Getting started ...

Ok, lets get started ...
MyPod has a few UI conventions:

1. When you select a line buttons appear on it to interact with it.
2. If you long press the line a popup appears with an explanation of the buttons.
3. You can navigate to different screens by pressing the menu button or going back to the home screen
4. if you make a selection the you can usually long press the button used to make the selection to clear it.

The rest of the blog outlines the operation of each of the main screens.

The MyPOD home page is : http://www.my-pod.org/

The MyPOD forums are on : http://groups.google.com/group/mypod-discussion please feel free to add your thoughts and comments, they are highly regarded.

This blog is located at : http://mypodhelp.blogspot.com/ if you would like to view it on your desktop browser.

MyPOD is under constant development and we would love your feedback about anything related to the application to make it better. I would like to add lots of online services and functions to the app to make podcasting on android as streamlined as possible. But it all takes time ...

Please consider buying the app if you use it, using the link on the home page or paypal as this will help us all. I always prefer to keep it as cheap as possible and have more people buy and use it. It also allows you to use unlimited feeds which MyPOD is designed for.

Best Regards,
Rob

Adding feeds ...

To add feeds:

1. Select "Add feeds" () from the home page.
2. There are many ways to add feeds:
1. "Add feeds from local file" : you can save a text file with feed urls to the MyPod directory. The title can be entered on the line preceeding the feed URL.
2. "Enter Search text" : Type in the text to search for on google, the google search page comes up and you can browse to the podcast - look for the RSS or atom feed.
3. "Enter URL manually" : This takes to straight to the edit feed page where you can enter the feed url and properties.
4. "Import from google reader" : enter your google id and password to login to google reader the feeds are presented in a list.
5. "Browse for RSS or OPML files" : Enter a URL in the text box - there are some suggestions using the button. The browser window will open and you can navigate to the links for a RSS or OPML (a meta page of RSS feeds) files. MyPod tries to automatically detect the link based on the URL but the feed may just load in the browser, use the "Add RSS" or "Add OPML" from the menu button to take you to the add feed page.
6. "Enter the URL of an OPML file" : This can be used to enter a OPML file URL, the OPML file will be loaded and you can select the feeds you want to add.


3. Enter the feed details and give it a tag or two. other settings are:
   
   
   
   • Update interval: the interval to check for feed updates (default : 7 days)
   
   
   • Max items to load:limit the number of items to load for large podcasts(default: all )
   
   
   • Auto download: Automatically download new episodes(default: false )
   
   
   • Number episodes to keep: Specify the max number of files to be kep via autodownload. (default: 1 ) - Note that episodes downloaded manually from the feed arent included in this calculation.
4. Click the button to add the feed to your list.

Other ways to add feeds

1. Email feed:
If you are on your PC and see a feed you want to put on, take the following steps:



1. Go to http://www.my-pod.org/feed.php


2. Put the feed URL into the "Feed URL" box


3. Click "Generate"


4. Click "(click here to send)" this will open up your mail client and you can post it to yourself or others.
5. You will have the option to open the my-pod link using MyPOD. There are also links to download the app if it isn't yet installed.

Feed management

Feed row: long press on the feed row for a list of options

• Load feed: download the latest feed data and view it.
• Load cached feed: use the feed data from when the feed was last updated (saves the downloading time).
• Edit: Edit the feed properties.
• Delete: Delete the feed and all files/records.
• Information: go to the information screen.

Feed icon: the icon for the feed, clicking on this icon shows a tick on the icon, by using menu>files you can view just the files for this feed.
New entries: shows the number of new entries since the feed was last viewed. To clear it - load the feed.

Search bar: The search bar help you to find the feed are looking for there arfe 4 items:

• Search text: Enter search text to limit the feeds display to ones with titles or descriptions haveing the required text. Long press the text box to clear the search data.
• Sort: display a popup with sort options for the feed list (Title (default), Last updated, URL (the feed url), Rating: (set in the feed info or edit page), New entries (the number of new entries))
• Tags: select tags to use, the feed list is limited to feeds with the selected tags. Long press the tags button to clear the tag selection.
  

Downloaded files screen

The downloaded files screen by default displays files downloaded on the device (by using the history button you can search back through anything you have listened to). By long pressing on the File row you can bring up the tool bar options as a pop-up. The Search bar is visible at the bottom.

More information on the file is available on the file info screen (Press the file type icon to get to it).

