ITunes Podcasts Under Linux

This post is probably a bit geeky for many readers but if you use linux and like to listen to podcasts you might want to read this. If that last sentence made no sense at all to you, then don't worry about reading the rest!

I wanted to listen to the Advent Conspiracy podcasts but discoverd to my horror that they are on iTunes. I tried entering any number of  variations on the itunes feed into rhythmbox, but without success.

So I did a Google search and discovered feedfliper which allows you to enter in some details of the itunes feed and it converts it to a standard RSS podcast feed which rhythmbox can use.

In this case the itunes feed URL is: itms://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=295881346&uo=4

Following the instructions on the feedflipper page I was able to convert this to the following address:

http://picklemonkey.net/flipper/convert.php?&feed=http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=295881346&sender=Advent Conspiracy

I can now dowmload that podcast happily. It appears in my feed list as "Advent Conspiracy" and the titels show up in the relevant lists.

The instructions are quite clear on the page, once you understand that you are constructing an alternative URL for the feed. Also you need to change the source feed address from itms://itunes.apple.com to http://itunes.apple.com and delete the bit after the Podcast Id (in this case "&uo4" was deleted).

So you no longer have to feel excluded from podcasts hosted on itunes.

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