So, a video iPod, it finally happened! I’m not sure about the idea myself, but I shall have to watch Steve Jobs do his thing and, positively glowing from RDF exposure, shall want one badly. It still looks good, regardless.

And saying that, I want an iPod nano badly too, just because, and if it had more capacity probably would get one. My poor old chunky v1 iPod (an iPod before most people knew what an iPod was!) is still going strong but is more than a bit cramped, so a nano isn’t going to solve anything. Perhaps I should just buy both for a laugh. 😀

Something interesting is that iPods can now record in stereo, which will be good news for podcasters out there tired of pressing the wrong buttons on their iRivers, which would be all of them.

And iTunes 6 already?! iTunes 5 must have been the shortest-lived version of software in the history of Appledom. Makes you wonder why they bothered.

I like Yahoo’s podcasting directory, I think it works well and I was trying to work out why. I guess it comes down to giving listeners more “say” or control over their podcasts that is more in the spirit of podcasting itself, as shown by the likes of Podcast Alley and Odeo. You can rate podcasts, comment on individual shows and add “folksonomy” tags (i.e. chosen by users rather than a predefined list).

One of the biggest ways I’ve long thought iTunes’ podcatching support is “wrong” (lousy show notes aside) when compared to Safari’s RSS support is that while it’s easy to subscribe to a podcast in iTunes, it doesn’t make it easy for you use the iTunes podcast directory with another podcatcher application such as iPodderX or one of the many podcast-aware newsreaders (e.g. NetNewsWire, NewsMac Pro or NewsFire). With Safari you can choose your RSS reader in its RSS preferences and it always respects that – no world domination stuff. 😉

But now, looking at Yahoo’s directory makes me think back again to the way podcasting was prior to iTunes and has shown me what is actually missing from the iTunes Music Store approach at present. It’s the interaction thing, making you feel a part of your favourite podcasts rather than being a layer away. iTunes has its subscription charts (a daily aggregate?) but that’s about it; there’s no way to say how you feel about something after you’ve subscribed.

Of course, it’s early days and competition is always good. 😀

NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire along with Ranchero’s other assets, such as MarsEdit and Brent Simmons himself. I can see how this is a good thing, reading all those things they want to do with NNW but can’t because they are just two people and there are only so many hours in the day. Also, reading drunkenbatman explain a few things about the situation, I can well understand how support for such successful products could be overwhelming – particularly for MarsEdit.

On the support, it went without saying as far as I was concerned. My own fun, fun, fun with FTP / iTunes support issues has taught me that, even on a small scale, you can have a product that works exactly as it should, but once it starts integrating with something else, particularly server software, you enter a whole new world of pain: different configurations and versions along with user understanding issues that can devour whole days in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, well done to Brent and Sheila! Here’s hoping this makes their lives that much easier and both their lives and products that much better.

I released Feeder 1.2.2 yesterday. This version is more like the Feeder 1.2 I originally planned before iTunes 4.9 came charging in with its podcasting extensions. I’m really happy with this version.

One cool feature request that came quite late in the day was to support Ranchero’s External Weblog Editor interface so news items can be sent to Feeder using “Post to Weblog” in NetNewsWire. I thought I’d have to defer this until the next release but when I looked into it I could see it was so simple to do, I coded and tested it in all of 30 minutes.

Feeder isn’t a blog editor, but quite a few people have written in saying they want to use it to post RSS feeds on their sites with links to news on other sites that they’re interested in – actual syndication. Feeder already supported the RSS clipboard format for drag and drop / cut and paste, but this weblog editor interface is much more convenient – just choose “Post to Weblog” in NetNewsWire and the item is added to the selected feed in Feeder. You also get more information than the clipboard format.

Apart from NetNewsWire, I know that PulpFiction and Shrook support this interface and Feeder works well with them. NewsFire supports the interface too, but rather than let you choose a blog editor in an Open panel, it has a preset list and Feeder obviously isn’t on it.

I might do a Feeder tips post sometime soon. There is lots of stuff in there people probably don’t know about.

I mentioned the other day that I’d given Feeder a UI update. I don’t normally write about stuff before it happens because it’s like a kiss of death, but I’m hoping to release Feeder 1.2.2 tomorrow featuring (amongst lots of other cool stuff and some bug fixes) an updated user interface. Here’s a sneak peak, click the image to see a full-size version:

You can compare it with a screenshot of 1.2.1 here (the windows are the same size, so you could open them both in tabs to compare).

Fans of NetNewsWire will notice a very familiar gradient status bar with shiny buttons at the bottom of the window. I tried to make the whole status bar shiny, but it was a little overwhelming, Aqua stripes seemed out of place and a plain colour was too, er, plain. So I went with this. While all the buttons are original and the gradient drawn using CoreGraphics, Feeder was always designed to look like a newsreader application, which in turn, at least in NNW’s case, looks something like an email client.

Talking of NetNewsWire and UI updates, I agree with Brent’s analysis of UI trends, which he posted a couple of weeks ago, where he said:

1. Stripes are passé.
2. Margins are bad.
3. Brushed metal is yesterday’s news.
4. The unified title-and-toolbar look is the new platinum.
5. The two-tone glass thing is big. Big, I tell you. Big.

I admit that reading Brent’s post and seeing my own redesign of Feeder’s iTunes preview made it so I had to do this UI update now and not save it for a later version. I’ve been planning it for months but kept putting it on the backburner as time got squashed and things happened.

Feeder’s redesign is not only intended to be more pleasing on the eye: removing the margins makes more room for the actual content of the window and it paves the way for the inclusion of some new features in the near future. 😉