The Smartfeed Mobile Client for Windows Mobile

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.smartfeed.org/Default.aspx' target='_blank'>http://www.smartfeed.org/Default.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Smartfeed is the first Podcast Receiver, or "Podcatcher", to bring podcasting to both the Smartphone and Pocket PC leveraging the same underlying .NET Compact Framework managed assembly! You are no longer tied down by cables. Use your mobile devices existing wireless or Bluetooth capabilities to find and download podcasts while you're sitting in a café or waiting to board your plane. Join the revolution and take podcasting to the next level."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050618-Smartfeed.gif" /><br /><br />Kevin Cawley, creator of Smartfeed, recently contacted us with a bit of information on his Smartfeed podcast client for Pocket PCs and Smartphones. Smartfeed allows you to locate podcasts using OPML, resume downloads, receive recommendations based on the number of downloads, manage your podcast library from the Pocket PC, and set podcasts to automatically update. It seems like a nice application so if any of you are interested, why not give it a shot? Kevin is also eager to gain any feedback so that he can make the next version as good as the first.

[bbarker]

What does OPML mean?

[Darius Wey]

What does OPML mean?

It's an XML format for storing outlines. If you want more information, then the OPML Specification page (http://www.opml.org/spec) may be of interest to you.

[jweisz]

Without knowing anything about the product, it seems to me that a lemon makes a really bad logo.

Just sayin'

[Darius Wey]

Without knowing anything about the product, it seems to me that a lemon makes a really bad logo.

Just sayin'

Mind you, the famous iPodder (http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php) uses a lemon as their logo too. They happen to be doing just great. :P

[silver99]

I actually thought it was iPodder for PPC when I saw the lemon - they should be careful on copyright laws (possibly stealing an image/logo).

[kiwi]

I actually thought it was iPodder for PPC when I saw the lemon - they should be careful on copyright laws (possibly stealing an image/logo).

hmmm.. those lemons look the same to me..

[Ed@Brighthand]

I gave Smartfeed a try, and while I think it has a lot of potential, it's not yet ready for prime time.

The big problem with this software is there's currently no way to limit how much you download.

As a trial, I set it to get me the Engadget podcast. I checked my PPC again 10 or 15 minutes later and it was still downloading. I stopped the download to find out what was going on, and discovered that it was downloading every Engadget podcast ever.

There's not a way to ask it to just get the most recent one. Smartfeed would apparently have continued downloading older and older podcasts until my SD card was full.

[martoon]

I downloaded FeederReader http://www.feederreader.com/index.html "a full-featured RSS Aggregator with podcast listening ("podcasting" or "podcatching") and enclosure support, running on Windows Mobile. It is designed for downloading and reading RSS feeds on a Pocket PC run without the assistance of a host computer." It's in alpha, so it's not very visually polished, but it works very well. That's how I found out about this thing. I have the feeder reader set to grab pocket pc thoughts. And a big BONUS, I don't have to sync up to the craptop, I just turn on the wifi and start downloading the content right into my pda. I've been using it for 3 weeks and no major problems so far.