Working with iTunes

[Doug Kaye]

In speaking with Jon a week ago or so, he mentioned one idea. Jon uses SpokenWord.org to subscribe to a variety of feeds and he uses iTunes at the other end. But he doesn't want every program from these feeds to automatically make their way to iTunes. He wants to preview individual programs before iTunes gets them.

I was thinking about this. Should there be some new intermediate state of programs that sit in a "review" queue? Then I realized that we've already got something like this. Why not subscribe to feeds from Collection A, then cherry-pick programs from Collection A into Collection B and subscribe to Collection B from iTunes? It amounts to the same thing as having a review queue, but it uses the general-purpose facility.

I continue to believe that the concept of a collection that can include/follow programs, feeds and other collections is a good one, but there's no doubt that newbies in particular find it confusing. On one hand, I don't want to make it more confusing by adding a new review-type queue, but this seems like an important use case. If use of the general-purpose collection mechanism isn't sufficient, it may need to be addressed in some new way.

Thoughts?

   ...doug

[Norman Lorrain]

Sounds like he has a lot of programs in his feed.  It's a scaling issue from the user's perspective.  Sort of an automatic vs semi-automatic choice.  Maybe you can make it an attribute of the feeds in a collection, and default it to automatically add new programs to the collection.  Then if a feed floods your collection, you can switch to semi-automatic.

This would be useful for someone who wants to collect all the feeds available on a certain topic, then publish a "best of" feed.  Now you've got added value. 

-Norm.

[Doug Kaye]

So what's the difference between "semi-automatic" and simply not subscribing to the feed at all? You can always go to a feed and Collect individual programs. You don't need to subscribe to the feed from your collection to do that. Maybe I'm missing something?

   ...doug

[Norman Lorrain]

That's true, but then you have to go back to the feed periodically to check for new programs.  I'm thinking in terms of day-to-day workflow. 

That said, I agree with your goal of keeping it simple.  More advanced users can do the previewing in iTunes.

-Norm.

[Ken Kennedy]

I think the "Collection A" ->"Collection B" -> iTunes solution works well. And with the API, we'll have the opportunity to make programmatic choices in moving things between collections ("Feed 1 in Collection A, take last program of month, add to Collection B", "Feed 2, take first 5 programs, but no more", etc.)

I'd say the biggest obstacle is getting people to realize they can do it. Perhaps some "tips and tricks" page, or even a "Curated Collection Wizard", or some other way to help the lightbulb go on for folks might be useful.

--
Ken Kennedy
Contact info: http://kenzoid.com/me/contact

[Bill]

I think there is a sense of collecting before selecting. The odds of  
searching out individual programs on a regular basis is very low.  I  
tend to take the firehose approach with iTunes where I subscribe to  
complete feeds the skip or mark read the ones that aren't interesting  
to me. That only works for the feeds that are really compleling or  
where you listen to the majority of the programs. Somehow a feed has  
to go from being "out there" to a list of possibly intersting content.

--
Bill Kempthorne
bi...@maxwest.net

[Bill]

Thought(s)-

The more I think about my use the more I realize the limitations of what iTunes gives me for content. It really biases listening to the high volume, serialized program that I would call my must listens (TWIT, MacOSKen, Woot).  The >90% listen end to end. 

I tollerate iTunes with large multi-program feeds like ITConversations because I consider it high quality so the 'noise' of extra programs isn't critical. The only filter I ever apply to this is maybe the odd skip or 'mark as read' when I get behind. 

The next tier is when it starts to get interesting and iTunes becomes problematic. There are a number of feeds that are largely single programs or small collections that I listen to some but not all. Frequently barely 50% of them. (NPR, CBC, BBC, EdTechTalk, This week in Law) There is value there but the noise starts to get pretty high. I've subscribed and unsubscribed to these feeds several times (currently CBC and TWIL are in, NPR, BBC are out, and I just readded EdTechTalk). I want to 'pay attention' but I also need to filter before it gets to my ears. For any given period I might listen to 40-80% of the shows in the feed. 

Then there are the real outliers the <20%, they hang around mostly because they are relatively low volume (2600, TMUP, and a local public affairs show called PublicEyeOnline). These are <1 wk. The ones that are more frequent I probably dropped and don't even remember anymore. 

I started to use smart playlists in itunes to take the podcasts and create situational playlists (workout, walk to work, listen to while waiting for X, bored on couch- Mac Mini/AppleTV) not very successfully. This is both event (commute, travel, bored) and location driven (iPhone, AppleTV, Mac Mini on home Theatre, Laptop, Desktop)

--
Bill Kempthorne
bi...@maxwest.net

[Doug Kaye]

Bill, the analysis of your personal use cases is very helpful. Let's take it to the next step: What (specifically) can we do with the architecture/UI of SpokenWord.org to make your life easier?

   ...doug

[Bill]

My comments below were really trying to focus on the working with iTunes topic. Where I though spokenword.org really goes where iTunes doesn't. I guess my thought pattern right now is trying to figure out the workflow. What order are people going to do which bit? The incoming "Program" feeds, collections, playlists, and outgoing "User" feeds all have a role but don't know if it is obvious where they fit. 

I'm using incoming feeds to refer to the program feeds coming from the content providers and outgoing feeds to mean the RSS created by spokenword.org

For me it goes like this

- Hunt around incoming feeds for interesting stuff

- 'tag' that stuff for either immediate reading or follow feeds

- sort stuff into outgoing feeds my content, purpose, or intended method of consumption (last one is what I do most)

Is that making any sense? Is there a design plan for this that suggest how you currently intend it to be used. Feel like I'm a little in the weeds throwing random ideas around?

--
Bill Kempthorne
bi...@maxwest.net