You can hear Allison give the tutorial on PoP Episode #9 (enhanced podcast) and read it on her site: Feeder Tutorial.

The Podcasting on Podcasting (PoP) series should prove very useful to budding podcasters as the entire process can be very daunting, as it covers everything from the technical side of recording equipment, software and web hosting on the one hand, and the creative aspect on the other, not to mention considerations such as time and family commitments.

Allison’s been podcasting for a long time now, and occasionally brings in other experienced contributors such as Don McAllister of the excellent ScreenCastsOnline.

The Podcasting on Podcasting series can be found as part of Allison’s main podcast, NosillaCast, at podfeet.com. Allison also contributes to the Mac Roundtable Podcast and the Mac ReviewCast.

Link: Scripting Sparkle Appcasts with Feeder and RubyCocoa

ThinkMac developer Rory Prior is a friend of mine (hence the plug) so I got to try iKanji before its release. I’m not learning Japanese and normally wouldn’t feel comfortable writing about such applications, but both iKanji and iKana are clearly exceptional learning tools. I’ve learned so much just trying them out.

Both applications are a superb example of usability on the Mac, look great, and include the sort of thoughtfulness that surprises and delights without ever being gimmicky or patronising. Also, to my surprise, they are a lot of fun.

iKanji’s learning experience is focused around flash cards and includes 2230 kanji built-in, with the ability to add your own, and nearly 20,000 example words. It can also search by kanji, meaning, radical and examples, sort kanji by stroke count or radical, allows you to add your own notes and create your own practice sets. iKanji covers Japanese school grades 1 to 6, JLPT levels 1 to 4 and 214 kanji radicals.

Following on from that are the tests. iKanji has tests for meanings, reading and writing (complete with animated stroke animations). After taking the tests, you’ll be able to see your proficiency with gold, silver and bronze stars marked on the kanji and plotted on a graph to see your performance over time.

iKanji requires Mac OS X 10.5 is available for €20 (around US$31) and can be bought with iKana for €25 (around US$40) at the ThinkMac Software store. Rory’s also confirmed that he’ll be creating iPhone versions of these applications in the (ahem!) near future.

• Yojimbo vs Together vs Evernote: a review by Rachel Murphy, whose blog includes a number of thoughtful posts on Mac software.
• 8 Web Information Collectors Reviewed by Daniel Jomphe covers DEVONthink Personal, EagleFiler, Journler, Circus Ponies Notebook, Scrivener, SOHO Notes, Together and Yojimbo.
• Solving Mac Information Management: Yojimbo, Journler, Together, VoodooPad, EagleFiler, WikityWidget, Punakea, Leap on NOT a blog
• UX Magazine - Review: Mac Information Managers quickly compares Yojimbo, Soho Notes and Together.

A number of these point out that it’s your needs that count, and that is a crucial point. All apps have their place as they can offer something unique; any app that tries to be all things to all people is going to be a disappointment.

Fortunately you can download and try all these apps for yourself. That said, with so much choice, blog posts like the above, written by real users, can be a great starting point.

Link: The AppleScript Studio Workshop - Adding a Check Updates Feature

Automatic File Import

Together can now automatically import files saved in its library folders, meaning you can save files directly to Together’s folders without having to manually import them. This can be enabled by checking “Auto import files added to Library folders” in Import preferences and it’s on by default.

For documents to be imported, you can save them anywhere in Together’s library folders apart from the Support and Trash folders. Together may move the document if it’s in the wrong page (e.g. a text document in the Images folder).

This will probably remove most people’s need for specific watched folders, but that method is still possible and may be useful too.

Import Hot Key

Together 2.1 also adds support for a global import hot key, which can also be set in Together’s Import preferences.

When the hot key is pressed, links or files will be imported according to Together’s Import preferences. This will work with most web browsers, Mail, Microsoft Entourage and NetNewsWire and the Finder.

Bookmarklets

A popular request was for Together to have support for bookmarklets, so web pages can be saved to Together with a single click, so this is now available in 2.1.

You can install the bookmarklets in your browser by clicking the Bookmarklets button in Together’s Import preferences. There are three different bookmarklets to save the current page as a bookmark, web archive or web PDF.

A synced library will merge with all other synced libraries, therefore only one Together library can be synced per Mac.

By default, Together will sync automatically a short while after you’ve made changes. If you prefer, you can choose to sync manually in the Library Manager and then choose Together > Sync Now from the menu when you want to sync.

Together actually syncs with your local sync database. The changes will be uploaded to .Mac according to your settings in .Mac System Preferences.

Files that are linked (i.e. the original file exists outside of Together’s library) on a local Mac will be saved as copies in the LIbrary on a remote Macs.

Most other things that are synced to .Mac with Apple’s Sync Services are small pieces of information such a bookmarks and iCal events, rather than whole files. It works, but there are some things to watch out for:

• You need enough free space on your iDisk to accommodate your library, with spare capacity for tracking changes. You can find out the size of your library by selecting all items in the Library group. The total size will be shown in the Info view.
• Due to the way Sync Services works, Together memory usage will temporarily swell by the size of your library while syncing and later on, one of the processes used during syncing (dotmacsyncclient) will temporarily consume memory that 3x the size of your library. Therefore, I would recommended not syncing a library if it is greater than about 20% of the memory installed on your Mac. So, for a Mac with 2GB installed, 400MB would be the limit.
• Large files are also unsuitable for syncing. If you have files in your library that are more than a few megabytes in size, it’s possible syncing will crash Together.
• Finally, if you have a large library, the sync status icon in the menu bar will stop spinning after 10 minutes even though the upload could still be in progress. A process called dotmacsyncclient is responsible for sending the changes to your iDisk and you can see whether this is still running in the Activity Monitor app.

Here’s a rough guide of how long it might take to perform the first sync:

Upload speed: 384 Kbps (47 Kilobytes/sec)
Library size: 100 megabytes
Upload time: 36 minutes

Future syncs will be faster as they’ll only deal with the files that have changed.

Sync, AppleScript, Web PDFs

Together can now sync its library with .Mac, includes AppleScript support and a new way of saving web pages - as PDFs that look identical to the original page, with background images, clickable links and no pagination.

Shelf Improvements

The Shelf has seen a number of improvements, including a new Favorites section, where you can drag groups and items from Together’s library for quick access, Quick Look previews, so you don’t need to go back to Together to see the content of a file, the ability to tag and group Quick Notes and the option to hide the Shelf tab, so it will open when the mouse moves to the edge of the screen.

Organizing

Smart groups become more useful with the ability to only search specified groups instead of the entire library. With group tagging, Together can automatically tag items added to groups and you can now copy or drag clickable links to Together items to other applications.

Import

Together’s import features have been extended considerably. For starters, Together can now automatically import any files saved in its library folders. There is a new global Import Hot Key for importing files from the Finder, URLs from web browsers and email messages, and there are now bookmarklets for Together, so saving a web archive, PDF or bookmark from your web browser is one click away.

For further integration with Spotlight and other applications, Together can now import files’ Spotlight comments and keywords as tags and export items’ Together tags back to the original files’ Spotlight comments in the Finder.

Library and Previews

Together’s user interface is now more customizable, with a choice of icons sizes for items and groups and preferences for the various different previews. Together can now also generate thumbnail icons for web archives and bookmarks.

The Portrait-orientation Info view has been improved so you can see an item’s basic information and its tags, comments, or groups at the same time and the tag browser now has options for which system tags to show.

These are just a selection of more than 60 new features and improvements in this version. The Release Notes page tells the full story and I will be posting more information about these new features over the next few days.

User Interface

Firstly, the user interface has been updated for 10.5 Leopard, and because Feeder’s minimum system requirements are now for 10.4 and later, gets some new controls such as date pickers and token fields for things like iTunes keywords.

Feeder has worked fine on Leopard since the big cat’s release, but Leopard’s darker theme almost eradicated the subtle borders on some toolbar icons and the increased contrast made some of the colours appear too saturated. Also, the sidebar gets Leopard gradient and colours, and turns grey when the main window is inactive. These are minor changes but make a big difference.

Podcasting

Feeder’s podcasting support has been improved in particular for video podcasters. Video podcasts can now have thumbnails via Yahoo’s Media RSS extension. These thumbnails are used for video search results and application such as Miro (formerly Democracy Player).

Using the Media RSS extensions is as straightforward as checking “Use Media Extensions” in the Extensions section of the Info drawer (below the iTunes extensions, if you’re using them). That will show the Media Thumbnail field in the editor, where you can drag an image file to upload or specify the URL of an image that is already online.

Finally for video podcasters, this version improves performance when reading and tagging MP4 files, including those used for iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc.

Publishing

Another change useful for any podcaster is that Feeder now has the ability to redirect uploaded enclosure URLs through a site. This is useful for podcast sites concerned with statistics such as Blubrry. You can find the settings for this in the Enclosures section under Settings in the Info drawer.

Feeder’s publishing is now improved to (finally!) support password-less SFTP. This can be enabled by clicking the Options button in the Servers window for an SFTP server. It also allows the creation of additional servers for enclosures and images during publishing setup.

Sparkle

Last but not least, Sparkle appcasting support has been improved. It is now possible for Feeder to automatically generate MD5 sums and DSA signatures for enclosure files. The settings for these can be found in the Sparkle section under Extensions in the Info drawer. Finally, Feeder’s AppleScript has been improved and now includes the ability to edit Sparkle attributes.

Summary

Most Feeder releases have an overall theme and in this case it’s mostly about video podcasting, but also about further refining it in its current form. Feeder is a pretty mature product now and actually celebrates its 3rd birthday tomorrow. I have plenty of ideas and plans for Feeder for the next year, so stay tuned!