MadJo commented, on April 2, 2007 at 21:20 (GMT +01:00):

The site looks really nice! Well done. (though the link to the blog in the FAQ is incorrect) :)

Sadly, I can't comment on the application. I get the error message "RuntimeError: Bad magic number in .pyc file" upon running the application after I installed it. (Linux Ubuntu 7.04, python2.5)

Jared Rimer commented, on April 3, 2007 at 00:14 (GMT +01:00):

I can't even log in to this web site. The system says the user name and password is incorrect. I gotmy password via the for password option on the login screen. I don't understand how I could get an invalid user name and/or password when I enter it correctly. I had this problem with the old juice client and web site and I had to copy and paste the password from the E-mail to even get it to work. Do I have to do that? Username has no upper case characters. I guess I can't use the new site at all.

Ronald-san commented, on April 3, 2007 at 01:54 (GMT +01:00):

I found the problem with the old client - there is errors in the OPML file.

got the desktop client to respond now... 6MB our of 1026MB...great...and it isn't telling me WHAT it is downloading still.

Sam commented, on April 3, 2007 at 09:23 (GMT +01:00):

This recent chicklet change has interfered with how my visitors listen to my podcasts.

Since PodNova is now REQUIRING me to register my channels (I have a ton!), I will no longer use the PodNova chicklet.

If you by any chance implement backwards compatibility, please post to the blog and I'll put the PodNova chicklet back up.

Robin commented, on April 3, 2007 at 14:43 (GMT +01:00):

@Sam: you don't necessarily need to register. First find your channel number, then just change the channel number (in the example below it is 84316) in the following code to your channel number and you should be good:

<a href="http://www.podnova.com/channel/84316/subscribe/"><img border="0" src="http://images.podnova.com/webfiles/img_chicklet_podnova.gif" width="91" height="17" alt="add to my PodNova" title="add to my PodNova" /></a>

Russh commented, on April 3, 2007 at 14:56 (GMT +01:00):

new Podnova client doesn't do anything except throw exceptions. Linux - SLED10.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./PodNova.py", line 664, in OnClick
AttributeError: 'CommandEvent' object has no attribute 'GetClientData'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./PodNova.py", line 664, in OnClick
AttributeError: 'CommandEvent' object has no attribute 'GetClientData'

jer@nyquil.org commented, on April 3, 2007 at 15:04 (GMT +01:00):

the linux download is an incomplete tar.gz file.

jer@jer-desktop:~$ tar zxvf PodNova-2.3-linux-py24.tar.gz
./
./install.sh
./PodNova-2.3.tar.gz

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

The tar.gz file within it isn't complete either. I've downloaded it 3 times, to no avail. Some stuff extracts, but not enough to actually make it run.

This really irks me, because the old client has ceased to function, leaving me really in the lurch here. I guess that's what I get for trusting someone else to manage my podcasts for me.

Todd Higginbotham commented, on April 3, 2007 at 16:57 (GMT +01:00):

LMFAO! This is what took so long? I hope client work was holding Active8 up because this is saddening.

More compatibility with hardware devices? All the client does is sync the download folder with another folder, doesnt work with my PlaysForSure device.

The client is insane. How do I know if its going to download 1 podcast or 136 podcasts?

You are not making podcasting easier for new users, you are alienating your current loyal users. Simply look at all the negative feedback and you can see this update is an utter failure.

Les Zaldor commented, on April 3, 2007 at 23:15 (GMT +01:00):

@Rene: while I understand completely about making a client easy for new users - I think a new user would like to know how to stop re-downloading podcasts that they listened to months ago because the podcast feed was changed/moved. With the new client, there is no way to see what podcasts are being downloaded, how many will be downloaded, and how to cancel individual downloads of podcasts - it's all or nothing. The old client gave a list of the files downloading, and allowed the user to stop any or all of them. Are there any plans on meeting the old users at least half-way??

jer@nyquil.org commented, on April 4, 2007 at 02:22 (GMT +01:00):

OK. several things.

I got it to unzip your crazy-ass tar.gz files by just going ahead and blindly running your crazy-ass installer with root access.

I don't know what the heck you guys think you're doing with this :)

first off: the downloaded .tar.gz file contains 3 files. One is your installer script (that must be run as root?!?). The other two are more tar.gz files. Not to stop at simply tar-ing up multiple tar files within the first tar file, ONE OF THEM IS ANOTHER COPY OF THE FIRST TAR FILE. !?

I'm not sure if the installer is just untar-ing them in the right order or what, but manually trying to extract your .tar.gz files fails as per my previous comment.

SO, to sum up my install experience:

1) requiring a user to run the installer as root is insane. (I realize that you'd need to be root to stick the binary in /usr/local/bin, but it ought to run just fine from inside the PodNova-2.3 folder.

2) having a tar file that contains multiple tar files (one of which has the same name as the original tar file, with a directory structure which causes it to extract overtop the first one if extracted manually) is pretty darn silly.

3) It may be fine for people who don't know what the heck they're doing to just blindly run your installer as root, but I submit to you that those people aren't running linux in the first place :). You need to have a single tar file that extracts everything nicely rather than a crazy installer doing additional extraction of twice zipped tar files. OK, installer rant over.

Now on to the client:

um, how do I see my list of podcasts? how do I pick which episodes I want to download or not? How can I select the last episode whose resumed download got messed up so that I can download it again?

can I do ANYTHING other than 'download,' 'syncronize,' or 'settings'??

Russh commented, on April 4, 2007 at 11:56 (GMT +01:00):

Hi There, perhaps a comment isn't the right way to progress this, but to respond to Rene... I'm already running python-wxGTK-2.6.2.1-20.2. Anyone else got this running on SLED10?

Rene commented, on April 4, 2007 at 12:54 (GMT +01:00):

@ Russh:

To confirm that your Python loads the right wxPython, can you do the following:

rene@MAGOG:~$ python
Python 2.4.4c1 (#2, Oct 11 2006, 21:51:02)
[GCC 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import wx
>>> wx.VERSION
(2, 6, 3, 2, '')

wx.VERSION should give at least (2,6,3,x)

Rene commented, on April 4, 2007 at 14:53 (GMT +01:00):

@ Les Zaldor:
You can enable logging in the PodNova Desktop Client. In your home directory, these is a directory '.podnova'. In that directory there is a file 'podnova_user_settings.ini'. In the '[logging]' section. Change key 'enable' to 'True'. Like this:

[logging]
enable = True
target = file

The PodNova Desktop Client will now generate a log-file in your home-directory (PodNova.log). I would like to see what the issue is. So, can you try to download and then send the log-file to me? rene@podnova.com

RussH commented, on April 4, 2007 at 16:47 (GMT +01:00):

general tip - If you want to install the new PodNova client on SLED10, you'll need to upgrade the Python wxGTK packages.
Easiest thing to do is to add http://software.opensuse.org/download/ho...
as a source in YaST, and it'll grab version 2.6.3.3.

I still prefer to see what the client is doing - as per the 2.2 version, but you've got allot of those comments!

RichC commented, on April 5, 2007 at 10:16 (GMT +01:00):

I installed the Client and had to re-install WMP 11 as it stopped working

jer@nyquil.org commented, on April 6, 2007 at 16:13 (GMT +01:00):

OK, I take it back -- I can no longer do anything via the web site. Clicking on the little +Subscribe buttons no longer has any effect, and using the sidebar "manually add a feed" returns a 404 error.

Is there another way to add feeds to my list of subscriptions?

Also, going to my subscriptions page on podnova, nothing is shown anymore. I get accurate counts, but no actual list of feeds.

One thing I'm not sure about: when it was working, and I was viewing a specific feed and the site listed available episodes, did clicking the little +add/-remove buttons on individiual episodes tell the podnova client to download them, or is it like adding it to bookmarks or something? I went and marked all the episodes I missed that way and after several downloads via the client, none of them have come down. How do we mark individual episodes as 'to download/to not download?'

One other issue: when clicking download in the client, it creates directories for each feed whether there are any new entries or not. The old client wouldn't create the directory until it was actually going to put something in it, and I -- like many other people, I'm sure -- use the presence of the folder on my device to indicate that there is something new to listen to (then I delete the folder when I'm done listening to it). As it is now, I have a hundred folders which may or may not contain anything.

Robin commented, on April 6, 2007 at 19:09 (GMT +01:00):

@ jer@nyquil.org: First of all thanks for providing feedback.

This afternoon we were working on a bug regarding adding feeds manually. However, there are still some issues with it, we will solve those shortly so that it will work properly consistenly. For the moment it might work, but it also might not.

Your subscriptions page should work normally, can you specify OS en browser so I can look into it?
If you click on the individual episode buttons ("add episode") it'll be added to your clippings folder, more info in the FAQ about the concept of clippings: http://www.podnova.com/faq/#feeds_14.

Thanks again for your time.

ixeian commented, on April 8, 2007 at 03:26 (GMT +01:00):

Just want to second the comments of several regarding the client: You've essentially destroyed the desktop clients functionality.
I listen to the podcasts on my laptop or desktop directly through the desktop client, and I distinctly remember seeing a statistic here that a significant number of members do the same. And no, I'm not always online.
Syncing to a pod device is good and fine but why remove other useful functionality from the client? Having the choice of working through the website or the client is one of the things I liked about this service.
Well, I quickly uninstalled the new client and reinstalled the 2.2 version (win32) but apparently that's not gonna work since it now won't accept my username and password. This is seriously irritating and I came close to just going away, but chose to write this instead.
Oh, and this place really needs a forum/board where things like this can be discussed.

ixeian commented, on April 8, 2007 at 15:31 (GMT +01:00):

