Posted on by Christopher Carfi

Another Baby Step Forward: A Zero Configuration, All-In-One Podcasting Device For About $25 That My Mom Could Use

Although I’m not an MacHead, the iPod shuffle did push a couple of buttons for me, especially around the use case of having a device that was intended to be transient in nature and only store a few songs (or podcasts) for a limited amount of time. The capability to sync a podcast to a flash-based device with the intention of listening to it on a commute seemed like something that would be useful to have. So, I was thinking about getting one of the shuffles.

Before doing so, and just for giggles, I did a quick search on Froogle for USB flash-based MP3 players. Although the shuffle has a killer cost/MB, I found a flash-based device for about 25 bucks that I thought it would be fun to try this out with. Less memory (128MB), but cheap. Definitely in the “good enough for concept hacking” category.

Looking at the specs, I noticed that it was a pretty nifty little bit of engineering for 25 bucks. Not only could you explicitly use it as a low-end MP3 player, but it was also designed to be used as a general-purpose thumb drive. Since I’m on the road a lot, I figured hey…why not? It’d be good for the quick-storage of documents that I might need to move between machines, etc…the usual use case for a thumb drive.

Then I started thinking about it and realized…holy crap…this is an MP3 player and a storage device. That means that the system will recognize it as a storage device.

One can put applications on storage devices.

Epiphany time…what if we took this one step further? What if…in addition to the downloaded podcasts…we put the podcatching client on the device itself and set it up to auto-run every time the device was plugged in?

The first step was to find a small footprint podcatching client. Doppler fit the bill. Fully installed, it only takes up about 1.2MB. So, I installed Doppler on the flash drive itself.

Podcastdopplerinstallflashdrive_1

The next step was to configure Doppler to write to the device itself. Piece of cake. Just specify the E: drive as where you want Doppler to store the podcasts.

Podcastdopplerinstallflashdrive2_1

Podcastdopplerinstallflashdrive3

Ok, cool. That seems to work so far. Let’s configure it with this feed. Fire it up and…holy crap…it works!

Podcastdopplerinstallflashdrive5

Let’s plug in the headphones. Yup. Works (note to self…since this cheapo device doesn’t have a volume control, ensure that all levels are normalized to 0db).

Podcastpix_003

Let’s try it in the car. I use the Belkin Tunecast (kinda like an iTrip, but device-neutral). This would also work with a cassette adapter. In this configuration, total weight has got to be less than two ounces. Cool.

Podcastpix_009

Next step. Set up Doppler to AutoRun. Everytime the thumb drive gets plugged into a machine, Doppler automatically starts and downloads the latest podcasts to the device itself. No setup for the user, no configuration, no nothing. Plug it in, it does it. Lights out. We now have a basic self-running, self updating, podcast listening device, that can be preconfigured and set up and handed to someone with no knowledge of podcasting, who can begin to listen to feeds. For a price point that’s low enough that even the most staid old company won’t even require an expense reciept.

Podcastdopplerinstallflashdrive4_1

Ok, this is pretty neat. So what?

So…here’s the business problem we can now solve. One of the things that my employer does is competitive intelligence. Up until now, we’ve always delivered this as an online document. But the actual end-users of this stuff (typically sales and marketing folks) don’t always have time to read the documents. They also can’t be sure that they are in possession of the latest update of the documents that we’ve delivered to them. However, as sales types, they are often in the car, or on a plane to see the client.

What we can now do:

  • Preconfigure these dirt-cheap devices, one per sales rep, with a preinstalled version of a podcatching client that is preconfigured to subscribe to a tailored competitive intelligence podcast feed. We can do one “post” per competitor. This allows easy navigation inside the device. We set up the device, subscribe it to the feeds, and hand it to our customer.
  • Prior to heading out to the client, the sales rep can plug the device into his or her machine, and within a couple of minutes the latest-and-greatest kill points will be automatically loaded to the device.
  • In the car, on the train, on the plane, the rep can listen to what’s going on in the competitive landscape. And always have the most up-to-date information available.

This is cool. This has been a good day.

