Windows Phone 7/8 Catch All

So I've been back and forth between Podcatcher and Cloud Pod. And while neither of them are perfect I can see how Cloud Pod could easily be made perfect for me.

1) I'm not sure how auto-updating works on cloud pod. I've set the auto-update setting to "on" but I still need to manually go into all of my individual feeds and press the update icon to get them to update. In my ideal app I'd be able to set a time of day when all feeds were updated, or at the very least have an option in the "all" feeds list to update all at once.

2) Auto downloading. At least when I'm on Wi-Fi I will always, without exception, want to download any new episodes that a feed update turns up.

3) Auto deleting. Once I'm finished listening to a podcast I usually want to delete it. And since Cloud pod downloads new episodes so quickly (literally a fraction of the time that my android app took) I won't mind re-downloading if I really want to re-listen.

4) Auto advancing to the next podcast. While the "New" playlist is useful for surfacing all my downloaded files I'd like to have a playlist function that allows for auto-advancing. This is especially true when I download a bunch of shorter podcasts to listen to on a car ride. I don't want to have to look at the phone every 5 - 10 minutes.

On the whole I love the app, it's clean and easy to use and the downloading speeds are blazing fast. I just wish I had the option to automate a bunch of functions that I'm forced to do repeatedly. It's entirely possible there are already options for some of these things and I just haven't found them, if so I apologize for my ignorance in advance.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

So I've been back and forth between Podcatcher and Cloud Pod. And while neither of them are perfect I can see how Cloud Pod could easily be made perfect for me.

1) I'm not sure how auto-updating works on cloud pod. I've set the auto-update setting to "on" but I still need to manually go into all of my individual feeds and press the update icon to get them to update. In my ideal app I'd be able to set a time of day when all feeds were updated, or at the very least have an option in the "all" feeds list to update all at once.

2) Auto downloading. At least when I'm on Wi-Fi I will always, without exception, want to download any new episodes that a feed update turns up.

3) Auto deleting. Once I'm finished listening to a podcast I usually want to delete it. And since Cloud pod downloads new episodes so quickly (literally a fraction of the time that my android app took) I won't mind re-downloading if I really want to re-listen.

4) Auto advancing to the next podcast. While the "New" playlist is useful for surfacing all my downloaded files I'd like to have a playlist function that allows for auto-advancing. This is especially true when I download a bunch of shorter podcasts to listen to on a car ride. I don't want to have to look at the phone every 5 - 10 minutes.

On the whole I love the app, it's clean and easy to use and the downloading speeds are blazing fast. I just wish I had the option to automate a bunch of functions that I'm forced to do repeatedly. It's entirely possible there are already options for some of these things and I just haven't found them, if so I apologize for my ignorance in advance.

Thanks for all the feedback! It was a labor of love and I'm glad that someone else (apart from me) is using it and likes it

You are right, there is almost no "automation" in the app. Being honest, I kinda just tried to get the thing working (downloading, saving position etc.) and then just finished dev there (as it did pretty much what I required).

1. Auto-updating is a bit spotty, basically once every 24hrs it will try and do an update of all your feeds. I set it at 24hrs to limit data usage (also why I allow the wifi-only toggle). It was really a stop gap measure, and I definitely can improve it to be more configurable (say allow you to set the interval, etc.) My guess is that there is a bunch of bugs in the current implementation, this is something I can look at easily.

2. Auto-downloading can be enabled, but it only works when the auto-update triggers and finds a new episode.

3. I've been thinking about an auto-deleting function, but I first want to allow batch deleting and some more batch operations.

4. I'll investigate! I originally designed the "New" tab to only show un-listened podcasts, but I think it got lost in the suffle of dev. I can try and put in some functionality which will auto-play the next unlistened to episode if you launch it from the "New" episodes tab. If you launch it from the "new" in the Music+Video's hub, that's a bit harder.

Well if you need someone to beta test any updates, I'm your man.

