Podcatching Without iTunes
One of the best ways to keep up with the news, or to listen to or watch your favorite radio or tv program on your time is through podcasts. But iTunes isn’t the only program to use when looking for and downloading podcasts. The term for finding and downloading a podcast is “podcatching” and there are several programs available to do it for you, even if you don’t like iTunes. .
Here are a few excellent alternative podcatching programs. And don’t worry; like iTunes, these programs are free.
Miro
Miro is a very small podcast manager that is also a video manager, if you’re into that. It actually has its roots as a media player, so its major strength is streaming and web-based media. As such, its best quality is its ability to provide excellent video playback, which makes it an ideal choice for managing video podcasts.
With Miro, you can manage your podcasts yourself, and either set them to automatically download, or make them wait until you give permission. You can also set parameters for keeping podcasts, and decide how long they stay on your hard drive before they expire, and you can also set limits on how much disk space you want to take up with podcasts. Miro will also import and export podcasts in OPML format, which makes it compatible with all major feed readers and other podcasting clients.
“http://www.getmiro.com/” Download Miro
Juice
This program used to be known as iPodder, and was one of the first open source podcast managers available. They just don’t get lighter and more streamlined. Juice pretty much only retrieves podcasts, downloading them on your schedule or its. The summary of its components are a built-in directory and a clean-up tool for deleting old podcasts. But if you want a program that just does what it’s supposed to do, and isn’t a resource hog, Juice is a great program.
“http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/” Download Juice
gPodder
Unlike Juice, which just does a couple of things quite well, gPodder looks like a basic podcast manager, in that it doesn’t include a built-in media player of its own, but it sports a huge array of extras, including the ability to sync to iPods, as well as directory-based and MTP-compatible players. Plus, you can specify which media player you’d like it to work with.
gPodder’s advanced options are actually pretty awesome; in fact, you’ll find multiple options for just about every aspect of the program’s functionality. It includes some advanced tools, as well, including the ability to alter the playback speed of podcasts, which allows you to cram more podcasts into your lunch hour. Be careful, though; you’ll need the manual to be able to access and learn to use many of the program’s more advanced features.
“http://gpodder.org/” Download gPodder
Tags: free programs, gpodder, ipod, itunes, news, podcast, podcsting
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