Caveats:

  • AutoRun on WinXP is not natively enabled. Either it needs to be enabled on the destination machine, or the user may need to explicity run Doppler off the thumb drive when the device is plugged in.
  • Doppler is still twitchy. I’m running on the 2.0RC, and it occassionally crashes.

Update:

I did find that this does indeed have a volume control, it’s just less intuitive than it could be.

Update 2:

Steve’s right…put an extra five-spot in the budget to do the right thing for whichever podcatching client you use.

41 Replies to “Another Baby Step Forward: A Zero Configuration, All-In-One Podcasting Device For About $25 That My Mom Could Use”

  1. This is very, very cool.

    Actually, it gets better – you’re in a specific situation, and it helps, but hey – why not apply it to more situations?

    Let’s say your company sets up a podcasting feed. Hell, make it private, only accessible with a particular PIN, and embed that in the software on the device. Then se up, say, a few feeds – you can give information to your customer very quickly, and efficiently.

    Reading everything is a problem for most people. I have more than I’d like to read – and I read at something like TEN TIMES (3,000 wpm) the rate of the average business employee. To read a 300-word memo will take a minute. And a few hours while they have it but avoid reading it. What if you can take that information, and stick it into a podcast?

    Not only will people be more likely to get around to listening to it, but they can multitask – listen while driving, etc. They get the information in a more “friendly” medium.

    And at the price of setup – hell, may as well outfit everyone in your company with one. $50 for item, software, and setup.

    Another, user-friendly way to get information out there. Wow. Damn, I wish I could be doing this 🙂

  2. One potential problem – depending on the computer you plug it into, it will get a differetn drive letter. If you hard code Doppler to use E:, on another computer, the drive might be assigned a differetn letter…say F: then when you grab podcasts, it won’t go to the F: (MP#) drive, it will go ot the E: drive.

    Just somethign to think about.

    brian
    http://mostlytrivial.com

  3. good point, brian. need to try doppler with just the root selected (as opposed to ‘driveletter:\” to see if it still works. otherwise, we’d need to have the user do a quick setting change on doppler to go to the right place. nice catch.

  4. I think you have just moved podcasting to another level. I just followed your instructions with my palm tungsten e that has Card export II(http://www.softick.com/cardexport2/) on it. Card Export makes the palm sd card a mass storage device.
    I now have an almost self contained podcatching client. It totally bypasses the win media player/itunes step in syncing. If doppler did not need .net it would run on any windows machine.

    Thanks for the idea. What an epiphany!

  5. I have had trouble with the autorun.inf although everything else has worked fine.

    I read on the MS site that autorun wont work with drives that install as “removable disk” though.

    Anyone cracks it, let me know.

  6. Does the dot net framework have to be on the removable disk MP3 player or on the PC that the player/storage device is going to be connected to?

    I tried to install Doppler on my SanDisk Micro USB device, and it said I needed dot net. Then I couldn’t install dot net to the USB device.

    Sounds very interesting. Maybe someone can detail the install more.

  7. Matt…the AutoRun thing seems to be an XP-specific deal. By default, XP disables autorun for USB drives. Per the caveat in the original article, the work around is:

    (a) to do a minimally intrusive hack on the registry (do a google search on “91 95 autorun.” Here’s a hack:

    http://www.moonvalley.com/products/rwavdc/enable.htm

    or

    (b) install one of the autorun helpers (there are a couple out there) that do this

    or

    (c) per the caveat in the article, have the user click on doppler on the device to start it (or give them a shortcut they can put on their desktop that launches doppler on the thumb drive).

  8. .NET needs to be on the pc NOT the device. BTW Ipodder works too but takes up more space. It is also slower since it has to load python.

  9. Treo 600 and 650 have sd card slots. You could use this same method to put podcasts automatically to your phone. I’m going to try it. You get the “light bulb” award!

  14. Leonard…if Doppler won’t do it, maybe one of the other podcatching clients will allow you to set up a “flat” directory for the ‘casts? Otherwise, it may be a limitation of the device.

    I was (happily!) surprised that the player I’m using manages to traverse the directories and find the MP3 files regardless of their location.

