CastSampler.com monitoring feeds
On the plane back from Phoenix this week, I implemented some changes to the way CastSampler.com republishes feeds for the sites a user subscribes to. The user page used to link directly to the original feed so it would be easy to copy it to a regular RSS reader to keep up to date on new shows. That link has been replaced with a “monitor” feed which uses the original description and title for each item, but replaces the link with a new URL that causes the show to be added to your CastSampler queue. The user page still links to the original home page for the feed, so I think I am doing enough as far as attribution and advertisement. Any author information included in the original feed is also passed through to the monitor feed. The OPML file generated for a user’s feeds links to these “monitor” feeds instead of the original source, too.
The goal of these changes is to make it easy to use a feed-reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader to monitor podcasts from CastSampler. To add an episode to your queue, just click the link in the monitor feed to be directed to the appropriate CastSampler.com page.
By the way, how cool is it to be able to develop a web app on my Powerbook while I’m on a plane? What an age to be alive.