It was mentioned on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code today that iTunes 4.9 (the one with podcasting support built in) is to introduce support for a new “pod” XML namespace to extend RSS 2.0 and add tags that will work with iTunes, including a synopsis, the option to be excluded from the iTunes Music Store, an explicit tag and more.

It sounds like iTunes 4.9 will be out within the next 2 weeks or so. The specification for this namespace hasn’t been published yet so I don’t entirely know what’s involved, but Feeder users can be sure these tags will be supported in future versions of Feeder as soon as possible.

Feeder 1.1 got 4 out of 5 stars in Macworld UK‘s WWDC 2005 edition, which is on the shelves now. The review will be available online for subscribers only. Gillian Thomson writes:

When I first tried Feeder I was delighted at the speed and ease in which you can set it up and start publishing RSS feeds…

Only one problem: the accompanying screenshot is of NewsMac Pro from the NewsMac Pro / NetNewsWire joint review below, but there you go. Coincidentally, I came across NewsMac Pro the other day and it looks great. Seems less well-known than the other newsreaders around at the moment so I hope that changes soon.

Feeder and Yours Truly get a great mention on Show 19 of the MyMacGuys podcast as they break with their not-too-geeky tradition and run through what they do and use to get a show out.

As they say on the show, we’ve been trying to get together for an interview for a while, but what with my house move and their Skype problems it hasn’t happened yet, but probably will sometime.

Anyway, thanks guys!

Feeder 1.1.1 is released today and has a ton of fixes, tweaks and stuff. It’s been surprising to notice how many little bits and pieces have changed in Tiger and some of the problems fixed in Feeder were workarounds that no longer need working around. It also shows what happens when you try to do a release while aiming for a fixed deadline and moving home. 😀

At least the fixes are mostly to do with smaller things – the big and important changes: publishing, templates and enclosure uploading seem rock solid (fingers tightly crossed!).

Two of the most requested features following the release of Feeder 1.0 were .Mac publishing and Secure FTP.

Publishing to iDisk is now very easy to implement thanks to Apple’s DotMacKit framework, although it’s a shame they can’t make the currently private DAVKit framework available for developers to include WebDAV support.
It’s not always understood that Secure FTP is a completely different animal to regular FTP and if you’re not writing your own FTP client, you ideally need an Open Source library to do most of the hard work for you.

Originally I was going to use libssh, but it vanished from the web for a couple of months while I was developing Feeder, so instead I turned to the brand new libssh2 by Sara Golemon. Feeder isn’t using the latest version of this, but will be upgraded to do so in the future after some more thorough testing. This library is not only very good but also licensed under a preferable BSD-style license rather than a LGPL. I like BSD licenses because they pretty much say “do what you want.” I don’t like GPL because it’s too rigid and far too hostile to commercial applications. LGPL is easier on the latter point, but it becomes a matter of principle!

The challenge in Feeder was to make these things fit together. Behind the scenes, when you click Feeder’s Publish button, you invoke one of three completely different file transfer mechanisms, but Feeder behaves the same for them all, with its built in server browser, progress bar, etc.





Also, Feeder 1.1 is much more helpful when you first set up publishing for a feed. I’m not usually keen on assistants because the user never gets to stand on their own two feet, but they have their place and in this case it is more a matter of workflow. Once set up, you see the same publishing panel as when you were setting it up but without having to go through the steps that led you there.

The other big publishing feature is enclosure uploading – a feature mostly useful for podcasters. Drag the file onto the enclosure section of the edit window and Feeder shows a sheet where you can amend and confirm the upload details. Feeder then gets the other attributes (MIME type and file size) and creates a file name for the enclosure based on the filename and upload settings.

Feeder keeps a record of the last time an enclosure file was successfully uploaded and will only automatically upload the file once, although this again can be changed when you come to publish should the file have changed. Another point of interest is when Feeder has enclosures to publish it uploads them first, followed by the feed. This ensures that by the time the updated feed is online, so too are the enclosures it references.

Expect to see more refinement, server integration and publishing options in the future.