PodCast Helper is a stay-open AppleScript that looks at the current track in iTunes; if the genre is “podcast”, it grabs the comment from the track, and parses it for timecodes and notes of the form:
@4:35 some note
If it finds any, it will watch the track and when it hits the appropriate timecode, it will use Growl (http://growl.info) to popup a notification with the note. Ideally, Growl would be able to show HTML, or at least text with links in it, so pocasters could include clickable links in the notes. Sans that, this script is really more of a proof of concept.
Usage: expand the archive and put the script somewhere. Double click the script and click “Run” when it opens. That’s it. Of course, the podcast must have notes of the appropriate format for this to work. The format, again, is:
@mm:ss note
Download: PodCast Helper
If you want to port this to Cocoa or some other environment, please do. It’s licensed under a CC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
I just gave this a try and I get the error:
Can't continue >.
Any idea? Also can you give an example podcast that has this information in it?
Josh, I'm not sure what is happening here. (This is, after all, a proof of concept only. :-) ) Check that the current track has a genre of "podcast", maybe? If you can describe exactly the process you went through, I may be able to help more.
As far as podcasts go, I'm afraid I don't know of any for now. As a test, you can take most any podcast mp3 and edit the comment field yourself (that's what I did). Pick random times within the file and add entries in the comment field. Sorry I can't be of more help, I'd like things to be easier for both podcasters and listeners, but it's going to take some folks picking a format and standardizing on it.
I'm heading out for work, i'll give it a go again tonight.
Ok finally got it going. First I was a version or so behind on growl, so I updated to the latest.
Next I loaded up one of the HomeNetworkHelp podcasts, and nothing.
Then I glanced at the ITT mail, and noticed it was looking for @Time not #Time. I changed them and it worked fine.
Very cool.
Hi Josh,
I've considered having the script look for @ *or* #, but again, text processing in AppleScript is too painful. If I could use regex, it would be a lot easier.