Techniques and systems for supporting podcasting
View Patent ↗Improved podcasts and techniques that facilitate their use are disclosed. The improved techniques can pertain to creating, publishing, hosting, accessing, subscribing, managing, transferring, and/or playing podcasts. According to one aspect, a client application can subscribe to podcasts and then automatically monitor the podcasts for updates to be downloaded. In the event that user interest in a podcast becomes inadequate, downloading of further updates can be restricted. According to another aspect, a podcast can be subscribed to through use of a portable subscription file. According to still another aspect, podcast feeds can be enhanced to include segment elements and other metadata.
1. A portable media player, comprising:
a communication port adapted for communication with an external device other than the portable media player; and
a processor coupled with the communication port and adapted to update a podcast having episodes by accessing episode information for the podcast and then updating the podcast with a new episode if it is determined that there is a new episode of the podcast.
2. The portable media player of claim 1 , further comprising:
a storage device that stores the podcast having episodes.
3. The portable media player of claim 1 , wherein the processor is further adapted to determine whether the podcast is active.
4. The portable media player of claim 3 , wherein said determining whether the podcast is active includes determining whether a user of the portable media player is interested in the podcast.
5. The portable media player of claim 3 , wherein said determining whether the podcast is active includes determining whether an episode download count is greater than a threshold amount.
6. The portable media player of claim 3 , wherein said determining whether the podcast is active includes determining whether a threshold number of days have elapsed since a date of an initial episode download.
7. The portable media player of claim 1 , wherein the communication port is adapted for bi-directional communication with the external device.
8. The portable media player of claim 1 , wherein said episode information is included in a portable subscription file that is stored at the client device.
9. A computer program product executable by a processor for updating a podcast stored on a client device, comprising:
computer code for accessing at the client device episode information for the podcast; and
computer code for updating the podcast at the client device with a new episode if it is determined from the episode information that the new episode of the podcast exists.
10. The computer program product of claim 9 , further comprising:
computer code for determining whether the podcast is active.
11. The computer program product of claim 10 , wherein the computer code for determining whether the podcast is active includes computer code for determining whether a user is interested in the podcast.
12. The computer program product of claim 10 , wherein the computer code for determining whether the podcast is active includes computer code for determining whether an episode download count is greater than a threshold amount.
13. The computer program product of claim 10 , wherein the computer code for determining whether the podcast is active includes computer code for determining whether a threshold number of days have elapsed since a date of an initial episode download.
14. The computer program product of claim 9 , wherein said episode information is included in a portable subscription file that is stored at the client device.
15. A method of automatically updating a podcast, comprising:
accessing at a client device episode information for the podcast; and
updating the podcast at the client device with a new episode if it is determined from the episode information that the new episode of the podcast exists.
16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising the step of:
determining whether the podcast is active.
17. The method of claim 16 , wherein said step of determining whether the podcast is active includes determining whether a user is interested in the podcast.
18. The method of claim 16 , wherein said step of determining whether the podcast is active includes determining whether an episode download count is greater than a threshold amount.
19. The method of claim 15 , wherein said episode information is included in a portable subscription file that is stored at the client device.
20. The method of claim 19 , further comprising the step of:
passing subscription information through a data network from the client device to at least one other client device without interaction with a host device, thereby allowing the one other client device to subscribe to the podcast.