Often on this blog or on my news pages I plug interesting and different podcasts whose feeds are created by Feeder, but since Feeder can create any RSS feed it’s nice to see it being used for the purpose that made me come up with the idea in the first place: to create a product news RSS feed on a web site (i.e. mine!).

Gaucho Software is now using Feeder to create news feeds and Seasonality, created by Mike Piatek-Jimenez, definitely counts as something interesting and different.

Seasonality is a very impressive weather monitoring app that shows comprehensive summaries, forecasts, maps with satellite imagery and radar, graphs for temperature, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, daylight hours and local time. The best part is that it wraps all this information in a slick interface that is easy on the eye and has lots of neat tricks to keep everything manageable. Kudos!

So what of Macworld and its impact on yours truly?

The Intel Macs look good. Their release comes much sooner than originally expected and it’s going to take me a little while to build my apps as universal binaries so they’ll run natively on Intel. I never got the Developer Transition Kit because by the time I was ready to order the web was thick with rumours of these real Macs coming and I don’t have money to throw around on computers I have to give back. (Update: Apple is running the DTK Exchange program now – damn!)

So it’s going to take me as long as it takes to get an Intel Mac, build my apps and test them all out. Feeder also uses third-party frameworks for functionality such as FTP, so they could cause some problems, but I don’t really expect any. The point is that I’m committed to doing this ASAP.

Then there is iLife ’06, which has lots of new stuff to do with podcasting. Garageband has tons of neat features to make putting a show together easy and to help with audio production. It can also create enhanced podcasts (i.e. in AAC format with chapters) and post them to .Mac with iWeb. iMovie does much the same with video podcasts. All this will be great for beginners, but as I see it, there are plenty of limitations.

I’m just going on what’s on the web but it seems that while Garageband can record and encode AACs, for MP3s you’ll still need to encode your recording with iTunes (or something like LAME) and add the tags, artwork, etc. Most podcasts are in MP3 format, because AACs only really play in iTunes and on iPods. Fine if you’re sure your listeners have these, but MP3 is truly ubiquitous.

Secondly, iWeb’s blog is lacking in interactivity. This is a major part of podcasting (and indeed, blogging), where listeners feed back through comments, etc. Not everyone uses Garageband either, preferring more professional apps such as SoundTrack Pro, Peak, etc, although maybe these features will change that.

So, I think iLife ’06 provides an excellent way to get started in podcasting, but for those who want a proper blog, already have their own web site and / or existing podcast then they will still need tools to help them with their podcasts and that’s where apps like Feeder and Podcast Maker come in. Same goes for RapidWeaver and Sandvox with respect to iWeb – RealMac Software and Karelia can go places Apple won’t go, because Apple relies on integrating its own products with .Mac to make things as simple as possible.

Now, which Intel Mac should I buy?

2005 has been the most amazing year for me. After writing the last post on this blog I remembered what I was doing on Christmas Eve the year before. I was utterly broke, I had been applying for jobs I didn’t want and thought my dream of making a living – no matter how modest – from creating my own Mac software was doomed.

However, for some weeks before I’d been sketching out my ideas for an RSS editing application called Feeder. I saw a gap in the Mac market for a good RSS editor so people could put news feeds and stuff on sites where they didn’t have a blog or content management system to do all that for them. Safari in Tiger was gaining its own RSS reader and I felt this was certain to make people want to host feeds of their own come Tiger’s release in the summer.

I was also vaguely aware of podcasting at this time thanks to early releases of iPodder (now Juice) and iPodderX. I designed Feeder for web designers and had no idea if podcasters would want to the app, but made sure it had some features for them anyway. Besides, podcasting was simple back then; you entered a title, a description and an enclosure with your audio file and that was it.

And so I found myself on December 24, 2004, with just enough money for another 6 or 7 weeks, starting the app that would be make or break for me. I worked on it day and night in quite a disciplined fashion. During the day I coded away on my iMac, working through an OmniOutliner document of features. At night I would do a deployment build, copy that onto my PowerBook – away from the source code – and focus on testing it all, making lists of bugs and necessary tweaks. The next day I’d deal with the bugs and tweaks and start again on the features.

I think this meant that I ended up getting two days’ worth of work out of every one and allowed me to switch personalities between developer and user. I hardly spoke to my friends during that time and barely left the house; I showed my friend Hans Kim some early builds to get his feedback and stuff and he was really excited about it. All my planning and design had paid off – by February 9th I released Feeder 1.0 and it was well received, both by people who wrote to me and in magazines such as MacUser UK, where it got a full 5 mice.

I was delighted. Initially, it only made me just enough money to survive, but that was exactly what I needed. As the year wore on, podcasting started to become more popular and ridiculously so once iTunes was released. Feeder started to get mentions everywhere, including some very popular podcasts such as TWiT, the MacCast, Inside Mac Radio and host of others, Macworld magazine in the US and the UK, PC Magazine (where it beat two of its Windows rivals), the Podcast Solutions book and many other places.

My inbox was swamped and sales grew to such a degree that in a few months I could pay off my credit card bill (I had resigned myself to being permanently around £1200/$2200 in debt), book flights and a ticket for Podcast Expo, continue to eat, buy some decent clothes and most importantly be sure I could continue doing what I love the most: creating Mac software. I also managed to move home in the meantime – twice!

I’ve barely caught my breath since that summer of madness but I’ve got some great ideas for 2006. I hope to kick off the year with Feeder 1.3, which packs in all those other features I’ve been longing to add since the summer and some more that were on my version 1.0 list but never made the cut. For the first time in over a year I’m working on a release that doesn’t need to be done in a screaming hurry to ensure my survival and so I hope it will be the best one yet.

I want to thank everyone who has stood by me in 2005 and helped make it one of the best years I can remember.

Happy New Year!

Both KIT and Feeder get mentioned by Allison Sheridan on Show 18 of NosillaCast. Allison also talks about Feeder’s 1.2.5 update on Show 19.

Feeder often gets podcast exposure, but I think this is KIT’s first mention on a podcast and that’s really cool. 😀

I *almost* met Allison at Podcast Expo, she emailed me just as I was leaving the hotel for the Bay Area. I should probably make a list of the people I meant to meet at the Expo to try again next year (well, if I go again next year – hope so!), it would be quite long. Anyway, Allison does an interesting tech podcast and is great to listen to. Thanks Allison!

The other day I mentioned that I’ll be attending the Portable Media Expo and Podcast Conference (aka Podcast Expo) this week. I’ll arrive in Ontario on Thursday evening, will be attending some of the sessions, meeting people and briefly reacquainting myself with something called “sunshine” (enough about the weather already! – Ed.).

On Saturday I’ll be doing a quick demo of Feeder during Paul Figgiani’s “Podcasting and Advanced Post Production on the Macintosh Platform” session (6A). For the demo I’ll be showing a development build of Feeder 1.3 – due out next month – and this will be the first time these new features will see the light of day – not unlike the developer. 😀

Paul, who does audio production for IT Conversations in addition to The.Point Podcast, will also be presenting a session, “Audio Gear for Any Budget” for IT Conversations’ The Podcast Academy Live the day before the Expo begins. If you are attending the Expo and arrive in Ontario the day before, you’ll find a day filled with compelling sessions from some extremely well-known and respected presenters at that event – check it out.

I’ll try to blog as I go along, but I expect to be insanely busy, so that might have to come afterwards. Also it’s unlikely I’ll be answering emails on Thursday or Sunday / Monday, because I’ll be in transit and time zones are funky.