Various rants
As a listener of plenty of podcast including many Catholic podcasts - one thing that annoys me is that the ones put out by major Catholic organizations don't have any cover art. If you have pretty much and recent MP3 player with a video screen, use iTunes, most recent versions of Winamp and many other media players they will show cover art for the podcast or song if any is embedded. Instead for all of the EWTN podcasts, Catholics Answers, Greg Popcak's HMS radio, and Mark Shea's "Rock Solid" I get treated with no cover art and a big question mark on my iPod Touch. Almost all Catholic podcasts put out by amateurs include the cover art. Even Vatican Radio has finally got on board in including it. It would be nice if at least they used a generic cover art for their podcast, even better if it was tailored towards the program itself. It would be a lot more professional for them to use cover art considering how many media devices can use it.
I would complain about the America Magazine podcast also not including covert art if I could actually listen to their podcasts without my iPod accidentally becoming a missile. Having interviews with people like Fr. Roger Haight, S.J., Fr John "Let Terri Schiavo die" Paris, S.J. Phillip Pullman fan Donna Freitas, and the author of the worst biography on Pope Benedict XVI is not exactly my cup of tea. Now if they had a separate feed for Fr. Jim Martin I would subscribe to that. Actually though I am subscribed to their podcast feed, I just usually end up deleting more shows than I listen to.
It also annoys me when EWTN puts up blogs by Raymond Arroyo and Joan Lewis without RSS feeds. Memo to EWTN: WordPress is free and you don't have to attempt to roll your own blogging software.
While I am on petty rants. Please give me back the original Catholic Answers theme music. I loved how the violins punctuated the opening Catholic Answers Live, plus you have to love the irony of using a piece from "New Age" musician Yanni for Catholic Answers. The new theme isn't very distinctive and much more modern sounding, though I guess I don't have to worry about Hans Kung being a guest any time soon, though he would make a great April Fools guest.
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I happen to agree with all these rants (except that I wouldn't bother with the America Magazine podcast). Catholic Underground used to have art, but it disappeared. It's nice to have something to fill up that big iPod Touch screen, isn't it?
Original Catholic Answers theme ++.
Oh no! They changed the Catholic Answers music? I loved those strings, too.
Somewhere out there is a website which can create an RSS feed from a blog site that doesn't already have an RSS link. I was able to get an RSS feed for someone on blogspot.com, who didn't have her own RSS button, and then read her blog from my RSS reader. Let me google around and see if I can find what I used. Maybe it can work for those couple of EWTN blogs.
Here you go, Jeff. This page has an overview of seven different methods, and the one I used was Dapper:
http://www.profy.com/2007/09/30/7-tools-to-make-an-rss-feed-of-any-website/
It took me a while to get it perfectly tracking the desired fields of the blogspot site for each post, but I had it working well.
I'm kind of enjoying the change in the CA theme music right now. You are correct, the older theme music was much more recognizable -- though I didn't like some (not all) of the voices in the background of the opening music.
Man! I got worried reading the podcast rant. Glad we escaped your wrath! :)
Hi Jeff,
Always looking for more ways to make the people happy. If I can find a way to get you some art, I'll do it. Any suggestions?
As for the CA theme music, it isn't their fault. The music licensing people exponentially increased their annual rates (like, from $2,000 to $40,000 by some reports I've heard), so using licensed music would bankrupt Catholic radio. We've all had to go to public domain music except for HMS, because I wrote and recorded the theme myself. Even so, we've had to stop using our segment music which was licensed.
But since we're responsible for our own podcast, if you can point me toward someone who can help us figure out how to use Libsyn give you a pretty picture to look at while you listen to us (say, my big beautiful bulbous head staring out at you) I'd be happy to oblige.
If anyone knows, shoot me an email. You know where to find me.
Greg
My new MP3 player doesn't have one of those annoying video screens flashing at you, which not only makes it a lot cheaper but also is a lot more relaxing.
I don't really understand why one would want cover art staring out at you, and I don't have the capability to attach it to my files. I tried a program that was supposed to do it, but it didn't work. (But I agree that people actually working for the Church and getting money to make podcasts ought to provide these capabilities. Me being a Luddite is just me.)
If I did have cover art, though, I would probably want something useful like "Chapter 2" in big huge letters. All those screens are so squinched!
Well, I for one am THRILLED that they finally changed the Catholic Answers Live theme song. I have never liked their theme music, and I always thought it made the show sound unprofessional and cheesy. The new music isn't the greatest either, but in my humble opinion, it's a significant improvement. Again, just my opinion! :)