GWC DTA Podcast iTunes Issue

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#1

I just realized that though I’ve been fighting with this for a couple of weeks now, I never actually posted notice of the problem. My bad.

We are currently experiencing an issue with iTunes and the DTA feed. The bottom line is that an upgrade of our blogging software overwrote some custom code I’d added to prevent auto-addition of the iTunes new-feed-url tag. When the software slipped the tag into the DTA RSS feed, it re-directed the DTA feed to the standard feed. Result: There are two copies of the standard podcast now instead of a separate DTA.

The bad news: I can’t reverse the process because they both run off the same feed now. Since the new-feed-url tag is the only option for this, I contacted Apple via reporting the DTA podcast once a day for four days. I’ve received no response and there’s no other way to contact Apple.

So…

Today I changed the URL for the DTA RSS (so iTunes wouldn’t see it as a re-submit) and re-submitted it to iTunes. Hopefully it’ll appear sometime this week. I’ve also corrected the RSS link on the blog, so if you’d like to use that URL to snag the RSS feed directly into iTunes (or another podcatcher), it should work fine. You can also download the podcasts directly either from the blog page or from the forum posts.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully Apple will accept the new feed and you’ll again have a place to subscribe. I’ll update everyone when that happens and let you know if you need to re-subscribe.

Thanks as always for your patience.

#2

Chuck, the rss-link from this page doesn’t work in iTunes, at least for me. But it works in a newsreader.

Gerald

#3

Welcome aboard, balzer.

That is kind of odd. I can’t subscribe to the RSS feed (directly) in iTunes using the Advanced menu. (Which I think should work, regardless of what the iTunes store is doing with the feed.) Yet I can open it in Safari?

#4

It’s all in flux, which is why you’re having these issues. If iTunes accepts the newly-submitted DTA, I can then reset all the links to work correctly – and hopefully remove the old one.

#5

if you have any problems… i get my copy from microsoft’s Zune sotware ( microsoft and zune’s Itunes) I get two copies of the cast… but it’s not a problem. it all plays the same and doesn’t overwrite anything. You don’t need a zune to downlaod from zune.

#6

I’m using a fancy new RSS aggregator for mobile phones called Viigo and it just recently began supporting podcasts. I think this issue, if it’s still an issue, is why I’m being told that 'cast #139 is the most recent update?
Is there a better feed address to use so I can get up-to-date entries, or should I just stick with my weekly ritual of manually downloading each cast?

#7

That’s odd. There’s an RSS feed listed on the blog page, can you use that?

#8

Yeah, RSS is the way to go. That way random things like this don’t happen! It’s always better to stick to entirely open standards and things that any decent program can use, rather than awkward in-house stuff that’s likely to suffer from NIH.

Err, what I mean by that is Not Invented Here syndrome, which Apple suffers from a lot. This ends up with them reinventing the wheel so often (and often without the polish of the previous “wheel” because they’re doing it from scratch and on their own), which blah blah ends up with these kinds of problems which would be rather unlikely to happen with something as elegant and simple as pure RSS feeds.

I think that’s an interesting thing about technology, these issues of complexity versus simplicity, and how the simple is sometimes really the most advanced . . .

uhhh okay apologies, it’s 7AM and I haven’t slept yet :wink: