Ever heard the expression “lighting someone else’s flame doesn’t diminish your own” (or something like that)? I’ve been having a conversation with Allison Sheridan from NosillaCast about this. Jonathan from the Mac Tips Daily Podcast told Allison to check out Podcast Maker as an alternative to Feeder for creating her podcast. Allison said she would, but felt awkward since she was happy with Feeder and the support she had received from me.

Now, as it happened, Potion Factory‘s Andy Kim told me that this was on Allison’s show (even though I’m still subscribed to Allison’s podcast, I have a backlog, OK!). I often talk with Andy, we’re good friends. I met both Andy and Jin at the Podcast Expo. Coincidentally, Allison wrote to me the very same day with a support question, so I mentioned in my reply that I had heard the show and told her exactly what I thought of Podcast Maker.

I think it’s brilliant and well worth checking out.

Feeder and Podcast Maker are very different products that happen to do similar things. The clues are in the names: Podcast Maker is dedicated to (surprise!) making podcasts. Feeder does podcasting, but is also a generic RSS feed editor. Both applications have their unique features. Podcast Maker is probably easier to use thanks to its focus on doing one thing and doing it well. Feeder may be more flexible, because it’s designed for a variety of different uses.

Of the two applications’ overall capabilities I bet there isn’t much in it, but frankly I haven’t done a comprehensive feature comparison to find out. I give Feeder users what I think they need, whether that is something frequently requested or an idea of my own. I expect Andy and Jin work on the same basis. How you implement these things is what makes all the difference.

I believe there is more to Mac applications than ticking boxes. Of course, Mac users care that an application does what they need, but they also want something that appeals to them on an emotional level. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought an app because I like it more than its competitors, regardless of whether it has as many features.

Same with Macs. I’ve always liked iMacs and all-in-one Macs in general. Yes, a Power Mac would be faster, more upgradeable, I could get a bigger monitor and it could double as a cheese grater, but I don’t care. The iMac is cute, a brilliant design and does everything I need perfectly. Obviously not everyone thinks the same as me, or Apple wouldn’t need to make any other desktop Macs.

Anyway, I digress. A man of many tangents, me.

Allison wrote back and told me that, if it were her, she might worry that plugging another podcast could take listeners away. It’s a good point, I had never thought of it from a podcaster’s perspective. True, people don’t need to make a purchasing decision between one podcast and another, because they’re all freely available, but listeners only have a finite amount of listening time.

But think about it, many of the most successful podcasters promote other podcasts on a regular basis. You plug a podcast you enjoy and they can mention you in return. It’s not mandatory, but both of you can gain listeners as a result of that extra exposure. It’s social networking, like a trackback on a blog, but it’s also word of mouth – the greatest marketing tool in the world.

The real point is this: it’s not as if someone can’t search for tech podcasts just as easily as they can search for podcast-creation software. There are all sorts of things out there: costly all-in-one solutions, bundled iLife applications, freeware, shareware, online services, you name it. And there will be more. To pretend these things don’t exist is futile.

Competition is good because it raises standards (or should!) and increases overall exposure. By mentioning Podcast Maker on her show, Allison also mentioned Feeder. People will make up their own minds. As for developers, and this could apply to anyone, it’s often so much better to work together than apart – a personal favourite example being the work we did in trying to sort out the iTunes specification.

My inspiration in this regard is NetNewsWire‘s Brent Simmons. Never afraid to mention his competitors, put source code out there, discuss all sort of things and open up his applications’ functionality for others to use (see the NetNewsWire developers page), Brent sets an excellent example for all developers – and just look how popular NetNewsWire is!

Indie developers are not like supermarkets, selling the same stuff at different prices. Our products should set us apart in a number of ways or we’re not trying hard enough.

So, the moral of the story is to share the love! It will always be good for you. 😉

This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the new functionality in Feeder 1.3.

Publishing Improvements

Feeder is now much more flexible about where and how you upload your feed, images and enclosure files.

• Feeder can upload different kinds of files to different servers when publishing your feed. To set default servers for different kinds of files, select the feed in the sidebar and choose File > Publish Settings from the menu and choose the servers to use for different kinds of files.
• All kinds of servers can now be created and edited in the Servers window. To see this choose View > Servers from the menu.
• Each server can have its own default locations for different kinds of files. These can be set in the File Locations tab of the Servers window.
• Default servers and locations can also be overridden on an individual basis for files such as enclosures and images. For enclosure files, click the Edit button next to the enclosure file’s name. For images, click on the artwork view and choose Upload Settings from the menu.
• After publishing your feed, Feeder can ping services such as iTunes, Yahoo and FeedBurner to notify them of changes to your feed. These can be set on a per-feed basis in the Ping Services section of the Settings tab in the Info drawer.
• You can create, remove and edit ping servers in Feeder’s Ping preferences panel. Choose Feeder > Preferences from the menu and click Ping.

Have you ever wanted to put a gallery of photos on your site for people to see? InstantGallery, a new app from ThinkMac Software, makes it easy – just drag and drop images and in an instant you have a gallery to publish on the web.

What’s more, InstantGallery can generate photocast feeds, comes bundled with a collection of elegant themes and has all sorts of other thoughtful touches.

I’ve been lucky enough to play around with InstantGallery prior to its release and think it’s a really cool little app just dripping in potential. And at only $15, it’s a bargain too.

Check out the screenshots, sample galleries and demo movie on the InstantGallery page and good luck to Rory with this new application!

Update: Don’t just take my word for it, check out this great review at Tera and Bambi’s Mac360!

This is the third in a series of posts exploring the new features in Feeder 1.3.

Media File Tagging

Feeder can tag audio and video files with values from your feed to match what iTunes does when it downloads podcast episodes. This ensures that everyone who receives your podcast, whether using iTunes or another application, has a consistent experience.

Feeder will also set the artwork on your media files using your feed’s artwork as a default.

The tagging changes happen automatically when you save an item in your feed that has a compatible enclosure file set to be uploaded. Feeder can tag files in MP3, M4A, M4V, MP4 and QuickTime movie formats.

• To have Feeder tag and upload a media file (or any kind of file), drag the file to the expanded Enclosure part of the item’s edit window.
• To fetch the appropriate tags from in a media file, click on the artwork box, a menu will be shown and choose Fetch Tags from File.
• You can also create new items with enclosures in your feed by dragging files onto the feed in the sidebar or to the list of items. If the file already contains tags, Feeder will pre-populate the item with with those tags.
• If you don’t want Feeder to automatically tag media files, you can switch this off in the preferences panel. Choose Preferences from the Feeder menu and click Podcast, then uncheck “Automatically Update Media File Tags”.

I have resisted posting something about Boot Camp because what can I write that hasn’t already been written?

I’ve been Windows-clean now for almost 3 years, apart from the PC you use to find stuff in Borders bookstore and those temperamental touchscreen kiosks with messages saying “The file C:\whatever\something32.dll cannot be found”.

I’m more interested in Parallels because it keeps Windows in its own window and goes along with what I wrote when the whole Intel transition was announced in the first place (last but one paragraph).

There are lots of debates going on about whether Boot Camp is a good or bad thing, but let’s face it, it was inevitable that we should have Windows running on Macs after the transition to Intel, whether or not that was endorsed by Apple.

I see it as being very good for Apple’s market share just because it will make the transition a lot less daunting for some people and that must be good for all of us.

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