Since I use my phone for essentially three functions (podcasts, phone, GPS in that order) I'm very invested in having a good podcast app experience.

On a related note anyone have experience with a good turn by turn GPS app? Perhaps the only thing I miss from Android is the native Google Maps support.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

Well if you need someone to beta test any updates, I'm your man.

Since I use my phone for essentially three functions (podcasts, phone, GPS in that order) I'm very invested in having a good podcast app experience.

On a related note anyone have experience with a good turn by turn GPS app? Perhaps the only thing I miss from Android is the native Google Maps support.

I find the Nokia developed HERE Drive+ app to be pretty damn good.

It doesn't use Google Maps, but the HERE mapping data is pretty damn good (at least I've found it so)

Alas, it won't work on my HTC 8xt.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

Alas, it won't work on my HTC 8xt.

really? That's interesting. I thought it worked on all WP8 devices...

Man, I haven't look at the Clout Pod code in a WHILE :/

Gonna take me a bit to work this out

Had another idea last night, maybe you could set a maximum HDD space that CP would have and if you download a new episode that exceeds that, then it deletes the oldest episode(s) until you can fit the new episode.

That way you could say, I only want to have 2GB of podcasts at any one time.

That would certainly solve the functional issue of HDD space. But it's not as neat a solution to the psychological issue of just wanting listened to podcasts to be taken out of the list so that they're out of sight and out of mind.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

That would certainly solve the functional issue of HDD space. But it's not as neat a solution to the psychological issue of just wanting listened to podcasts to be taken out of the list so that they're out of sight and out of mind.

Sure. I think it's just coming up with a couple of different options for people.

AP Erebus wrote:

Had another idea last night, maybe you could set a maximum HDD space that CP would have and if you download a new episode that exceeds that, then it deletes the oldest episode(s) until you can fit the new episode.

That way you could say, I only want to have 2GB of podcasts at any one time.

I actually really like that idea as it's the principal reason I would delete old episodes. Also, does Cloud Pod support SD card storage? I'm testing a Samsung ATIV S that had an SD card slot, but I haven't put a card in it yet.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

Had another idea last night, maybe you could set a maximum HDD space that CP would have and if you download a new episode that exceeds that, then it deletes the oldest episode(s) until you can fit the new episode.

That way you could say, I only want to have 2GB of podcasts at any one time.

I actually really like that idea as it's the principal reason I would delete old episodes. Also, does Cloud Pod support SD card storage? I'm testing a Samsung ATIV S that had an SD card slot, but I haven't put a card in it yet.

I have no idea!

I don't have a phone with SD storage to test it on. I wonder if the emulator supports that... Hmmm

EDIT: It appears not.

I presume you'd have to be able to select the SD card as the place to store the downloads so I'm going to guess that has to be added. But if the emulator doesn't support it, I don't know how they'd expect anyone to implement that. Unless third party apps don't get access to the SD card on WP8 which based on some of the other dumb omissions I've seen in it so far, wouldn't surprise me.

Under settings, phone storage, on the Nokia Lumia 820, it gives the following options, quoted from screen:

You can change the storage settings below for music, videos and pictures.
Store new music+videos on
-SD Card
-phone
Store new pictures on
-SD Card
-phone

I guess it's just a matter of knowing if the podcast is downloaded as 'new music' or part of the app (and therefore 'stuck' on the main device.

Does that help AP?

I've eyed the cheap Lumia 520 as a possible non-phone use replacement for my wife's broken Zune HD. I have a question about available apps, though. Is there a good audiobook player available to use with Overdrive audiobooks and others obtained from non-audible sources? If so, are DRM'd .wma books supported, and not just the typical .mp3/m4a stuff?

High speed non-chipmunk playback is a definite plus if not a requirement.

I've started listening to my audiobooks more and more on my phone, although I prefer my Sansa Clip form factor and separate non-phone draining battery source. But I really like to listen at 2x speed or so, and the Clip doesn't do any tonal adjustment when playing at higher speeds. I still use the Clip for .wma files, and unfortunately, Overdrive downloads are still primarily DRMd .wmas.

