Hi Kaare,
On Aug 12, 2008, at 1:46 AM, kaare dehard wrote:
Speaking of podcasts, and itunes... How does one get access to the
podcasts? I don't have a .mac account and can't seem to find where
a list of them to subscribe to may be. Are there alternate
agrigators available for the mac?
You can subscribe to podcasts through iTunes, either by importing an
OPML file for your subscriptions (if you used a podcast aggregator on
another system), adding the address of a podcast feed, or finding and
subscribing to a podcast in the iTunes Store. You do not need an
account at the iTunes Store to download podcasts. In addition, many
web pages for podcasts will have a link that provides a one-click way
to start a subscription to that podcast in iTunes. There are
alternate podcast aggregators, such as Juice, available for the Mac.
Podcasts that you subscribe to through iTunes or download from the
iTunes Store are placed in a separate Podcast library that you select
in your iTunes source list. The episodes are organized in folders by
subscription, and are accessed from the songs list for your Podcast
library. There are a number of features for managing subscriptions
and browsing your podcasts in iTunes that are convenient, especially
for large libraries that you want to handle automatically. Your
iTunes podcast preference settings (Command-comma to bring up
preferences; VO-keys-right arrow to the podcast tab and select with
VO-keys-space) let you choose how frequently you check the feed for
new episodes (daily, weekly, hourly, or manually), what to download
when new episodes are available (download all, download latest, or
manually download), and which episodes to keep (all episodes, all
unplayed episodes, last [1,2,3,4,5, 10 etc.] episodes, or manually
delete). If you set up automatic feed checking, a line in the
preference menu will tell you when the next check is scheduled. You
can further customize these settings, check individual feeds,
unsubscribe or re-subscribe to podcasts, etc. using the context menu
in the songs list for your podcasts. Some of these functions rely on
information that iTunes gets from the feeds and adds to the podcast
headers at the time episodes are downloaded. In addition, podcasts
downloaded through iTunes are automatically set up to "bookmark", so
that when you stop listening in the middle of a program your location
is noted. Then, whenever you resume in iTunes or on an iPod,
playback resumes at your last played position. (You can turn off
this setting if you have music podcasts where you don't want this
feature.)
As David answered, you can find podcasts at the iTunes Store by
selecting the iTunes Store in your source list, then tabbing to the
search field and entering the name of the podcast you want. Tab to
the songs list and interact to view the results of your search.
For example, to subscribe to Blind Cool Tech for Mike's new Mac
podcast you could follow the appended instructions in iTunes. I'll
outline how to start subscribing to the podcast (with a download to
the latest episode) and an alternative method of downloading a few
selected episodes with the option to subscribe (or not) later.
You'll need to have Safari open to be able to navigate to the podcast
page that lists episodes (until there is an accessible link in iTunes
for this). I've found the Safari-iTunes tie-in way to search works
fairly well for me (on a 4-year old PowerBook with Tiger), but I
don't advise it for any systems that have limited resources, that
frequently experience "Safari, busy" messages, or have problems with
internet connections under normal circumstances.
1. Tab to the "Sources Outline" and interact (VO-keys+Down arrow).
2. VO-keys+Down Arrow or use the item chooser menu (VO-keys+I) to
move to "iTunes Store".
3. Stop interacting (VO-keys+Up arrow)
4. Press tab to go to the "Search text field"
5. Type "Blind Cool Tech" (without the quotation marks) and press
return.
6. Press tab to go to the "Songs Outline" and interact.
To subscribe to the selected (Blind Cool Tech) podcast starting with
the most recent episode:
7. VO-keys+Right Arrow to the column that says "Free"
8. If you don't have your VoiceOver navigation set with "Mouse cursor
tracks VoiceOver cursor" checked, you need to route your Mouse cursor
to your VoiceOver cursor with VO-keys-Command-F5. (Older laptops
need to add the Fn key -- I hold down all four keys to the left of
the space bar and press the F5 key, so that's Fn-Control-Option-
Command-F5.)
9. Click the selection with VO-keys-Shift-Space
Alternatively, you can view the Blind Cool Tech podcast page at the
iTunes Store and examine the list of currently available episodes on
their feed. I'm assuming that Safari is one of your active
applications.
