click it and Firefox will prompt you to "Subscribe to this feed using: Live Bookmarks." Clicking "Subscribe Now" will give you the option to add it to your Bookmarks Toolbar. If you do this, it will be place right above your browser window and you can click on the link to activate a drop down that lists the titles of all recent posts on the site. Nifty, huh?
For the Firefox users who are a bit more savvy, I recommend the Wizz RSS News Reader Add-on. It creates a nice little side panel listing all your feeds.
And finally, if you don't have Firefox (or I should mention Apple's Safari, now for Windows!, does the same thing), there are a lot of other great desktop RSS readers for download.
What is a Podcast?
Even though "pod" is in the name, you don't need an iPod for Podcasts. Let's get that out of the way up front.
A podcast is basically on demand radio or TV. That's a concept we're all familiar with at this point, right? You see a listing radio shows or TV shows, you click one, you can watch it right then. If you really like that series you can subscribe to it and get the whole season and every new episode that comes out.
This is the same with podcasts. The come in two flavors, audio (radio) and video (tv), and use the technology above (RSS) to tell people when a new show is posted. Best of all, they're free!
How to Subscribe to a Podcast: My way ... Or the Highway.
Disclaimer: Ok, I'm only taking one approach to this, and here's why: One: I'm an Apple fanboy. Two: All my podcasts are in m4v format. Three: I'm getting tired of typing.
Basically, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and go get Apple iTunes. Its an amazing music player with a lot of other great features.
Once you have iTunes subscribing to podcasts is a snap. If a link is formated right (like mine) it will open iTunes automatically and subscribe for you.
Otherwise, it will bring up something that looks like the RSS feed we clicked on above. To subscribe, open iTunes, click "Advanced" in the menu bar, and then choose "Subscribe to Podcast..." This will bring up a text box called URL. Copy and paste the website address (URL) from your browser into this text box. It'll look something like this: http://www.travisjtodd.com/podcast/podcast.xml . Then click, "OK."
This will automatically subscribe you to the podcast, and once its done downloading you can view it by clicking "Podcasts" in the left hand side of your iTunes. You can even get a description of the show before you watch it by clicking the little "i" in a circle at the far right side of the window.
Try this out by clicking the links on the right of this site. And comment below if you have any questions. Merry Internetting...
How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed
Firstly, What is an RSS feed?
An RSS feed (forget what the acronym means as not even the experts can agree on that) is basically a file on the internet that stores the "meaty," important portions of several articles. This basically includes the title, date published, a snippet of the text (sometimes the whole text) and a link to the actual webpage that the post is on.
Every time I make a new blog post, or the BBC puts up a new news article a new entry is added to the RSS feed with the "meat" of the post. What having a separate file for this does, is allow you to get the content of the post without having to go to the website and get all the graphics, ads, and other stuff involved with a webpage. Dial-up internet users and Eastern Bloc European Countries, rejoice!
You can find RSS feeds by this icon:
Next, How to Subscribe?
This gets a little more tricky, but bear with me. Unfortunately RSS feeds are still kind of a nerdy concept so the magic standardized crossover between computers and RSS feeds hasn't been developed yet. This means you'll need a third-party program (translation, you'll have to install something). What this program will do will allow you to put all the feeds you want to subscribe to in a single place. It's like having all the content of the webpages you visit in a single glance without having to visit them.
If, you have Firefox, congrats, you've already installed something that will read and store RSS feeds. Wherever you see that icon above or a link that says "Subscribe to My RSS Feed!" you can click it and Firefox will prompt you to "Subscribe to this feed using: Live Bookmarks." Clicking "Subscribe Now" will give you the option to add it to your Bookmarks Toolbar. If you do this, it will be place right above your browser window and you can click on the link to activate a drop down that lists the titles of all recent posts on the site. Nifty, huh?
For the Firefox users who are a bit more savvy, I recommend the Wizz RSS News Reader Add-on. It creates a nice little side panel listing all your feeds.
And finally, if you don't have Firefox (or I should mention Apple's Safari, now for Windows!, does the same thing), there are a lot of other great desktop RSS readers for download.
How to Subscribe to a Podcast
What is a Podcast?
Even though "pod" is in the name, you don't need an iPod for Podcasts. Let's get that out of the way up front.
A podcast is basically on demand radio or TV. That's a concept we're all familiar with at this point, right? You see a listing radio shows or TV shows, you click one, you can watch it right then. If you really like that series you can subscribe to it and get the whole season and every new episode that comes out.
This is the same with podcasts. The come in two flavors, audio (radio) and video (tv), and use the technology above (RSS) to tell people when a new show is posted. Best of all, they're free!
How to Subscribe to a Podcast: My way ... Or the Highway.
Disclaimer: Ok, I'm only taking one approach to this, and here's why: One: I'm an Apple fanboy. Two: All my podcasts are in m4v format. Three: I'm getting tired of typing.
Basically, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and go get Apple iTunes. Its an amazing music player with a lot of other great features.
Once you have iTunes subscribing to podcasts is a snap. If a link is formated right (like mine) it will open iTunes automatically and subscribe for you.
Otherwise, it will bring up something that looks like the RSS feed we clicked on above. To subscribe, open iTunes, click "Advanced" in the menu bar, and then choose "Subscribe to Podcast..." This will bring up a text box called URL. Copy and paste the website address (URL) from your browser into this text box. It'll look something like this: http://www.travisjtodd.com/podcast/podcast.xml . Then click, "OK."