Well, I do understand some of your thinking on this, but imho you've still gone badly wrong. Adding the robocopy functionality is fine, I can see the usefullness of it, but again why actively remove other parts of the program. It's not like it was bloated, I mean, it was just Juice with some improvements and Podnova integration. I was using Juice for some months before signing up with podnova specifically because I liked the idea of the website/client integration.
Guess I might be going back to Juice if I can't get the old 2.2 client working. Concrete question: Is the 2.2 client never gonna work with the new Podnova?
Just so you know, it's not that I'm totally down on you, what you've done with the website is very nice and I can see myself using it more if you'd just reconsider on the client. What I don't get is why making the website better as you've done necessitates changing things on the client side so much. Did you have no idea how users would react to this (see comments upwards).
I'll see what I can do about a forum. If any of you want to get in touch, I'm reachable at jayhey at the gmail place.
One final comment: I'm not so sure these client changes are good for new users either. I'd quite like to know some of your thinking there too.

ixeian commented, on April 8, 2007 at 18:37 (GMT +01:00):

rabshakeh, thanks for the response. I've got the 2.2 client working now, apparently last night was just some sort of hiccup.
What you're saying about the maintainability of the client makes sense, I can imagine taking a look at that codebase and I'm not even a hardcore programmer :) But actually, reading this makes me want to bone up on Python.
I do understand that I'm what you call a power user (RSS and general tech/net enthusiast here). It's good that you do have user reactions to the previous client and this does clarify where the apparent tension between new and older (power) users lies.
My comments about new users comes from having done my time in user support and as the guy responsible for interface testing on a couple of projects. I'd like to write up my thoughts on both this and your idea mentioned at the end in more detail and mail to you. But I need a little time to do that, hope that's okay with you.

Ronald-san commented, on April 9, 2007 at 00:49 (GMT +01:00):

It seems that the switch deleted one of my fav. podcasts from the directory (AND MY SUBSCRIPTION LIST) (Cool) sh ite on the tube...and I get an error when I try to subscribe to it again.

Is there some sort of word filter being used on the feeds, please add this if there is.
http://www.coolshite.net/wp-rss2.php?cat...

Nils commented, on April 9, 2007 at 19:03 (GMT +01:00):

I was relying on the old clients ability to launch a program when a download completes. Any way to do this with the new client?

Also the new client wanted to download everything from scratch. Is there way to "catch everything up"?

Stanley commented, on April 10, 2007 at 03:35 (GMT +01:00):

Good work on the site so far guys, however the new client is a huge disappointment. I too listen to podcasts mainly on my computer and for anyone who chooses this means of listening, the new client is a PAIN. I can't tell what is downloading. I have to log in to the website to change ANYTHING. I think if usability is your concern, you should take into consideration BOTH new users and current ones. This release clearly has not done that. I have gone back to v 2.2. hopefully v 2.4 will at least have an advanced mode for those of us who prefer the old interface. thanks for the hard work I'm sure you put into this release, but I think you missed the mark on this one.

MadJo commented, on April 12, 2007 at 00:07 (GMT +01:00):

RussH,
Ubuntu user (though 7.04 beta) here, and I can use the online player.
Are you sure that your browser uses the Flash9 libraries?

Mark commented, on April 12, 2007 at 23:30 (GMT +01:00):

I refrained from commenting until after I used the entire package for a while. I also avoided reading the comment section to maintain my own opinion.

1. Agree with most, let us know what has been downloaded. Ideally show us what is going on at that moment. If nothing else, show a list of recent downloads.

2. Like the integration with my Super Talent player. I've clicked the -auto sync after download- option but I can't seem to get it to work. Manually sync-ing works fine, auto does not. Do I have something else set wrong?

3. Like the idea of adding to my "podcast list" from anywhere with only browser. Very nice. Seems to be a bit smoother.

4. Don't like having to manually clean up the directories and files of shows that have been removed from my list.

5. Expert (for lack of a better title) would be nice to have. "Beginners" could just use the new three button interface while the "advanced" users could either dig a bit deeper or d/l a feature rich player interface.

Look forward to using your product more and seeing it grow.

regards

Rene commented, on April 14, 2007 at 09:45 (GMT +01:00):

@ Mark:
>2. Like the integration with my Super Talent player. I've clicked the -auto sync after download- option but I can't seem to get it to work.

I would like to see what happens. You can enable logging in the PodNova Desktop Client.
In your home directory, these is a directory '.podnova'. In that directory there is a file 'podnova_user_settings.ini'. In the '[logging]' section change key 'enable' to 'True'. Like this:

[logging]
enable = True
target = file

The PodNova Desktop Client will now generate a log-file in your home-directory (PodNova.log). I would like to see what the issue is. So, can you try to download / auto-sync and then send the log-file to me? rene@podnova.com

Robin commented, on April 18, 2007 at 16:52 (GMT +01:00):

@ Russh: rotating is fixed and working appropriate again. With rotating you can cycle through the Episodes of that Channel. Try it out and see if you find it handy, most people do.

Jeff commented, on April 21, 2007 at 16:22 (GMT +01:00):

Great job with the update. The site looks clean, and although the desktop client change was a bit jarring, I think managing podcasts throught the site & windows media player works fine (I do think the "Expert" mode suggestion is a good one, though).

I've noticed that I can't shutdown my XP machine with the client in the system tray while "Hide PodNova desktop client on quit" is set, and I've had a few unexpected 2GB downloads, but that's probably just upgrade weirdness.

Thanks for a great product, please keep up the good work..