10. Bring up the contextual menu for your search result (VO-keys-
Shift-M) and arrow down to "Copy iTunes Store URL" then press return.
11. Switch to Safari by using Command-Tab to switch between your
current open applications.
12. Type Command-L (to go to Safari's address bar) followed by
Command-P (to paste in the iTunes URL you just copied) and press return.
13. Your iTunes window should now have focus, and be loaded with the
iTunes podcast page for your selected podcast (Blind Cool Tech).
Press tab to get back to the Songs Outline and then interact.
14. Browse through the podcast episodes with VO-keys+Down Arrow (and
Up Arrow). You can VO-right to the description column to get a short
summary of each episode and use this (VO-down) to decide which
episodes you wish to download. For episodes you want, VO-right and
"click" (items #7,8, and 9 in the instructions).
15. (Extra) You can also use the contextual menu to "Copy iTunes
Store URL" for individual episodes. These add a unique ID number
for the episode to ID number for the podcast. When users activate
this URL address, you're taken to the podcast page in iTunes with
your focus on that specific episode.
So, people who want to download Mike's 3 episodes on Mac
Accessibility from the Blind Cool Tech podcast page in iTunes can
just click on the links for:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?
i=33512790&id=78111172
(Mac Demo Part 3)
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?
i=26795934&id=78111172
(Mac Accessibility Demo Part 2)
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?
i=26277127&id=78111172
(Mac Accessibility Demo)
(They really only need to click on one of these links, then navigate
up or down the list of episodes to find the others. Note that the
first episode is at the very bottom of the list, so it may shortly
become unavailable from the feed.)
To find the podcasts that are now downloaded onto your computer:
1. Navigate with the tab key to the "Sources Outline" and interact.
2. VO-keys+Up Arrow to the "Podcasts" library. You'll now hear the
number of new (unplayed) podcasts announced after the library name.
3. Stop interacting.
4. Tab to the "Songs Outline" and interact.
5. VO-keys+Right arrow to the folder, which you'll need to open by
interacting, then using VO-keys-backslash to toggle it open or closed.
(This seems to be the problem point for most people. The backslash
key is at the far right on the keyboard below the delete key. Make
sure that you are at the folder in the second column and that you use
VO-keys-Shift-Down Arrow to interact first.)
If you have difficulties opening and closing the podcast folder with
VO-keys-backslash, you can try using Command-right bracket to open
and Command-left bracket to close. (The right bracket key is to the
left of the backslash key and the left bracket key is one key further
to the left.) This is an undocumented general Mac OS X shortcut that
does not require interacting. However, it opens and closes all your
podcast folders, and it may not work on non-English language
keyboards. These commands to expand and collapse folders also work
for radio streams.
6. To play podcasts, press return; to pause/resume playing press the
space bar (just as for all songs in iTunes).
To browse podcasts in the iTunes Store, the problem is that the main
search controls are in the part that is announced as "iTunes Store,
dimmed image". However, just as in the example of the podcast page
given above, it's possible to access the power search page if you use
Safari to navigate to there. You can type in text to search only the
podcast category by Title, Author, and Description from iTunes
provided you can get to this location. I keep a bookmark to :
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?mt=2
(iTunes Power Search page for Podcasts)
You can copy this to your Safari Bookmarks Bar
1. Command-Option-B to open your Bookmarks page
2. Tab to the table and interact
3. Navigate to the Bookmarks Bar (this is the first entry; you can
use your arrow keys or the item chooser menu to go there, or you can
use VO-keys-Home, which is VO-keys-Fn-left arrow on laptops).
4. Stop interacting
5. Tab to the outine and interact
6. Navigate to one of the first 9 entries and paste in
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?mt=2
7. Optionally change the Bookmark name for the entry to something
easier to remember, like "iTunes Search"
8. Hide your Bookmarks page again with Command-Option-B
Because the first 9 entries on your Bookmarks Bar automatically have
the shortcuts Commnand-1, Command-2, etc. you can use these shortcuts
to web URLs whether or not you hide your bookmarks bar (with Command-
Shift-B), as most of us do (to simplify navigation).
