Doppler 1.1 is out. Download it here

What’s new or has changed in Doppler 1.1

• We’ve moved the selection of the playlist to which you want to add your download away from the feed subscription. It’s now located in Tools -> Options -> File Types. You can add file types if you want to. After installation you are supplied with a predefined set of filetypes including an example for .torrent files.
• Doppler 1.1 supports proxy servers. Tools -> Options -> Proxy settings
• You can set up default feed settings. This means that every new subscription you make will use those settings. But be aware, changing the default feed settings at a later stage does -not- update existing feeds.
• You can set up ’spacesavers’ to make sure that you do not fill your harddisk to the last available byte.
• You can select a bloglines category to sync with. Check out Tools -> Options -> Bloglines
• You can override the tags supplied in the downloads with your own. Please be aware, this only works in connection to either Windows Media Player or iTunes, so only files which will be added to those media players will be affected.
• You can import from the ipodder.org podcast directory. File -> Import from Directory
• You can search allpodcasts.com (hide the search bar in the View menu if you don’t use it)
• You can ‘catch-up’ a feed. What it does is that it will parse the RSS feed, and add entries in the history for all downloadable files in the feed. However it will not download the files itself. Usefull if you subscribe to a new feed but still want to be able to download all -new- files after subscribing. (right-click on a feed subscription)
• Select a feed, press CLTR+O and it will open the folder in which the downloads are located
• Select a feed, right click and select ‘preview’ (or press CTRL+P). Doppler will download a 1 Mb file (or less if it’s smaller) and starts playing it in your prefered media player. If you want to preview a feed before subscribing, just click the preview button in the subscribe dialogbox.
• Doppler is a lot nicer to the RSS feed providers (the actually Podcasters) as Doppler now supports conditional gets. It will check if the RSS feed has been updated the last time Doppler downloaded it. If not, Doppler will use the version from it’s cache.
• Doppler is multi-threaded, resulting in smoother interface handling.
• We improved the user experience by cleaning up the interface. You really didn’t like the look of those URL’s on screen did you? They’re gone now.
• We’ve added a Last Download column to Doppler. So you can easily see which feed supplied you with a download.
• You can choose if you want to show the popup notification in the system tray after a download
• The system tray icon changes when Doppler is downloading
• If you are fast enough, you can click on the system tray notification popup. Doppler will then start the downloaded file in your media player.
• And a lot more under the hood.

Tricks

Bittorrent feeds

If you want to download bittorrent feeds with Doppler you can do this with 2 feed subscriptions. Proceed as follows:

• Make sure you have installed the bittorrent client from http://www.bittorrent.com/. This bittorrent client supports all kinds of command line parameters which we are going to use
• During the installation of Doppler 1.1 we provided you with a File Type definition for .torrent files which assumes you have a bittorrent client installed. If you deleted that one use this as an example:

  Extension type: Custom action
  Application: c:\\program files\\bittorrent\\btdownloadgui.exe (modify this to point to your installed version if bittorrent)
  Parameters: –saveas “{n}.mp3″ –responsefile “{1}”
   

• Subscribe to the feed which contains the .torrent files and retrieve it. Doppler will create a folder in your downloads folder using the name of the feed you selected.
• Now create a new subscription and call it for instance: Torrent Directory Parser (or whatever you want to call it). Instead of entering a url in the form of http://yourfeed.com/rss.xml you enter the path to the folder Doppler created for the feed in the previous step. So if you downloads folder is located in c:\\dopplerdownloads and feed with the torrent files is called bittorrentfeed you enter this as a path:

  c:\\dopplerdownloads\\bittorrentfeed

• The next retrieval run doppler will scan this folder for new files (so it’s not parsing an RSS feed then) and if it encounters a file not in the history for that feed it will add it to the playlist in your preferred media player.
• I promise to make it easier in an upcoming release of Doppler

MP3 Tags

If you want to organize your podcasts is a more consistent way, just change the feed subscriptions (don’t forget to change the default feed settings too) to override the Genre tag in the mp3 files. For instance use “Podcast” as a genre. This makes organizing your podcasts in iTunes or Windows Media Player so much easier.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 25th, 2004 at 22:40 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.