the podcast client that sucks less each day.
Today, I’ve done a little more work on PodTower, and I feel that it’s got enough features that it warrants a beta release of sorts. I’ve been posting updates on a daily basis for the past few days, but I think from this point the stream of major updates will be a little slower.
What is PodTower?
PodTower is a cross-platform podcast client for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X. It’s meant to be a simple client – it updates the various feeds once per hour (or when you click the refresh button), and can play back the downloaded podcasts, if they’re in WMA or MP3 format.
How was it made?
PodTower is built using Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Visual Web Developer Express 2010. In order to install PodTower, you’ll have to install the Silverlight 4 plugin, which is available here. It runs as a standalone application on your desktop. I’ve spent about three days so far on it, and used the Silverlight Toolkit for theming (as I’m not a visual designer).
Features
- Subscribe to podcast/RSS feeds
- As long as your feeds have an enclosure tag, it’ll work
- Play downloaded podcasts
- Plays MP3 and WMA podcasts from your local machine
- Low memory footprint
- It’s Silverlight – it’s small
- Fast, one-click install
PodTower downloads your podcasts to your “My Music” directory in your home directory. When downloads are complete, PodTower notifies you both by the status bar text, and by toast notifications by the bottom of your screen.
The three buttons along the top-right represent the three major features of PodTower – adding RSS feeds, refreshing current feeds, and playing the selected podcast.
Clicking the add button will give you a dialog to add your podcast feed.
Expanding any of the feeds will give you a list of podcasts available for download. Clicking the button next to the name will begin the download. A progress bar beneath the item will show how much of the podcast has downloaded.
When the podcast finishes downloading, PodTower will alert you with a toast notification. It automatically closes after about four seconds of inactivity.
Clicking a podcast item, then clicking the play button up at the right will begin the playback of the podcast. Clicking inside the gauge below the title will adjust the position within the podcast.
So what are you waiting for?
Go download a copy of PodTower! You might just like it. It’s licensed under the New BSD License, so it’s totally free. Tell a friend about it too.
Want to help contribute?
I’m mainly doing this as a fun little project. However, it’d be awesome if PodTower caught on and actually became supported by you. If you think this program is nifty or useful, I’d appreciate a donation. PodTower is totally free and licensed under the New BSD (3-clause) license.