Each File row has the following elements:

• Tool bar: When the row is selected the tool bar and the Preview bar appear. The tool bar has different buttons depending what type of file the row represents the above example is for an audio file. Some buttons use long press for the background player (See "The Player" section for details). See tool bar icons for the description.
  
• Preview bar: By dragging the slider the current playing file(s) are turned down and the file is played from the position indicated . The play button next to it plays the file at the selected position.
  
• Feed title: So you can see what feed the file is from.
• File title: The file title as it appears in the feed.
• Type icon: (Press to flip to view file info) Indicates whether the file is audio or video. If it can't be determined then an audio/video icon is shown.
  
• Last play position: Rectangular progress indicator to show how much has been listened to (also shown in text on top).
• File size:type : Shows the size of the file and its mime-type.
• File flags: These little icons show what has been done with the file.

Toolbar icons
: Delete file (Long press)
: Play video - only show for a video file type
: Reload file - this will enqueue the file and remove the downloaded copy
: Add to playlist - Long pressing will add it to the background playlist (See "The Player")
: Add to playlist - Long pressing will play on the background player (See "The Player")
: Stream file - This button can only appear when you are viewing your history as the file isnt downloaded anymore and can only be streamed. Long pressing will play on the background player (See "The Player"). You can also use the reload button to re-acquire the file.

File flag icons
: The file has been deleted
: The file has been queued for download
: The file has been listened to
: The file has been marked kept (It wont be autodeleted until it is unmarked on the file info screen)
: There was an error playing the file.
: There was an error downloading the file.
: The file was automatically downloaded.
: The file was downloaded (also shows if automatically downloaded)

The Search bar has the following elements:

• Search text: Type the text to search for (searches file and feed title) - Long press to clear the box.
• Sort button: Sort the file in a particular order (Feed(default), Title, URL, Size, Type, Download date, Rating (the rating you give on the file info page)).
  
• Tags: Select files whose feed has a certain tag (long press to clear).
• History: MyPOD stores all files you have listened to in the database so that you can find them again later and re-listen/ re-download/ send to someone. See the "History" section for more details. Long press the button to clear the history search and just show the downloaded files.

The Player

Why have two players?
As I was developing the app I always had a desire to be listening to music while I was listening to a voice podcast so i would play music in the background, and I found some music podcasts be a bit non-engaging by themselves. So I though I would try out the concept. I think it adds a feel when you are listening to diffrernt podcasts so i kept it.

You don't have to use it and probably I will put a config in in future to enable as its not for everyone - but you dont have to use it if you dont want to. I would like to add more to streamline the process like a voice filter - to make it a bit more manageable.

Some things to remember when using both players are:

• The background podcast should be all music and the foreground should be mainly voice - it gets a bit confusing it two voices or two musics are playing at once.
  
• the music podcasts level generally needs to be quite low as music has signal power over a lot more frequencies. the background player's volume slider is customised to have finer adjustment for the volume at low levels.
  
• When the second file streams the UI gets a bit frozen while the file buffers - it can take about 30secs to get back to normal (i am working on it!)

Feed browser/ View Feed

The feed browser shows all the feed items for a feed. Feed items are colour coded & labelled to show what items have been listened to (blue), downloaded (green) or queued (red). Different button appear according to the file status.

• If the file isn't downloaded then a download button() and a stream button () is shown.
• If the file is queued a queued icon() (not clickable) and a stream button is shown
  
• If the file is downloaded then a play button() is shown.
  

The user can use links on the feed items or the feed link at the top to go through to the website for the feed and find more content available on the site. (This can happen when the feed is truncated to make it easier to download or other link to content are available on the website).

You can use the back button on the device to go back. Note that the red exit button is just a shortcut to exit the screen (even though it looks like a back button).

The info button at the bottom of the screen flips around to allow URL input and to view the browsing history.

The add button is a link to add a feed when a feed is loaded into the browser in case you find a linked podcast on the site.

Download options
After clicking the download button a popup appears to select the download options, here you can change:

• The title that will appear on the "Downloaded files" section.
• The other options are to download when power is connected and/or when a WIFI connection is available (Some mobile operators have "fair use" limits - which you can burn through pretty fast if you listen to podcasts a lot).
  

If the feed item (episode) has been used before - the feed flags are shown (see "Downloaded files" for an explanation of the flags)

Make sure you click the download button to enqueue the download (hitting back will cancel the download even though the item is not updated).