The desktop Zune software can not sync to Windows Phone 8..phones. It can only sync to Zunes and Windows Phone 7 phones.

Looks like build quality on the low-end Lumias is pretty crappy. The headphone socket on my 620 is going already and the volume button on a colleague's has broken after a few months. Looking at the internals it's a very flimsy-looking design. It's under warranty still so I'll just get a replacement, but you get what you pay for I guess.

Urk, that sucks. The headphone socket seems to be an issue with many Lumias though, hasn't someone in this thread's 920 had a failure already? I've noticed that mine is very tight, it needs quite a lot of force and I'm not wild about that.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

... I've noticed that mine is very tight, it needs quite a lot of force and I'm not wild about that.

s{racist slur}s

...and sigged

Goddamm it!

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Urk, that sucks. The headphone socket seems to be an issue with many Lumias though, hasn't someone in this thread's 920 had a failure already? I've noticed that mine is very tight, it needs quite a lot of force and I'm not wild about that.

That was me. My 920's headphone port failed after about 8 months of regular daily use. On the plus side, AT&T's in-person support was great and it took zero effort to replace my phone. If you're backed up to SkyDrive, going from the previous handset to a replacement will be nearly seamless. To use a phrase from the other side of the aisle, "It just works".

The key is to go directly to a AT&T Device Support Center instead of an AT&T retail store: http://www.att.com/esupport/article....

Bugger, just cracked my 620's screen with my elbow while moving my laptop and now I can't even unlock it. My wife dropped her iPhone 5 down the toilet last week, so it's an expensive month of phones in the Zelos house.

Zelos wrote:

Bugger, just cracked my 620's screen with my elbow while moving my laptop and now I can't even unlock it. My wife dropped her iPhone 5 down the toilet last week, so it's an expensive month of phones in the Zelos house.

That cold chill you feel is Hell freezing over: http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/22/4...

Vine and Xbox Video also coming soon: http://www.wpcentral.com/more-apps-a...

Cool, i don't use instagram, it seems redundant with twitter and Facebook, but i know a lot of people do so this opens up Windows Phone as an option for them.

I'm glad Asphalt 8 is coming.

So I paid my AT&T bill using their WP8 app for the first time since it updated a couple of weeks ago. Holy crap is it horrible now. Unbelievably sluggish. For some ungodly reason it appears that they went from native code to HTML and it's near unusable.

Can you activate a Windows 8 phone without a cell plan attached? I keep looking at the cheap 520/521s as a potential replacement for my wife's Zune to give her a media player that's not attached to her phone (battery reasons), but I think I read somewhere that you couldn't link it to your MS account via wifi. Might be wrong about it, so I wanted to check.

If she's downloading subscription tracks to a Window Phone 7 device, that's not supported on Windows Phone 8. Aside from that, though, it's not bad as a PMP, plus Target and Amazon have them on sale for the holiday.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

If she's downloading subscription tracks to a Window Phone 7 device, that's not supported on Windows Phone 8. Aside from that, though, it's not bad as a PMP, plus Target and Amazon have them on sale for the holiday.

They're on sale everywhere. They're not Win Phone 7, but Win Phone 8. I saw them at TD today for $59.

Still interested if they'll link to your MS account without service. I know I heard some mention of that not working a long time ago, but can't seem to find it now.

MannishBoy wrote:
Kurrelgyre wrote:

If she's downloading subscription tracks to a Window Phone 7 device, that's not supported on Windows Phone 8.

They're not Win Phone 7, but Win Phone 8.

I know. I mention it only because if you have the Zune/Xbox Music Pass and had a Zune Player, it let you synchronize the protected subscription tracks to that player, and do so for any Windows Phone 7 device like the original Samsung Focus. It can't do that for Windows 8 Phones like the Lumia 520. It has to stream from the cloud or play unprotected tracks that are local.