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Is there a widget I can use for my own podcasts on iTunes?
I podcast my all of my lectures from two different colleges where I teach, and Apple iTunes aggregates them in two separate albums. Podcasts begin, of course, as RSS feeds from one of the two Websites (NucleusCMS); then the core audio feeds are picked up by iTunes, so theoretically I could make an RSS widget, but that would come out as a link to an MP3 file sort of floating in cyberspace, and more importantly, I wouldn't have the Apple iTunes imprimature associated with the widget, which would give more people seeing the widget incentive to go and subscribe at iTunes. (The podcasts are free, by the way.)
I don't see an iTunes widget, especially one for constantly updated, proprietary podcasts, and that means it looks like this project would be an awful lot like work. Is that a good assessment, or am I missing a relatively painless way to pull this off?
I don't see an iTunes widget, especially one for constantly updated, proprietary podcasts, and that means it looks like this project would be an awful lot like work. Is that a good assessment, or am I missing a relatively painless way to pull this off?
I’m meatloaf dense.
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Inappropriate?Hi Alan,
Can you post (or send via email if you'd prefer) your RSS feed? You may be able to put the elements that you need to run a blidget in there as well as what itunes needs.
Do they use the <link /> element for the URL to the mp3?
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Inappropriate?Good afternoon, Dave. You caught me during a break in my classes. Here are the two iTunes-compliant feeds with the respective associated links at Apple iTunes:
http://isu-prof.com/xml-rss2.php
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZ...
http://hcc-prof.com/xml-rss2.php
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZ...
As I noted, I could always just make RSS widgets from the /xml-rss2.php URLs, but that would not show the podcasts as being associated with Apple iTunes. Unfortunately, to the extent that I know anything at all about how iTunes, itself, works, there really is an iTunes feed stream, but I've heard that the file format and/or encoding is unusual. I don't have this as first-hand knowledge, though.
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. -
Inappropriate?So one option would be to change over your <link /> elements in your RSS feed to point to the itunes links (posted above), or to itunes links to that specific podcast if you find a way to get them from itunes (which may be less feasible):
<link />http://isu-prof.com/index.php?itemid=644</link>
I don't suspect that you want anyone really to have access to these links, as you mentioned, due to the source MP3's being available on those pages.
Another option, if you're slightly less concerned with people having direct access to download your MP3's would be adding the iTunes links to these PHP pages.
Neither solution is entirely perfect, but they should be easy modifications to allow you to accomplish your goal: get a widget, direct traffic to itunes.