  15. Why is it that most techies that have something nice to say about the shuffle have to declare they’re not a Mac fan to start?

  16. Maybe most techies aren’t mac users? 🙂 (oooh…. am I living dangerously?)

    If drive E: setting in the app is a problem, I’m sure there could be a very short compiled script or something written to be run directly as the auto-run command and that could find out what drive letter it’s being run on from it’s own path and update the settings before running the actual podcatching application. For those cases you’re auto-running it.

    As mentioned, yes it’s a security risk.

  17. Podcast Catching Tool for Windows ($30)

    Christopher Carfi has a great write-up on how to turn a $25 USB Flash / MP3 Player into a podcatching system for Windows. The reason why I wrote $30 up in the title is that I think folks using Doppler

  18. .net for something like this? Nah man, way to overkill and way to overbill.

    If you want a sleek as shizzle podcatcher app you want BashPodder http://linc.homeunix.org:8080/scripts/bashpodder/

    44 lines of bash code that uses the ultra slim wget command. You could fit all the programs you would need to run this in under 200k I bet ya on most any system, less if its Linux or MacOsX. Actualy there is a Wget port for most any platform, so you would be all set.

    As far moving this stuff on a SD, heck yea. I have a Palm Tungsten C that I use to listen to spoken word mp3s (old time radio, speaches, podcasts). You can put Bashpodder on the root dir and since it places the files under where it happens to be your automagicaly in luck..zoom zip and the SD fills up.

    I have a Jumpdrive SD cardshell that I carry with me. SLip the SD into one of those, slot it into the nearest computer, run Bashpodder…the speed of the net connection is your only weak link here:)-

    For some real fun…Try this. You can install an embeded version of Damn Small Linux ( http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ) on your USB device. You can use a little program called Qemu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) to have it load under Mac, Windows, or even Linux. The result is you have a fully working version of Linux running in a window of whatever computer your using. You can then put bashpodder on that and run it from there.Whatever you DL is saved in a virtual drivesapce on your USB device..I have actualy done this and man is it ever cool. You can then play the podcasts from whatever computer your on as well as having a decent OS as well with tons of apps. This has saved me many times in the land of Windows machines in net cafes and while waiting for my wife at malls.

    There are many ways to skin a cat, but the ones where your not tied down to crappyrighted junk like windows et al are, to me at least, the sweetest .

    Enjoy

    -tomhiggins

  19. Didn’t work for me.

    First of all Doppler needs something called .net installed on the machine I’m plugging my flash drive into. WTF is .net? and I certainly can’t install .net on my machine at work, at the library, on a friends machine, in the internet cafe, etc. So the idea is not portable with Doppler.

    Then I tried using ipodder, but that insists on installing it’s config files in C:\Documents and Settings\ so once again it’s not a portable solution because the record of the podcasts you’ve downloaded stays with each individual machine you’ve used. Every time you move to a new machine it starts to download the same podcast files all over again.

    For it to work we need a robust self-contained (doesn’t require .net) podcatching client that does not store it’s config files in the registry or in C:\Documents and Settings\ or anywhere on the host machine.

    Steve

  20. This is cool. I got it up and running. I think there may be a problem if you try and move your device to a machine that already has Doppler up and running. Not positive, needs more checking.

    I agree with Steve in the sense that you can’t expect .NET to be installed everywhere. The same as Java. In a controlled environment this wouldn’t be a problem in my opinion.

    I also suggest setting up Dopplers space saving features if you don’t have much memory. Also, might want to check ‘use Internet Explorer proxy settings’ to take advantage of machines that have proxies to the net.

    I really like Doppler for it’s feature of being able to set how many feeds at a time to download and also how far back to get feeds. If you miss a week it’s nice not to have to wait for ever to catch up, just get the last 1 or 2. ipodder doesn’t have this.

    I look forward to what others are doing in this areana.

