New Years Resolution: Loose Weight!

Happy New Year! To celebrate 2008, we are loosing weight, at least we are loosing the obese URLs from the site. Now all the URLs for feeds and preview pages created by the site are short and simple!

Old URL format:
http://feed.scripturecast.net/r/?start_time=1188579465&ratio=110.5432&volume=1&min_seconds=74715&type=rss2&check=34cd7

New URL format:
http://feed.scripturecast.net/web/1884d4d.html

Hopefully these new URLs will look less scary and be more easily cut and pasted into various pod-catching programs as needed.

The smaller URLs also have allowed us to keep better individual feed statistics. Viewing the "Preview Page" will now also show you which audio files you've already downloaded.

I'm thinking about renaming the "Preview Page" idea to something else like "Web View" (or maybe use both names).

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.