Written by Scott Whitney
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We’ve been recently approached by a company who is considering working with PodWorx. As we spoke about what it is they are trying to do, they said they wanted to be able to directly send their Intracast (internal podcast) to their sales people who all have Blackberry’s. When they asked if that was possible, I thought it would be pretty easy. Turns out, I was wrong.
After a ton of research, I found that BlackBerry’s are not able to listen to RSS-based podcasts easily. There is, however, a way to make it happen. This information came from Ronen Halevy, from BerryReview.com, who outlined four ways of listening to a podcast on a BlackBerry. As Ronen is right to point out, options 2-4 are pretty unappealing…so I’m just presenting his first (and best) suggestion.
- Download Juice Receiver (it’s free). This is “podcatching” software that you will use to subscribe to your favorite podcasts using their RSS feed. It will then read the podcast RSS feed and download the MP3 files automatically to your computer.
- Transfer MP3s to your BlackBerry using Roxio Media Manager. Launch Roxio’s Media Manager, find the location of the recently-downloaded MP3 files and simply drag a copy of them to your BlackBerry. (I created a directory called Podcasts on the BlackBerry so they’d be easy to find.)
- Launch the BlackBerry Media Player and Listen. On your BlackBerry, simply start the Media Player, select Audio, find the Podcast MP3 episode you want to hear and listen away.
That’s it. Because podcast MP3 files can be pretty large (ours are typically 900k per minute), you’ll likely want to add an additional SD card to your BlackBerry for media storage.
How a Podcast SHOULD be listened to via a BlackBerry.
While what I’ve outlined works, it’s not very elegant. If a company expects their BlackBerry owners to go through this exercise each time a new episode is available, I think they’ll be disappointed with the results. Ideally, we should have some BlackBerry-installed software that allows us to subscribe to the RSS feed and download the episodes wirelessly. It should then either provide a media player internally or provide a seamless link to the BlackBerry media player.
The question is, does such software exist?
The answer, from what I can tell, is not yet. Hopefully, some company will come around and make it happen. I expect the revenue potential for such an application would be sizeable. The good news is there may be something on the horizon. I’ll provide more details when I’m able.
Posted on January 19th, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Thoughts
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PSSST… Just hold on for a bit. I am sure it is coming soon.
Blackberries DO have the ability to EASILY listen to podcasts.
It is quite simple actually.
Consider this:
Open your BlackBerry browser and go to Google.com
Search for “marketplace podcast”
Click on the first link that shows up
Scroll down and click on the link below “To subscribe using another…”
While the RSS feed is loading - bookmark it
Then simply click the BlackBerry button on the most recent post and click “Get Audio”
After the file is downloaded the player will start automatically
Enjoy!
Hey, this looks to be pretty clever Del. However…I received an Error 403 Forbidden “You are not authorized” message when actually trying to download the audio.
When I checked the “Details” section, it said the “The request or reply is too large” and that this limit was set by the Internet Service Provider “who operates this cache”. Well, I tested it on my own podcast of which there is no limiting that I’m aware of and it still had the same problem.
Any suggestions?
UPDATE: It appears to have to do with the size of the audio file. I tested Del’s suggestion on our GearUp podcast, which are usually about 5 minutes and it worked. HOWEVER, it takes A VERY LONG TIME to download a 4.7MB audio file. . .which leads me back to the idea of being able to stream the show as well.
I’m looking to do the same thing - there’s an app called AudioBay out there that’s supposed to handle podcasts, but its $15, there’s no demo and the reviews are pretty resoundingly negative. I tried doing as Del suggested, but I’m looking at 5-45MB mp3 files, and since I’m going through a BES, I get HTTP 413’s errors because the BES only allows a max of 1024K in a response. I expect pulling down a 45MB file over EDGE wouldn’t be worth the wait, either, unless I had a player that would start playing before the file was completely downloaded.
Del’s method does work for his needs and mine. The NPR Marketplace Morning Report files are about 3.4MB so they can be dowloaded to your Blackberry. I tried it and was able to download the podcast in about 2 min in Verizon’s EVDO coverage area. When I tried to download the full Marketplace Report (about 25MB) I received the same error that Scott did. I find it very useful to download short podcasts to my BB. Anything longer than that, I can listen to online or on my ipod. Thanks Del!
We’re currently testing a new version of AudioBay that can download large files in parts for user’s who are running into the BES/BIS download size limitations.
For current users, you can try the test version by selecting ‘Website’ from the main menu and following the ‘Install test version 3.3′ link.
What about for non-current users, Mr. Thibault? Anything available for us to test?