Monday, June 18, 2007

End of feed bug

I'm aware of a bug where there is an error given when the feed has run out of chapters to push. The problem is that the system is looking for chapters beyond the end of the book and they just don't exists.

Update 8/28/07: I fixed this bug that was showing itself with long expired "Set rate manually" feeds.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Character encoding

One of the last remaining bugs that I will have to conquer before launching is getting all the character encoding set to be the same. When I inserted the summaries for the Doctrine and Covenants, somehow the encoding for such was different than the encoding for the summaries of The Book of Mormon. This will have to be straightened out so that users don't see weird characters coming up.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Doctrine and Covenants added

Today I added the full Doctrine and Covenants. This is in addition to the Book of Mormon which has been available. You can create your custom D&C podcast the same way you create your custom Book of Mormon podcast.

I haven't fully tested the D&C (or for that matter, the Book of Mormon) so if you find a chapter or feature that doesn't work, your feedback would be appreciated.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Better calculations

Today I improved some of the algorithms to give a more accurate minutes per day measure when creating a podcast that ends on a specific date.

In doing that, I was able to display on the creation page about how many minutes per day average you would listen too dynamically, to help you choose a good ending date.

When you are finally done creating the feed, it also gives you a link to preview your feed, which is also a good way to listen to the audio or get at links to the full text.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Sharing is good

Sharing is good, especially when you share the gospel. Second to sharing the gospel, is sharing this site. So if you know someone who likes the scriptures, or who likes podcasting, you should tell them about this site. One of the ways you can share this site with others is to click one of the sharing links at the bottom of the home page.

Flash Players

The podcast feeds contain a link back to a web page which is another way of viewing the feed. The page contains links to the full chapter text, the MP3 audio file, and the chapter summary.

Today I added a new feature which allows you to listen to the audio right on the page, using an embedded flash player to play the sound file.

Feed information

Today I added a small feature to the service. When you are done creating your custom feed, the page gives you more information about the feed you just created. It tells you the reading rate and the date you will finish. For those who created a feed to finish on a particular date, it will tell you the average number of minutes it will give you each day. For those who created a feed based on a number of chapters each day, it will tell you when you will finish.

Feedback appreciated

I'm really excited to fully announce this website, but I would like to get some feedback from some users before I do. If you have any suggestions or comments, simply comment on this post. Thank you for the feedback, it should help in making podcast feeds better.