This will automatically subscribe you to the podcast, and once its done downloading you can view it by clicking "Podcasts" in the left hand side of your iTunes. You can even get a description of the show before you watch it by clicking the little "i" in a circle at the far right side of the window.
In Conclusion...
Try this out by clicking the links on the right of this site. And comment below if you have any questions. Merry Internetting...
Labels: Apple, firefox, itunes, podcast, RSS, subscribing
Saturday, June 16, 2007
future of television
I wrote a long reply to an email from my uncle Mark about answering his query to the future of internet television and thought it was worthy of sharing with everyone:
Ah, internet TV, well it is the way of the future I predict and right now options are just beginning to appear. From what I've seen thus far though, is that with price comes quality. I mean, there's a reason that HBO costs so much extra and that's because the quality of television is so much higher. But there are some options:
Some interesting things are, of course, Apple TV, which allows you to stream downloaded content to your TV from your PC. It also now has built in youtube functionality. It can also be hacked to run a full Mac OS, which makes it the cheapest Mac desktop on the market ;)
Next is iTVN which is what I predict TV will look like in the future. It's TV over your broadband connection
Unfortunately now their selection is kind of limited but they offer some interesting things like a la carte ordering. It's also the cheapest way I've seen to get Setanta Sports.
There's been a ton of buzz about Joost. Unfortunately it's not in public beta yet, so you have to be invited to download the program. It seems to have a big selection, but this runs into the problem I mentioned earlier in that it's not all the major channels/programs you're used to. You kind of have to let go of your traditional view of TV, like CNN, NBC, ABC, etc...the old giants.
And then for the slightly more grey market. If you want to watch some shows or movies (in low-quality) streaming over the internet, theres AllUC.org and TV-links.co.uk. If you want something a little higher quality (and in a little darker grey market) there's bitTorrents. ISOhunt and Pirate Bay are some huge bitTorrent search engines.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I've been doing a lot of searching for this sort of stuff in order to keep up with my american shows...
Ah, internet TV, well it is the way of the future I predict and right now options are just beginning to appear. From what I've seen thus far though, is that with price comes quality. I mean, there's a reason that HBO costs so much extra and that's because the quality of television is so much higher. But there are some options:
Some interesting things are, of course, Apple TV, which allows you to stream downloaded content to your TV from your PC. It also now has built in youtube functionality. It can also be hacked to run a full Mac OS, which makes it the cheapest Mac desktop on the market ;)
Next is iTVN which is what I predict TV will look like in the future. It's TV over your broadband connection
Unfortunately now their selection is kind of limited but they offer some interesting things like a la carte ordering. It's also the cheapest way I've seen to get Setanta Sports.
There's been a ton of buzz about Joost. Unfortunately it's not in public beta yet, so you have to be invited to download the program. It seems to have a big selection, but this runs into the problem I mentioned earlier in that it's not all the major channels/programs you're used to. You kind of have to let go of your traditional view of TV, like CNN, NBC, ABC, etc...the old giants.
*Edit: Since writing this email I got an invite to Joost and checked it out. It's a BEAUTIFUL program with a SLICK user interface and really does come through on everything it promises. Some downfalls are the lack of real quality entertainment and mainstream shows, but I have faith their channel listing will steadily grow (it may also be limited because my IP address is coming from Germany and I think you need different rights to distribute worlwide). The other problem is it only runs on intel-based macs, which mine is a Power PC, so I had to load it up on Sofie's iBook. Maybe it's time to buy a new Mac, eh? If you want an invite, drop me a line and I'll hook it up.
And then for the slightly more grey market. If you want to watch some shows or movies (in low-quality) streaming over the internet, theres AllUC.org and TV-links.co.uk. If you want something a little higher quality (and in a little darker grey market) there's bitTorrents. ISOhunt and Pirate Bay are some huge bitTorrent search engines.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I've been doing a lot of searching for this sort of stuff in order to keep up with my american shows...
Labels: Apple, bittorrents, itvn, Joost, TV
Monday, May 28, 2007
Hard Drove Into The Ground
Just in case you haven't heard, my hard drive has died. So, thats why I haven't been online much or there hasn't been a new podcast. I guess my over-worked machine finally gave up.
It's getting repaired for free (since I made the best decision of my life and bought the Apple Care extended warranty). But I do have to fork over 200 € to recover the data and files if Apple won't front the bill like they should (and previously said they would).
So, hopefully in the next week I'll be back full force. Have a great Memorial Day statesiders!
It's getting repaired for free (since I made the best decision of my life and bought the Apple Care extended warranty). But I do have to fork over 200 € to recover the data and files if Apple won't front the bill like they should (and previously said they would).
So, hopefully in the next week I'll be back full force. Have a great Memorial Day statesiders!
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Fun with iChat
Hey all you Mac users! Can't wait for OS X Leopard? Or don't want to pay for it? Well, get some sweet new plugins for your iChat now, including my favorite, tabbed iChat windows.
Thanks to Chad for bringing this neat little app to my attention: http://www.ksuther.com/chax/
To my other friends and family, sorry for the nerdy post, but get used to it!
Labels: Apple, Chax, iChat, Mac
