This page contains information about "Podscape", a free Pod/Vodcast Downloader/Catcher application and other software.

PodScape.NET

What is Podcasting/Vodcasting?

Several years ago, someone invented RSS feeds, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It was a way a company or individual could syndicate content to anyone who wanted to read it. It made it really easy for say, the BBC to distribute their news stories to other web sites and news organisations without any human interaction. Blogging was born of this new technology too, Blogging is where an individual can syndicate their personal news, such as an online journal that the world can read, then someone had the idea of enclosing an audio attachment with each syndicated item and Podcasting was born, now anyone could "pull" an audio file from the blogger's server and play it on their iPOD or other MP3 device, or just play it on their PC or Mac. Vodcasting is one step up, with video attachments instead.

Everyone from private individuals to huge corporations can create a video show and easily syndicate it to the world, basically creating their own TV Station, but instead of a schedule to stick too, content episodes can be downloaded and viewed by anyone with an internet connection at any time.

What does PodScape.NET do?

Once the Pod/Vodcaster has made their work available, the consumers (us lot) need some nice program to "subscribe" to and download their vodcasts whenever theres a new one available. When you first run Podscape, you can browse through a growing number of vodcasts available, each one comes with a description and sometimes a picture so you can get a feel for what the podcast is about. with one click you can subscribe to that feed (which is FREE!). within a few minutes, Podscape will start downloading the most recent podcasts from that feed, and will continue to get new podcasts when they become available. It will then transfer the video file (MPG,MP4,AVI,M4V,MOV) to a folder of your choice. This folder can be just a regular folder on your hard drive, or maybe a folder on a portable video player. I personally transfer mine to a Windows Media Center "My videos" folder. That way I can watch all the vodcasts on my TV using a remote control! You are only limited by the drives/folder you can access in "my computer".

What does PodScape do that other pod catchers/downloaders don't do?

I Wrote Podscape for the same reason I wrote Satscape... There were other similar programs out there, but none of them worked the way I wanted them to work, some didn't work at all, some didn't work and actually wanted you to pay for them! So, go on google and search for other podcast/vodcast downloading software and you'll see quite a few now, Podscape is just another one, but one that works just like I want it to work, maybe you'll find it nice to use too, if you don't, then delete it and try one of the others, you have nothing to loose, Podscape.NET is freeware!

What Pod/Vodcasts are available?

I think Vodcasting will eventually become more popular than 'regular' TV...Vodcasting killed the video star. Currently there are various vodcasts available, ranging from small one-man productions from a their mom's basement, to big TV (Ziff-Davis, Microsoft) 45-minute episodes. Naturally, there are alot of "Techie-geek" TV shows where the presenters talk about and show off the latest gadgets and computer games, such as "DL-TV" and "G4-TV". As time goes on, regular broadcasters will make shows available for download via a vodcast.

Where the heck can I download Podscape.NET?

OK, so thats given you some info on how Vodcasting came into being, and what you can expect, so dive right in, and download Podscape.NET to try it out for yourself. You'll find the link to download it on the left-hand side of this page. Heres a few points you should know first:

• Podscape.NET is a "reciever" only, you can't use it to start vodcasting yourself, I'll add some links here soon to help you do that.
• As the name implies, It requires you install Microsoft's Dot Net 2.0 first (1.1 is not good enough) The download is 20mb which is no problem for a broadband connection, in fact its best if you don't run podscape.net if you have dial-up internet, its simply not fast enough and requires an allways-on connection.

If you have a problem with Podscape, have a look on thePodscape Message Board

News Saver.NET

Coming soon...

Screensaver in the style of Star wars, grabs the latest news off the BBC and displays it Star wars style !!!
UPDATE: Having a bit of bother getting this working on other PCs, so it will appear here when its ready.

Breaking News

When News Breaks, you'll know about it!
This is a little program that sits in your Windows system tray (next to the clock), it monitors News from the 4 main News agencies, and as soon as any news breaks, it pops up to let you know, you can then click OK and carry on with what you were doing, or click more info, and it will take you to the news article on the internet, so you can read more. Theres programs similar to this like the BBC and Sky's "Skinkers" desktop alerts, but I find it doesn't work all the time, you miss stories breaking, or get bombarded with non-news stories, such as "britney spears is pregnant"...wow! shocking news. So far during testing, this program has worked every time, I get news before the BBC NEWS 24 channel breaks it.
None of my programs contain any spyware, they generally make outgoing internet connects to various sites and servers, and thats it. I just wanted to re-assure you, as these programs are all freeware, simply because they didn't take long to make, and I really couldn't be bothered to provide support for them. I test them out on various PCs and they work fine, so if they don't work on yours, then sorry, just delete it and try other programs instead.