If you visit Player FM today, you’ll find a number of enhancements to the channel organisation. As always, channel organisation updates are motivated by helping users find shows on their favorite topics. Better organisation also means a simpler out-of-the-box experience when the app suggests topics to new users. Not all shows are discovered via the…
New in 1.3: Multi-Select We released Player FM 1.3 a few days ago and it includes a feature we hope will help you juggle your podcasts like a Pro. It’s the ability to select multiple episodes similar to the way GMail lets you select multiple emails. Long-hold any episode and watch the action bar transform…
Good news for the storage-challenged infovores! Player FM for Android 1.2.5 now supports a custom downloads folder. Previously, the app was using the default folder assigned to it by the OS. But now you can visit Settings and point to your external SD Card, USB drive, or any other location you fancy. And just a…
A huge benefit of podcasting is offline access, and Player FM launched with a powerful but simple “Auto-Download” feature to ensure offline access for your subscriptions. However, it’s easy to stumble on episodes that aren’t downloaded, either because they’re too old to be auto-downloaded, or they appear in another channel. So users naturally wanted a…
I mentioned in the tablet upgrade post we’re presently in a “happiness tweaks” phase, and we’ve added several of these in the past couple of weeks. These new features are now available at Google Play. Sort episodes Some people wanted to see episodes from the top first. This lets you listen to episodes on your…
With the release of version 1.2, Player FM for Android is now friendly on devices of all sizes, just like the Player FM website. And the release comes hand-in-hand with the much-requested ability to download older episodes. These two features work great together, as tablet mode is an ideal way to flip through episodes for…
Player FM is now receiving new episodes faster. Much faster. Whereas the average lag — from publisher upload to appearance on the site — was previously 2-3 hours, it’s now about 5 minutes. Generally, it will be a maximum of 15 minutes and in many cases, it will be just a few seconds. Furthermore, the…
So you’ve got 30 minutes to learn everything about basket-weaving. You search for basket-weaving (I love how that actually returns four episodes). It returns the fabulous “Everything You Need to Know About Basket Weaving in Sixty Minutes” show (we’re well into hypothetical territory at this point). 60 minute show, but 30 minutes to countdown! Not…
In this recent contribution to GigaOM, I explained why a web app wasn’t enough. Why Player FM went all-out native with an Android app. To be clear, the web app is alive and well, and in fact has received several upgrades recently. A few years back, the question was “Web versus Native”, but now it’s…
It’s not all Android around here. Big update on some other fronts today … Website Design First up, the website gets a fresh lick of paint. Highlights: The sidebars have been re-designed and are now more consistent in appearance. Channel/topic views have also been re-designed. Full-length topics side-menu is gone; it now opens when you…