  21. All-In-One Podcasting Device For About $25 That My Mom Could Use

    Over at The Social Customer Manifesto, they have a cute hack. Basically, he buys a simple $25 mp3 player that also looks like a thumb drive. He copies Doppler to it, and sets it to autorun so that when he plugs the MP3 player into his laptop, it au…

  22. I agree that having to have .NET is a weakness. Problem is I have not found a podcatcher that has the features of doppler. Running it on a usb device requires the space saving and dowload limiting features. I would love an Open Source platform neutral catcher that will do the same thing as doppler. Are there any?

    I have now used this setup on a Palm tungsten E connected to both work and home. What was cool was that at work yesterday it mapped to f:\. At home it mapped to g:\ so I had to change the download path. Today I hooked up at work and it went back to f:\ and the dowload dir was remapped automatically. Don’t know if there is a conf file somewhere off of the device but this may take ca5re of one of the concerns above.

  25. Setting Up A Self Contained, Auto-Updating Podcast Device – Holy Crap…It Worked!

    Another new podcast – this time from Christopher Carfi which has probably one of THE neatest ideas relating to podcasting that I’ve heard recently.

  26. We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ iPod

    I’ve been using a Northgate pocket MP3 player that I got off eBay for $10 to listen to podcasts during my lunchtime walks or while driving. It only has 64 MB of memory, but that’s enough to hold several hours…

  27. usb flash memory based automatic podcatching

    This whole podcasting thing has taken off, thanks to the iPod
    phenomenon.  The people at  “Social customer manifesto” 
    have now …

  29. I ordered the MusicDisk and instead of Doppler or iPodder I installed Nimiq (http://www.nimiq.nl/) on the MusicDisk. Everything works perfectly. I’m listing to one of my favorite shows (http://www.croncast.com) right now.

    In my mind, the whole point of this experiment and capabilities of this self-contained podcatcher/player is a simple and cheap device to catch a preset list of feeds, possibly an internal corporate feed or just a few of your favorite feeds to take with you each day (it is only 128MB, remember). This $25 MusicDisk is not an iPod and the podcatcher installed on it doesn’t have to be completely feature laden.

    Thanks so much for the great article and great idea!

  30. The ironic thing is that this hack will not work on Ipods! I figured out how to enable the Ipod to show as a removable disk on Windows and installed Doppler on the Ipod. The Doppler downloaded the Podcasts to the Ipod, and they could be played on the attached computer which had WinAmp on it, but the Ipod would not play the Mp3s. According to the Wikipedia article on Podcasting, the Ipod will only work as an Mp3 player in conjunction with Itunes.

    I installed Itunes on the Ipod in the same manner as Doppler but (drive space not withstanding) there can only be one installation of Itunes associated with an Ipod, so it was either my existing music library or the Podcasts, I opted for my music library. 🙂

    Anyone know how to make this hack work on an Ipod? The reason I don’t just put Doppler on my home computer and use my home Itunes to download Podcasts is because my home computer is on dialup and I was hoping to download Podcasts from a broadband connected public terminal.

  32. I use an Axim with an SD card to listen to podcasts. Pull out the card, stick it in my card reader, and run a batch file which pulls down all my doppler podcasts, and then ftp’s all my new mp3s to my dircaster directory. Easy. I do wish I could firgure out a way to delete the podcasts I’ve already listened to.

    Patrick

  33. Smallest Portable Podcast Recorder Around

    The Rover and similar devices can allow users to record podcast segments or shows from anywhere. Just pull it out of your pocket and go!…

  34. Great job! Nice to see that PC folks can have fun/cool hacks like the Mac and Linux folks do. Very nice idea and nice writeup.

  35. Great idea,

    I have used this idea in a little bit different way. On my palm Tungsten T I have installed the program BlueSync. It allows me to hotsync the SD-card with a directory on the PC. I have setup Doppler to put the podcasts into this directory on the PC. Then when I hotsync my palm the podcasts are moved to my palm together with my updated agenda, todos, etc.
    Doppler can be setup to limit the number of podcast which are put in a directory so you never have to remove any podcasts. They are removed by Doppler when new podcasts arrive.
    So all I do ones per day is a hotsync of my palm. No manual copying anymore. The only disadvantage is the slow speed of hotsyncing big files.

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