Yo peeps, i just finished chatting with Mack from Paramagnus Developments Inc.
They're basically a podcasting services co. that are testing out the Swoosh. Here was some feedback on possible features and support for Podcasters:
- API for reports and stats. We have reporting and stats at http://my.redswoosh.net, but no way for users to programatically get the stats. All users can do right now is view them on the site.
- Detection of client in Podcast environments. We have javascript detection of clients for anybody using us in a webpage, but no way for content/service providers to detect the RS client if iTunes is pulling a Swooshed link. The reason to detect is so you can determine whether to send user to origin server or swooshed link. One way to deal with this issue is to use our i=n parameter in the Swooshed links (not sure this is documented--we'll get on that) which will not prompt users to install and will simply redirect non-installed users to the origin server. What are your guys' thoughts on this? Are there other reasons to detect the RS client in non-browser environments?
- Reporting of Partial vs. Completed downloads. Mack made it clear that this is *very* important for the podcaster dudez. We currently support this at http://my.redswoosh.net and we do have some work still to do to make sure that the stat is accurate.
- Icon Notification support in the JS-API. We currently have icon notification for predeliveries. Goes like this: RS client completes download, and then pings predetermined website URL to say that it has completed and then the website URL returns the location of the icon to pop in the system tray, and the behavior of the icon that appears. We'll add this to the list for future JSAPI support
Thanks for all your feedback Mack. If any of you forum readers have further comment feedback on Podcasting support, please chime in here.
Perhaps another thing would be allowing third parties (such as ourselves) to distribute the installer inside our own installer, with a silent install option?
One of the items that should have been on the ultimate dream wish list is that Swoosh is already installed *everywhere*. If that were the case, then any podcaster could Swoosh their links and see their bandwidth costs immediately go to zero.
So in getting there, it's important that Swoosh provide source code or easy API so that third parties (application and otherwise) can get their users installed. We'll get this on the list with a high priority.
Speaking of "the list". Someone should actually put one on the wiki. . .another item for the list. . .;)
As for installing with your application, simply bundle http://www.redswoosh.net/install/RSBundledInstaller.exe and run it with the /S option. This downloads the latest RSInstaller.exe and runs it either silent or verbose, depending on the presence or absense of /S on the command line. Because it always downloads the latest RSInstaller.exe, you can safely bundle this with your application. If the installer fails (such as when run offline), it'll exit with a nonzero exit code, which you can handle however you like (for example, prompt to go online). Please give this a shot and let me know how it works for you.
I'm Tom, a Red Swoosh Client developer. I'm thinking of introducing a mode into the client that would allow it to be installed as a 'podcatcher'. When installed in this mode it would:
- Register itself to respond to XML podcast feed clicks in your webbrowser, subscribing itself to the feed, popping a notification bubble “subscribed to <podcast name>, downloading episode <name>…" when feed is clicked.
- ***Here’s the kicker:*** The client would be of course compatable with all the existing podcast feeds out there, but would *swoosh* each of the video/audio file URLs listed in the XML feed file to download them.
- The ramifications of this are that existing podcast aggregation websites and popular single podcast websites who recommend podcatchers such as Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/) can just start to recommend the Red Swoosh Podcatcher and their bandwidth bills will go away! I like this because that’s very easy for them to do; they don’t have to do anything technical. (Contrast this to the hilariously technical tutorial on how to set up a bandwidth-conserving podcast: http://www.gotilk.com/bittorrent_podcast.html)
- Of course the client would check the feeds periodically for new episodes. Standard stuff podcatchers do.
- We could also have a tray icon that you can double-click to allow adding XML feed URLs manually, and/or have it open our control panel download manager to see what podcasts are downloading & manage them, iTunes style.
- Eventually, our client would be able to transfer episodes to your iPod and other devices, automatically. This would be a fantastic full experience: Click a feed, see a notification bubble, and a while later, episode is on your computer and iPod, with more to come. And even with tens of thousands of viewers / listeners, the person who creates the podcast doesn't pay any bandwidth bills, and all they did was recommend a different podcaster. Sound like an idea?
Um, seems fine, but what about all the existing podcatchers that want to be able to use RedSwooshed links? I'd prefer to see a solution that would allow ALL podcatchers to take advantage of RedSwoosh.
I totally agree with that goal. The challenge on our side is teaching our servers to figure out whether or not the client is installed when the podcatcher downloads. Normally we do it using a cookie on the redswoosh.net domain, but podcatchers don't pay attention to IE or FireFox cookie caches. Thus it's not safe for us to redirect the podcatcher to localhost as we have no idea if the client is installed and currently online.
In order to tell which user has Swoosh installed, we could identify the top 5-10 podcatchers, and insert SWOOSH_IN_THE_HIZZO somewhere in their HTTP headers . . .:) (or some other more normal flag). Any time a podcatcher with swoosh already installed pulls a swooshed link, we'll look at the header and know that the RS client is there, so we can redirect to localhost.
Now we might be able to add this to the header on the fly, or alternatively, find where these podcatchers get their http-header information from locally, and add our little flag there
. . .we could talk to all the popular podcatchers, and get them to bundle Swoosh the same way that various applications bundle flash. . .
. . .we could have a special RSS link that podcasters publish on their site that when a user clicks on it, it takes them through Swoosh install and also asks the user which podcatcher they are using so that Swoosh can make sure that podcatcher's http requests go up with the Swoosh flag in them. . .
Anyway, my question is, what do current podcasting clients do when they come across a Swooshed link? Do they download it from the site like a link of old or do they ignore it? What about if you have already installed the Swoosh client?
I love Tomjacobs idea about about having a client just swoosh the links without the podcaster having to know about or care about it. Granted this isn't the ideal as paramagnus mentioned but it's a start IMHO. One thing to worry about though is the number of redirects. Some 'casts already do redirects through statistic gathering sites before it gets to the client and I think there is a limit of 5 redirects.
1) Current podcasting clients will download the swooshed link straight from the origin server. As a rule, if we're not absolutely sure the client is running on the computer, we'll play it safe and just download the file from the server. (Though there are ways a publisher can disable this, should he wish, so that users who without Swoosh installed are simply presented an error page -- this is useful to publishers who are on a tight budget and can only afford to distribute video via Swoosh.)
2) Unfortunately, at this moment even if Swoosh is installed the podcaster will (generally) still download from the webserver. This is because for most podcatchers, we have no way of knowing whether or not the client is currently installed on the computer, and as mentioned in (1), we play it safe.
As Tom mentioned, however, we're looking into ways to both make the client into a podcatcher, as well as for enabling us to detect when Swoosh is installed (as Paramagnus suggested) with all other podcatchers.
Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed the Chris Pirillo episode. If I might ask, what sort of online video distribution do you do, and what can we do to make Swoosh work for you?