The CastRoller Blog » Site News

Adding to Channels and HTML5

Will Spaetzel — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 01:19:09 +0000

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.

CastRoller Podcast 56: Worth a Twenty

Will Spaetzel — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:51:59 +0000

Welcome to the fifty sixth episode of the CastRoller podcast for August 30th, 2011 featuring Bill Deys and Will Spaetzel.

CastRoller News

Published new faster homepage
Sped up Podcast directory and fixed splash page
Improved categories with subcategories
New algorithms for Top Podcasts, Up & Coming & Hot Episodes
Autoamatic running of SQL, block spammers automatically
Thinking about big changes
- Hide Channels – Empathize Categories
- Private by default – require friend confirmation
- Remove episode page, put inline with episode list. Removing comments.
Scraping iTunes directory
CastRoller is the 89th most popular Canadian startup

Up and Coming Podcasts

Tech News

Picks of the Week

Will’s pick is Game of Thrones
Bill’s pick is nvALT – Will starting a Windows clone

Events

Add to your CastRoller Collection: Theme music is Takin’ Out the Trash by Heuristics Inc.

New Fast Homepage

Will Spaetzel — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:50:07 +0000

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!

CastRoller Podcast 48 – Speeding up the Process

Will Spaetzel — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:04:20 +0000

Welcome to the fourty eighth episode of the CastRoller podcast for May 3, 2011 featuring Bill Deys and Will Spaetzel. This episode was recorded in person at the Deys studio.

CastRoller News

Big speed updates. Don’t load episode files along with episode, saves a lot of database queries, speeds up the site.
now tracking all downloads of episodes. Allows further delay of episode, more stats for podcasters & allow user preferences for feeds
Should resubscribe to feeds eventually
2 week development plan

Up and Coming Podcasts

Tech News

Picks of the Week

Will’s pick is Portal 2
Bill’s pick is Take Five

Events

Add to your CastRoller Collection: Theme music is Takin’ Out the Trash by Heuristics Inc.

Speeding it up, changing Episode Files

Will Spaetzel — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:17:32 +0000

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.

CastRoller Podcast 47: Updates and HackWaterloo

Will Spaetzel — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:32:02 +0000

Welcome to the fourty seventh episode of the CastRoller podcast for April 12, 2011 featuring Bill Deys and Will Spaetzel. This episode was recorded live at http://live.castroller.com

CastRoller News

Site updated to run on .net 4.0
Slight improvment in speed
Aggregator fixes
Fixes problem updating collection episodes

Up and Coming Podcasts

Tech News

HackWaterloo was a blast. Check out CanMan
Amazon Cloud Locker
Mono for Android released
The Blackberry Playbook will support android apps
Amazon announces Kindle with ads. $25 cheaper

Picks of the Week

Will’s pick is Sword & Sworcery
Bill’s pick is Meal Snap

Events

Add to your CastRoller Collection: Theme music is Takin’ Out the Trash by Heuristics Inc.

New CastRoller Database

Will Spaetzel — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:53:45 +0000

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.

CastRoller Podcast 38: Lots of Comments

Will Spaetzel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:34:00 +0000

Welcome to the thirty eighth episode of the CastRoller podcast for Oct 26th 2010 featuring Bill Deys and Will Spaetzel. This was recorded while streaming live at live.castroller.com.

CastRoller News

Updated look and behavior of registration page
Working on improving welcome wizard
Added commenting to all Podcasts

Top Podcasts

Impressions of Apple “Back to the Mac” Event

iLife 11
Mac OSX Lion
New MacBook Air

Picks of the Week

Will’s pick is The Social Network
Bill’s pick is Alfred App

Events

Boss Rebel Video Shoot – Saturday, October 30
London Geek Dinner on November 3rd at Gigs Grillhouse
StartupCampWaterloo10 on Nov 10

Add to your CastRoller Collection: Theme music is Takin’ Out the Trash by Heuristics Inc.

Instant Episodes: PubSubHubBub Support Launched

Will Spaetzel — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:48:29 +0000

Last night we launched PubSubHubBub support for CastRoller. What this means is that for any podcast that has PubSubHubBub enabled, CastRoller will now receive new episodes within seconds of the podcaster pressing the “Publish” button. No more waiting for episodes to appear or pressing the “Refresh” button to check for new episodes.

The really great news is that almost half of all of the Podcasts on CastRoller already have PubSubHubBub enabled, so you’ll be getting instant updates for most of your favorite shows. PubSubHubBub is picking up in popularity, so we predict that the majority of shows will support it in the near future.

New Feature: Tracking Inbox Episode Views

Will Spaetzel — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:33:04 +0000

When you are logged into CastRoller at the top-right of the the page that shows the number of new episodes in your inbox. Previously, this number showed the number of episodes that have been shared since you last viewed the inbox. We just updated the site, so this number now shows the episodes that you haven’t viewed or played.

This will make it easier for you to enjoy all of the episode that your contacts share with you. To mark an episode as viewed, just click on its title, or play it in the contextual playlist. If you would like to clear your inbox, there is also a new “Mark All Read” button. Finally, to view older episodes shared with you, there is a new all inbox episodes page that shows all of the episodes in your inbox, even the ones you have played already.