Listening to BattleAxeNetwork podcasts in Android

Aug 01

ErinTechnology No Comments

I have started listening to the GoodTimesWithMo Podcasts for those dead-air moments during my every day travel/commute. The new Android phone provided a good vehicle for listening to the podcasts. Way better than my old (and stolen) Sansa Fuze. The people running the podcasts are pretty much iTunes-specific so here are the steps I did to have the podcasts ready.

  • Install a podcast manager in your Android device. I previously used the discontinued Google Listen but have migrated to ShiftyJelly’s PocketCast so you can search and install it form the AppMarket.
  • Go to the www.motwister.com site and copy the link to the Video/Audio podcast. I dont want my phone to get stolen so I use the audio link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/gtwm-audio. You can also get an alternative link via the www.battleaxe.network site but I will leave that exercise to the reader.
  • Launch the Listen application and go to the “My Subscriptions” section.
  • Tap on the “Add Subscription” button and enter the link to the podcast feed retrieved in an earlier step.
  • Tap on the GWTM podcast entry, refreshing as needed, and tap+hold on the episodes that you want to queue.
  • Once done, go back to the main screen and tap on the “My listen items”. Tap/play the podcast you want to listen to and it will start downloading.

Some tips and notes:

  • Google Listen will link up with your Google Reader account. Well it did on my setup. Use a separate podcast manager if you dont want to do this.
  • Listening to a podcast will buffer and save it locally. Each GWTM podcast comes at around 50MB so be prepared to wait.
  • My trick is to start a podcast, then pause once it starts playing. Google Listen will keep on downloading the podcast until it completes.
  • While downloading, I repeat the steps above for the succeeding episodes on the queue. Only one podcast will be downloaded at a time but the application will start the other “buffering” episodes once the current one is done. A nice activity to do before you sleep. 🙂
  • Make sure you revisit each finished item and remove the local data to free up some more space for the next wave of episodes. Or buy a larger SD card.
  • Google Listen doesn’t have the feature of preventing your phone from sleeping. In my experience this means the player will suspend after 60-90 minutes of inactivity.
  • Google Listen also doesn’t yet have the feature of moving the local storage to another directory, or importing an already downloaded podcast.

Have fun. And also try Gabe Mercado’s Geek Chorus podcast from the BattleAxeNetwork.

ciao!

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