Right so everybody clicking this link likely thinks “Another one” but I’m making this one a bit different.
First off, the backend is built on Swift, and is a learning tool for me, to learn about Swift.
It’s a video first podcast service, though that’ll likely change, and I’m still considering if it’s going to be open source
But what do I mean about video first? When you open up the service, it’ll present to a list of recommended episodes, though both videos and audio, as well as PDF, instead of recommending series. I try to build up the model more like YouTube than a traditional PodCast Client. Though I do plan on having a view for those who prefer to see recent episodes ordered by release, for those who might prefer that. There’s also a bunch of power PodCast features I’d like to include, such as queue, but that’s much later down the road. currently I only have a feed parser and login system ready, with the feed parser needing a rewrite
I plan to adhere to as much of the podcast spec as possible, which is why I’d also like to present PDF podcasts. I might release some custom specs, to make it easier for feeds to intergrate with my features, though these shouldn’t conflict with established core specs at all, just added fairy dust
So what do you guys think? Can I add to the already saturated podcast client market? Would such a client be of interest to y’all? Should I just give up and rm /PodCastClient ?
It never hurts to try such things and as a learning project sounds cool.
I admit I am a touch confused as to what you mean by PDF podcasts but that is likely just me needing to do some googling.
I feel like your biggest competition becomes actual YouTube since most video podcasts make there way there in the end anyway, however if you nail discovery that could be a very promising platform.
For me personally, would I use it, probably not, I only watch one video podcast, but in audio I prefer to listen to things in blocks of episodes where possible rather then jump from show to show.
If you do decide to not continue it, you should open source what you have, maybe someone else would take it and run with it
I already have a repo over at my github, but that’s way out of date, so FOSS’ing it is already a thing!
And I admit that my biggest competition is going to be YouTube, but I’d like to make PodCast Videos a viable option for what we today call YouTubers (since there’s no word I can think of as of rn)
On that note, I’d like to support PDF because it’s part of the spec, and I’m interested in what PDF’s can add to PodCasts
I had had a quick skim of the podcast spec from apple, it seems PDF podcasts really are a thing, and it’s kinda what you would expect. A PDF file delivered through a podcast feed, interestingly they also support epub.
Yeah it would be an interesting format to explore. I guess the main uses there are business, as an auto reports downloaded off a private feed. I am not sure what is gained through a PDF over just a traditional web RSS feed. (Other then the fact that since google reader went away RSS has been kinda dead) I suppose the advantage of PDF is the embedded metadata.
It does seem to be an interesting inclusion, and I wonder how many people support it and I really wonder how many produce it
Well, hobby writers has a medeum to publish their writings, and their readers has a medeum to follow their writers, amongst all the video and audio PodCasts, that’s what I’ve always thought though…
On that feature IDEA, OCR’ing on the server side could be a paid plan feature , and reading it out loud should from there then be client side, I’ll add it to the future feature (hehe) list!
Or more bractical, paid to make the server OCR an entry, free to get the already ORC’ed entry, free to OCR on device and push to server!
I have spent some time thinking about cool features like this, about a year ago I proposed a content blocker for podcasts. Since most of the podcasts I listen to at least have there content in sections, they might talk about the iPhone for a bit, then the Apple Watch then have an add or whatever.
I was thinking that it would be possible to take the raw stream, hit it with a speech to text translation, then use a mix of algorithms to identify sections and topics within sections, then the user can specify that they don’t want to hear about say the Apple Watch anymore, or remove a specific add they don’t like. While keeping more of the rest of the show.
It would be the biggest pain to implement and make consistent though for probably little gain.
I have a feeling that removing the ads would not be seen as a good thing by the people producing the podcasts - their contract is to include the advert so a 3rd party service automatically removing it could harm them quite badly if their advertisers discovered it. (IE their contract would be considered violated and they’d have to come to you to get recompense.)
There’s a way to do this proper, in a premium plan, there could be a way to remove(skip) hover ads after listening to them the fifth time if the podcast has Chapters and consistent chapter markers.
Or maybe prove that the product has been purchased, and you won’t hear about those suit cases anymore!
, and reading it out loud should from there then be client side, I’ll add it to the future feature (hehe) list!