since Mediafly is stopping service, can we get Stitcher to replace it?

[mp3michael]

There's a new option for Squeezeboxers who want to access podcasts on their net radios - http://DAR.fm

Previously DAR.fm has allowed people to time shift AM/FM radio shows and they have a 16,000 show library. Recently though they added podcasts to that catalog. They already have a majority of the popular ones and anyone can add a new podcast by clicking "Change the Guide" on the bottom of any page if you see a podcast that is not listed that you want.

All shows recorded/subscribed at DAR.fm can be played back on Squeezebox and here's how.

Get the MP3tunes app for Squeezebox.
Login with your DAR.fm or MP3tunes account info.
Navigate to the playlist menu of MP3tunes and shows will be listed there with a DAR prefix.
Click to play them

You can also fast forward within a show which is a very unique and useful feature.

-- MR

[mortslim]

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

[mortslim]

Nope, sorry, dar.fm doesn't fit the bill. That service supposedly "records" podcasts (even though those podcasts - which by definition are previously recorded material - are already available "on demand" on the internet, and thus don't need to be "recorded" again).

I can understand the mp3tunes service for a song played in real time on a radio station which would need to be "recorded", however that is not the case with a podcast.

In addition, after I designated just one podcast for "recording", I was told I had reached my limit for the free service and thus if I wanted to "record" more podcasts, I would have to subscribe (pay a subscription fee). Considering that the podcasts are available for free on the internet, I don't see the value in paying mp3tunes.com for this.

So back to square one: is there any way to get a replacement for mediafly before the end of March when the mediafly service stops on squeezeboxes?

[mortslim]

Here is the relevant part of Mediafly's press release on the subject:

"Effective March 31, 2012, Mediafly will be shutting down OnAir and OnAir-related apps".

http://www.mediafly.com/news

[Wigster]

I was thinking of using Yahoo Pipes to combine all my MediaFly RSS feeds into a single feed, sort chronologically and then to subscribe to that using the Squeezebox. At least you'd be able to play all the podcasts in order, if not mark them as "heard" and delete from the list.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

[mortslim]

Thank you for the suggestion of Yahoo Pipes. Apparently after you log onto your personal Yahoo account, Yahoo Pipes allows a series of feeds to be combined into one megafeed and then this megafeed can be published so that it can be used without having to log onto your Yahoo account. So then this public megafeed should be able to be manually added to the squeezebox podcasts app. However although I understand the theory of this idea, I was unable to set up my own podcast pipe. It would be nice if someone can explain step-by-step how to do this.

Separately, it just dawned on me that my iPeng app on my iPad can be used to set up an on-the-fly series of podcasts by going to my squeezebox podcast app, selecting one and playing. Then selecting a second podcast and press and hold till a pop-up window appears and then select "add to end", and so forth for additional podcasts. In this way, a playlist of podcasts can be created.

So apparently iPeng has saved the day for me. I had the iPeng app all along but didn't connect the dots till now that it can solve the issue of creating podcast playlists once Mediafly becomes burnt toast on the squeezebox platform.

Thank you iPeng.

But still curious about Yahoo Pipes if someone can offer a detailed set-up procedure. The advantage of this over iPeng would be that the playlist is already set up in advance rather than have to set it up everytime with iPeng.

[mortslim]

Curious as to the status of this issue.

It seems only Logitech is in the best position to respond and as yet, there has been no response from Logitech.

Does Logitech care any more about the Squeezebox line?

[mortslim]

As of today, Mediafly is gone as a service on the squeezbox line of audio players.

[mortslim]

I spoke to a representative of Stitcher. I was told that Stitcher approached Logitech about adding the Stitcher service to mysqueezebox.com, however Logitech wasn't interested.

Maybe Logitech can explain why it is not interested in adding the Stitcher service.

[Wigster]

OK, I've finally made myself learn a little about Yahoo Pipes to get it to do what I want.

My Pipe can be found here

http://pipes.yahoo.com/musicpodcastsorter

What it does, is take a list of supplied RSS feeds (I've put in the xmlURL address that MediaFly exported in the OPML file), restrict the output to be only those episodes which are no more than a month old, sort them chronologically and combine into a single feed. You can take this feed's URL and plug it into the podcast app in MySqueezebox.com, and you will now have all these feeds combined appear as one list in the LMS menu.

You can just clone this pipe and edit the Podcast URLs for whatever you like and adjusting the "expiry date" is also easily done in the widget called Date Builder in the top right.

There is probably some nice improvements that could be made (such as adding the feed's name to the title of the episode, since it's not always obvious). Anyway, this seems to work reasonably well, with the exception of not getting rid of episodes which have been listened to. However, there really is no way to do that I think.