How to use podcasting to download media

Podcasting is a new technology that allows your computer to automatically download the latest audio and video content from CommonBits or other Web sites. With podcasting, you can listen to or watch the latest CommonBits content as soon as it is updated and downloaded to your computer.

CommonBits recently began supporting podcasting in all of our RSS content feeds. In order to download content, you’ll need to install a Podcasting client program. We recommend iPodderX for the Mac or DopplerRadio for Windows because they both support downloading files via BitTorrent. You can find links to other podcast programs here (Mac/Windows).

There are four ways to use CommonBits to download your favorite content from our podcast feeds:

1. Download all new submissions by subscribing to our main feed

Whenever any item is added to CommonBits, you’re podcasting client will download it to your computer. The RSS address is http://www.commonbits.org/content.xml.

2. Download every episode of a specific show

Want to download every episode of Al Franken or DemocracyNow? Click on the show link on our home page, then add the RSS feed at the top of the page to your podcast client. For example, to get the latest headlines for NPR’s To The Point, visit the show page here, then add the RSS feed http://www.commonbits.org/rss/tag/to-the-point to your podcast client.

3. Download media from your favorite CommonBits channel

If you have a favorite channel on CommonBits, you can add the RSS feed to your podcast client to automatically download all its featured media. For example, the RSS feed for Jeff's Channel to add to your podcast client is http://www.commonbits.org/rss/channel/jeff.

4. Download media related to a specific topic using a descriptive tag

Whenever CommonBits users add new content to CommonBits, they tag it with descriptive information. For example, new clips from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart are tagged with "daily-show" and "jon-stewart". CommonBits creates a feed for each of these tags such that you can visit the Daily Show feed here and add the RSS feed there (http://www.commonbits.org/rss/tag/daily-show) to your podcast client.

Note that one limitation of using Podcast software to view CommonBits content is that there may sometimes be multiple file types available e.g. mp3 audio, quicktime video, a video bittorrent but your podcasting software will only download the first available file. This is a limitation of the podcasting technology at this time. If you wish to view all of the file types available, you will need to visit the CommonBits Web site.

While podcast clients will download media files automatically for you, you may be interested in browsing the headlines from new content at CommonBits. If you'd like to read more about using the CommonBits content feeds with an RSS feed reader, please read how to use RSS feeds to follow content.

Please help us improve these how to guides. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for improving this guide, please post them below and we'll integrate them into the content. Thank you for using CommonBits.   

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