Phoenix Times Winner 2005
A Different Point of View
Jack Mangan: Deadpan
Speaking of Beer

Multiple downloads and you hate my guts?

Sorry, man. I’ve done what I assumed would correct the problem. But some of you, like anyone using iPodderX and Juice, are gonna get (or have received) everything all over again. If you care, read more. If not, know that I tried and try not to hate me. At least not for this.


Still here? Techy freaks.

Here’s my assumption: in the RSS 2.0 world, there exists a tag called GUID. That stands for Global Unique Identifier and it is supposed to be the “fingerprint” for the media file. In my perfect world, all podcatchers would be evaluating the contents of this tag to determine if a media file is new. If the podcatcher doesn’t have the exact same GUID in it’s history files, then the file must be new. Download it. But if the GUID does exist in the history, it’s not new and should be skipped.

To that end, and quite logical assumption, I busted my hump and Dan’s hump (he’s made the very cool PodPress pluggin) to add the old GUID from the old file to the new system. Open the XML and look at the GUID for the show items. Note how they all say “dragonpage” in them? That’s the EXACT same thing they said when the shows were part of the tDP install.

I’m sure the podcatcher-makers have valid reasons for not simply following GUID files. And I’m sure they do something like checking the pubDate or perhaps the actual file name. That’s a shame, because it means anyone that moves a hosting company or RSS generator is fucked beyond belief.

I don’t know the solution for the problem, only that I tried my level best to not make it happen. I’ve written a Tech Tip and presented it to Podcast411. It simply suggests that everyone, right now, access all of your existing feeds and set them to “download the most recent” file instead of “download all files”. I just recieved every single Seanachi and every single Cory Doctorow podcast on Monday, so I feel your pain.

But if you change your settings for podcasts you are already subscribed to, it’ll never happen again. In theory.

16 comments to Multiple downloads and you hate my guts?

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