benjarvis.org

Sorry Kevin, I Gotta Hack Ya.

So Kevin Smith has had some problems hosting SModcast. Apparently it’s bandwidth related. So to combat this he settled on a rather silly kludge: the most recent version is only available on the website. iTunes subscribers have to wait until the second week to get the file.

Horse feathers I say. That’s just plain silly. On a monthly view, you still have the same traffic. It doesn’t fix the problem. This is the Internet and you don’t do that kind of thing. Either create an ad stream, get another host or grin and bask in your success. So I found a way around it. I figure since it’s a given that I would visit the site to d/l the mp3, I don’t feel bad setting up iTunes for proper downloading.

It’s a real simple hack (because his solution was pretty low-tech). If you subscribe via the iTunes store or the iTunes link on the site, you will enjoy last week’s episode and forever be 1 week behind. However if you go to “Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast” in iTunes and paste this URL:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/smodcast

Now iTunes will be able to access the most recent podcast. Genius.

Sorry, Kevin, but you know there has got to be a better way for you to achieve throttled bandwidth. Try libsyn.

So tell me…it’s 2008, what new podcasts are you listening to?

I’m listening to:
Digital Planet
Pods and Blogs
FLOSS Weekly
LUG Radio
MacBreak Weekly
No Agenda
Off the Hook (2600 magazine show)
Off the Wall (Emmanuel Goldstein’s show)
Escape Pod
SModcast
This American Life
The Week in Tech
Radio Lab
Mysterious Universe