« What a difference a source makes.
MobileCast a top 10 iphone app! »

Finding RSS Feeds

podgrove just got a search function that makes finding feeds for mobilecast a whole lot easier. Head on over to the search page and enter your query:

We’re using rails with ferret to power these searches. Ferret is basically an implementation of Apache Lucene in ruby, so you can leverage the lucene query syntax when your searching for podcasts on podgrove. Currently ferret is indexing & searching the title, description, url & body (raw rss feed dump); you can query just the description field for “BBC” by typing “description:BBC” into the search box. Its working pretty nicely for a first version. You can expect to see some further refinement over the coming days/weeks. Including integration with mobilecast - I’ve actually been thinking about using iui for a quick integration. All we’d need to do is initialize a webview of an iui version of the podgrove search page in mobilecast :)

Below is another screenshot showing off some search results:

If you click through on any of the results it should bring you to the RSS for that feed. Then if you’ve added the podgrove rss handler to firefox, you’ll just need to click to subscribe. To get the feed onto your itouch or iphone you’ll just need to hit the sync button on the settings page in mobilecast.

Please check it out. Head on over to podgrove, create an account if you don’t already have one and have a play with the new podgrove search feature. Please let us know what you think of this in the comments, we’d be vey interested in your feedback!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 10:38 pm and is filed under mobilecast, podgrove. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Finding RSS Feeds”

  1. Great Software - Many thanks
    I assumed that saving a podcast would allow me to replay it when Wifi is not available. If not, what does the save button do? I’ve saved some music, can now see it highlighted but it does not play when I am not near Wifi. Is it something I am not doing correctly?
    Thanks

  2. Morton:
    The save button on the settings/add feed page in the mobilecast app simply adds the feed or opml you just entered to your list of feeds. To download podcasts over wifi for playback later, simply click the download button on the feed items page, its on the bottom-left opposite the play button that streams shows when your connected on wifi.
    hope that helps.
    –Frank

    PS - if you’ve got more questions about mobilecast the google group is a good place to post them:
    http://groups.google.com/group/mobilecast/topics

  3. The create an account application isnt working so i cant register and cant manage to add feeds so im hoping to sync them instead

  4. gahhh! thanks for reporting this Dfinni - it appears to be caused by an upgrade to the ruby version provided by my hosting provider :(
    Apparently were hitting a known bug:
    http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/211
    I’ve contacted my hosting providers support team. In the mean time I’ve put a workaround in place that should allow the site to function. Please post if you encounter any further issues.

  5. I’m trying to register as well but that workaround you mentioned isn’t working for me :( I fill in the email addy and password and hit register but nothing comes up. I tried both FF and IE.

  6. @adrian - sorry about that - I didn’t do a whole lot of testing. You should be able to create an account now (it worked fine in my test).

  7. Thank you very much for the quick fix :)

Leave a Reply