Comments for Bill Rodman's Blog

Comment on Podcasts to audiobook conversion: A wish by Martienne

Martienne — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 18:22:05 +0000

A service for doing this would have to be incredibly clever to do this faster than you can already do it yourself. I doubt there is enough demand. Anyone who is geeky enough to want to do it in the first place knows that they can do it manually. Here is how.

Locate the podcasts on your hard drive.
Merge them to one long file (max 7 hours per file) with an mp3 merging tool there are tons around).
Optional: Edit as needed in Audacity or Goldwave and again save as mp3.
Use an mp3 converter and convert to mp4 or m4a.
Then change the file extension to m4b.
Open the file in Itunes and set the type to Audio book. It is now identical to an audiobook, sans copyright.

Voila.

Comment on Resuming a podcast playlist on an iPod Touch by billrodman

billrodman — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:13:20 +0000

Have a second smart playlist identical to the first, but with “Live updating” left unchecked.

I tried this, but problems. The second playlist does not update when you sync the iPod touch.
I discovered that to make the updating work you must:
- Sync the iPod Touch

-Right click on the playlist name (Found in the Playlists Heading in the – right column on iTunes) and click on ” Edit Smart Playlist”. In the editing window that opens, press OK.

- Re-sync the iPod Touch.

Painful, but it works (as long as I remember or am bothered to do it.

Comment on Resuming a podcast playlist on an iPod Touch by billrodman

billrodman — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:01:04 +0000

I wrote:

The solution is not perfect. Podcasts have been listened to drop off the playlist. You can’t then easily go back to relisten to a podcast once it has been deleted from the list.

I just thought of a solution: Have a second smart playlist identical to the first, but with “Live updating” left unchecked. The playlist will then continue to contain all the podcasts, played or not. It will only be updated at “sync”. Therefore one has the option of selecting and listening to a podcast that has already been played. I’ll have to try that.

Comment on In praise of push buttons: my podcast player. by Resuming a podcast playlist on an iPod Touch « Bill Rodman's Blog

Resuming a podcast playlist on an iPod Touch « Bill Rodman's Blog — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:07:39 +0000

[...] to music and to alternate between music and podcasts. On my previous podcast/listening solution (MortPlayer running on a Windows Mobile phone) you could alternate between two playlists, and the app would [...]

Comment on New iPod, iTablet, nixing Google Voice: Coincidence? I don’t think so. by Apostol Apostolov

Apostol Apostolov — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:00:09 +0000

I highly doubt any of the stated above will be true, at least not in this iteration of hardware. 2010, maybe.