November 3rd, 2011 by Will Spaetzel
We’ve just published an update to the site with several usability improvements that take into account feedback that we have received from our users.
The first has to do with what CastRoller does when you add a podcast to your collection or to a channel. Previously, when you added a podcast the latest 5 episodes from that podcast were added to the top of your collection/channel causing any episodes currently in that collection/channel to get pushed down beneath. We have now updated the behaviour so that now only the most recently published episode from that podcast is added to the top of your channel/collection. The next 4 newest episodes are added to your collection/channel in order with other episodes published at the same time as those episodes, so they will be mixed in where you expect to see them.
This change makes it less of a hassle when you add a new podcast as your feeds won’t be dramatically changed when you add the show. We chose to put the most recent episode at the top so that you’ll be able to enjoy that episode right away, and the other episodes are mixed in so that when you are paging through your episodes, you’ll see them where you expect to see them.
The 2nd change will affect less users, but still is quite useful: If you are using a web browser without Flash installed, you previously were unable to play episodes directly on CastRoller. Now, we have updated the site so that any browser that has Flash disable but supports HTML5 will be able to play both audio and video right on CastRoller.com.
This means that both desktop and mobile web browsers that don’t have Flash will be able to fully enjoy playing episodes on CastRoller.
Finally, we made a number of smaller fixes to CastRoller including fixing adding a podcast to a new channel and some fixes attempting to reduce the number of duplicate episodes on the site.
These changes are a direct result of the feedback from our users, please let us know what you think of these changes and any more changes you’d like to see on the site.
August 10th, 2011 by Will Spaetzel
We just published a big update to CastRoller’s logged in homepage. This update greatly speeds up the page as well as makes it a lot easier to get to your most used actions. Now instead of showing a Facebook style stream of updates to your collection, channels and contacts; the homepage just shows you episodes from your collection by default. This list had links for “Download”, “Play”, “Share” and “Star” for each episode, you you can quickly interact with each episode.
There are links to all of your channels in the right hand sidebar, and clicking these keeps you within the homepage interface, letting you quickly check your channels without losing your spot in the site.
We have also added a new page that shows all of the actions from your contacts. This is the same as the old home page, except it shows just updates from your contacts so you can easily explore what they are doing on the site.
We think this update greatly improves the usability of the site, and it is the first of many updates to the site to come soon. Enjoy!
May 2nd, 2011 by Will Spaetzel
We’ve just published a new update that will significantly speed up the performance of the website. This affects any page where episodes are listed such as Podcast details pages, your logged in homepage and channel pages.
CastRoller stores Episodes and “Episode Files” in two separate tables. This allows one episode to have more than one file. This is done so that in the future, we can update the site so that when a podcast publishes both an Audio and Video version of their show, the episodes and podcast can live on one place on CastRoller. The player will allow users to select which version they would like to watch/listen to.
We changed CastRoller so that it only loads from the Episode Files table when the site requires the exactly url for an Episode’s enclosure. Otherwise, all links to download now go to a download page located on CastRoller. Only when the link is clicked, is the extra database lookup made.
This new download page also allows us to track additional statistics for episodes, we now track when an episode is Viewed, Played or Downloaded from the site or from CastRoller’s RSS feeds. In the near future, we will allow podcasters who have claimed their shows to see these statistics.
Another change is that if you click on the “Subscribe to Feed” link on channels or your personal feeds, the URL now contains a user id and hash. This is done so that in the future, users can choose a setting in CastRoller to specify which file they would like by default in your RSS feeds. That way when a video version of a podcast is merged with the audio version, users can continue to receive only the audio. With the user id and hash in the RSS url, we can uniquely identify the user who is downloading the feed, and automatically give them the file they want.
Of course the current /audio and /video urls will continue to work, so you can override your preference by subscribing to the file type specific feed.
Finally, the Episode playlist has been updated so that now when you click on a new episode in the list, the title, description and download links all update to match the episode that is currently playing. Also, the episode page now uses Twitter’s “Tweet” button and we added the new Facebook “Send” button.
February 21st, 2011 by Will Spaetzel
We just made a major behind the scenes update to CastRoller that moves the site over to a brand new database structure. We made this change to support the upcoming CastRoller API to be used with our iPhone and iPad app. Also, the new database should be faster than before, so you should experience slightly faster speeds on the site now. The new database will allow us to make further updates that will speed the site up even more. Our goal is for CastRoller to be one of the fastest sites on the web, and hop to be there soon.
It is possible that you will notice some episodes missing from your channels, 99% of them are there now, and we are currently running a script that will take up to 24 hours to get the ones we missed in the first round. In the meantime, we apologize for the confusion with this.
Finally, this update also fixed a bug that caused the wrong podcast to sometimes be added to your collection when you added a podcast through the “Add Podcast” form.
December 1st, 2010 by Bill Deys
Today is the day!
Today is December 1st, the Canadian National Day of Podcasting. It’s the day that podcasters are supposed to revive their retired podcasts and produce one more episode. No reinventions, nothing special, just a show like they used to be.
As part of this day, CastRoller has set up a channel (and feed) so you can keep up to date on the shows.
We’ll do our best to get all the podcasts in the channel. Help us out by emailing a link to the episode to bill@castroller.com or tweeting a link with the tag #cndop.
August 5th, 2009 by Will Spaetzel
We know lots of CastRoller users are big Flickr and Twitter users. Well now you can log in to CastRoller using your Flickr or Twitter accounts. Just click on the log in link and click the Flickr or Twitter logo to get in.
May 30th, 2009 by Will Spaetzel
The most requested feature on the CastRoller Feedback Page is OPML export, well as announced in the last episode of the CastRoller Podcast, the feature was currently under development. And now it is available!
Now there are links in the left hand side of each channel page, each channel podcasts page and each user collection episodes page that says “Export Podcasts” or “Export Podcasts as OPML”. The OPML files let you take the the lists of podcasts that you have added to CastRoller as use them elsewhere.
April 5th, 2009 by Will Spaetzel
Today, we published a completely new version of the Episode page for CastRoller. This is the page you see when you click to view any episode on the site.
The first change you will see is that the player is now front-and-center. So it’s easy for you to enjoy the audio or video of the episode.
The page also gives you a number of extra options to share the episode on more sites. These include, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Facebook.
In order to make it easier to get more of the content, you can add the podcast to your collection right on the page.
Finally, there are both some episodes from related podcasts that we think you might enjoy as well as some more episodes from the same podcast.
We hope that this will help to make the site more enjoyable to use and allow you to enjoy more content.
March 24th, 2009 by Will Spaetzel
CastRoller already makes it easy to find new podcasts to enjoy. Now, with the new automatic podcast recommendations feature, CastRoller finds the podcasts for you, automatically!
We take a look at all of the podcasts in your collection and see which podcasts users which similar interests have also subscribed to. When we find new recommendations, we send you an e-mail and display the recommendations on your home page.
You don’t have to do anything to start using this feature. Recommendations will just start coming to you.
February 14th, 2009 by Will Spaetzel
It’s common to want to share an episode with one of your friends, but not send it to all of them. Previously, your only option on CastRoller was to share with all of your contacts. Not any longer. You can now share episodes with just one of your contacts.
The option appears in the “Share” drop down along with the other share options. You can choose to include a note to send to your friend as well. Note, you can only send episodes to people who are mutual friends. Meaning that you have added them as a contact, and they have also added you.
Also, if your friend has chosen to have an e-mail sent when someone shares an episode with them, they will recieve an email with a link to the episode and your note.
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