Hi Søren, I'm changing the subject line, since you want to know about seaching for podcasts in order to preview them before downloading. You asked: >>> SJ: How do I play podcasts without downloading them? Pressing enter >>> doesn't work. I have tried to interact with the podcast and pressed >>> enter, but nothing happen. It does only work with the podcasts I >>> have downloaded.
and Shaun answered: >> Search for the podcast in the I Tunes store and once you've found it >> press return. This is correct, because you can only play podcasts that are either actually on your computer (downloaded) or if you have access to the podcast feed that hosts all the episodes. Shaun's answer points you to the podcast feed through the iTunes Store. You replied: >How do I do that? When I search, nothing happens. I select the Itunes >store in the sarsorus table and press tab to the search edit field.. >Do I need to create an account in the Itunes store?? No, you don't need an account at the iTunes store to search for, download, or subscribe to free podcasts. But you do need to figure out how to search effectively. The problem is that the search text field runs through everything in the iTunes Store -- music, movies, audiobooks, etc. If you know the name of podcast you want -- like "Screenless Switchers" -- and type that into the Search text field and return, you'll get an exact hit for the podcast when you tab into the Songs Outline and interact. Then, when you press return, you'll be able to listen to the latest episode from the feed. At least, it works that way here. What you don't get to do is sample all the earlier episodes that are still on the feed this way. To do that, you would have to go to the iTunes page for that podcast, which is: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=161020459 OK. How do you find this and use it? This is where it gets messy. A few months ago you could use the context menu on the result of your search to "Copy iTunes Store URL". Because iTunes integrates with web browser functions, when you paste the above podcast address into your web browser it will load that podcast page from the iTunes store location into your iTunes -- that is, your source will get changed to the iTunes Store, and you'll find a list of available episodes for the podcast under the Songs outline. Interact, and navigate down to any of these, and pressing return should allow you to sample them. Pressing space bar will pause/resume. You can move to another episode, hit return, and listen to the feed, and then decide whether you want to download that podcast with the contextual menu. Because Apple is working on the options, if you try using "Copy iTunes Store URL" on the same search for "Screenless Switchers" now you get: http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=161020459 The ID number for the podcast is the same, but the URL points to Apple's testing location (ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net) not the location that would direct you to this page at the iTunes Store (phobos.apple.com). They've been adding new features on. For example, now an episode id number is part of the URL, so you can be pointed to specific episodes in the Songs outline. This process still works, but I can't tell you to simply Copy iTunes Store URL from the context menu because it no longer points to the same place. Another thing that used to work for me, (that stopped, and apparently does again), is pointing to the iTunes Power Search menu address for podcasts: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?mt=2 (Note: people should NOT try this link if they have been experiencing slow connections, many "Safari busy" messages, or have had problems with their access to the iTunes Store) This is not really accessible, but what I could do at times is tab from the Search Text field into the dimmed image area of the iTunes store and reach the three (unlabeled) tab fields for Title, Author, and Description -- specifically for podcasts. That is, you could tab to these fields, and fill in any part of the field -- such as "BBC" or "BBC Radio 4" for the Author, or "Classical Music" under the Description, press return, and get a list of podcasts that matched the search in the songs outline. One problem is that you always had to clear each search field when you tabbed in by using backspace/delete, since anything left from past searches would go into the new search. I'm not even sure that most people would be able to use this now, since I'm not running Leopard, and I thought I couldn't use this after my last iTunes update. Unless turning on my browser and tabbing through there brought back this capability? Anyway, this may not work now, but there are references to this back in the archives -- back to March of last year, actually. What I would do then is use the contextual menu and "Copy iTunes Store URL" to get the podcast page URLs. The IDs are still there, but the start of the URL points to the edgesuite test pages.. If you tried those you'd just end up loading an inaccessible web page in your Safari browser. HTH as general background information. I'm not sure that it will help you in practice. Cheers, Esther