So, if you bookmarked the podcast power search page as the first item
on your Bookmarks Bar, you can run a podcast search of the iTunes
Store as follows:
1. From Safari, type Command-1 (or the appropriate shortcut key
number for your Podcast power search)
2. In the iTunes window, which will now have focus with the iTunes
Store in the Source List, tab to the "Search Text Field" (or go there
directly with Command-Option-F)
3. Press tab once; you'll hear "iTunes Store, dimmed image"
4. Each of the next 3 tab presses will take you to the search fields
for "Title", "Author" and "Description" in the dimmed image. You can
type or paste entries in any or all of the fields, but VoiceOver
won't speak. When you carriage return your search is run, and you
can tab to the "Songs Outline" to examine the results of the search,
subscribe to podcasts, or examine the podcast page of episodes as
described above for the example using "Blind Cool Tech" in the
"Search Text Field".
The only difference in the present case is that you'll get multiple
results, ordered by popularity, instead of just one in the "Songs
Outline". While you can use the "Search Text Field" to search for
podcasts in the iTunes Store, the problem is that there isn't a good
way to screen out music, movies, audiobooks, and other categories
from your search results. It works fairly well for Music searches,
since that's probably the largest content area in iTunes, but not so
well for podcasts.
The power search link in iTunes ONLY searches for podcasts.
See this August 2007 post from the archives for another example of a
podcast search using this method:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg17052.html
This method is similar to the one that was recently described for
searching the iTunes Store for content from iTunes U:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg39511.html
(Addendum: People who read that post on the web can use:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?
institutionTerm=&media=iTunesU
for a clickable link to the iTunes U power search page instead of the
one I gave in the linked post above -- that post gives a URL that
starts with "itms://" instead of "http://";. Both addresses work,
even in other browsers if you copy them to the URL address field, but
people who are not reading these posts through Apple Mail won't see
the URL that starts with "itms://" as a clickable link.)
You can use the same trick of assigning that address to one of the
first nine bookmarks in the Safari Bookmarks bar to get a shortcut
key for your iTunes power search.
If you download individual episodes, the same instructions for
listening to podcasts on your library apply: select "Podcasts" in
your source list and tab to the "Songs Outline" to view these
episodes, which are in a folder that must be opened. You can decide
to subscribe (use the contextual menu and choose "Subscribe to
Podcast" -- or "Unsubscribe to Podcast" for one you decide to stop
listening to), or you could just update the feed ("Update podcast" in
the contextual menu -- but watch out because some feeds keep a LOT of
episodes listed on their feed, and you get all the descriptions even
though you haven't downloaded any episodes. This can be a long list
to look through .) Then, you could "Download podcast episode" for
any individual episode you wanted, based on the episode description
from the feed, again using the contextual menu as you VO-down
(through this potentially long list). (You might want to delete the
entries you don't want as you go through, just to avoid having this
really long list of un-downloaded episodes when you open your podcast
subscription folder.) Again, there are lots more options here.
I'll finish off by answering Kaare's question about (other) ways to
add podcasts to iTunes.
Adding podcast subscriptions from the feed URL
1. Navigate to the Advanced Menu on the iTunes menu bar (VO-keys-M;
type "A" to go to the Advanced Menu).
2. Arrow down to "Subscribe to Podcast" and return.
3. In the window that opens to prompt your for the URL, type or paste
in the address of the podcast feed (e.g.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/iot/rss.xml )
4. Navigate to the "OK" or "Cancel" button and press (VO-keys-Space).
(Or press Carriage return for "OK" and the Escape key for "Cancel".)
Adding subscriptions with an OPML file
If you already use another podcast aggregator you can import the OPML
file.
1. Choose "Import" in the File menu on the iTunes menu bar (VO-keys-M
to go to the menu bar, type "F" for the File menu, arrow down and
type "I" for the Import option and press return) or use the shortcut
key sequence for importing (Command-Shift-O).
2. Press Command-2 to ensure you are in list mode in the File
Browser window.
3. Navigate to the location of the file (e.g., Desktop, Downloads,
your attached removable media)
4. Navigate to the outline window and interact with it (VO-keys-Shift-
Down-Arrow).
5. Navigate to the file you wish to import.
6. Stop interacting with the Outline.
7. Navigate to the "Choose" button and press it (VO-keys-Space).
HTH, and that there aren't any uncaught errors in this rather long
post. I'm changing the Subject line to flag it as a Summary, and to
make it easier to search in the archives.
Cheers,
Esther
