Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Fixed some 3 Nephi summary encodings

Some of the character encodings for the summaries in some of the chapters in 3 Nephi were bad, and thus, iTunes choked on the podcast feed. I found this myself as my progression through the scriptures hit 3 Nephi 12.

The problem is fixed now, and iTunes seems to be downloading 3 Nephi chapters as usual.

Also, while I was at it, I removed some bad links from the chapter summaries. (There were some relative links pointing to Matthew).

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Audio file tracking

If you look closely at the source code for the RSS podcast feeds that we create, you will notice that the addresses for the enclosed audio files have changed. They now look something like http://feed.scripturecast.net/a/?id=###. These URLs will redirect to the actual audio file from the source site. They also allow us to keep usage statistics on the audio files.

There is a rate chance that some pod-catchers will re-download the audio files.

General Conference now added!

You can now get a custom podcast of general conference. Just go to scripturecast.net and create a podcast feed of conference at just the rate you want.

I suggest setting your rate by a completion date which you can set to be just before the next April conference. That way, you can be reviewing conference talks at a slow pace all year round!

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Slower Reading Rates

If you decide to subscribe to a scripture podcast using the "Set Rate Manually" mode, you can now be fed feed items more slowly than before; as slow as one item per month.

I think this will be helpful if I ever put general conference into the database, so you can listed to just a few talks a month if you would like.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Better feed titles

I thought I would just add a small little enhancement to the RSS feeds that are generated. I haven't forgotten about this project at all. I actually am using it more and more consistently to help me with my scripture reading. But one thing I found is that after I create the feed, I forget how fast it is feeding me new chapters, so I added the rate to the feed titles.

Now that I have added the rate, I see that the feed I'm subscribed to feeds me an average of 9.5 minutes per day.