How to synchronize your podcast feeds on many computers

A friend recently asked me if I knew of a way to syn­chron­ize his pod­casts (using iTunes) on mul­tiple computers. Ini­tially I had no idea, but then I remembered Pod­Nova. Aside: I’ve since learned that iTunes sup­ports OPML import / export, but still think Pod­Nova is the bet­ter way to go — online cent­ral­ized repos­it­ory…


A friend recently asked me if I knew of a way to syn­chron­ize his pod­casts (using iTunes) on mul­tiple computers.

Ini­tially I had no idea, but then I remembered Pod­Nova.

Aside: I’ve since learned that iTunes sup­ports OPML import / export, but still think Pod­Nova is the bet­ter way to go — online cent­ral­ized repos­it­ory of all your pod­cast feeds VS sav­ing and mov­ing OPML files between computers.

I’d writ­ten about it a few years ago when I was look­ing into a text-to-speach solu­tion for my blog: How to con­vert your blog post into a pod­cast.

Basic­ally, Pod­Nova is a ser­vice that you use to sub­scribe to all of your pod­casts. Or, you can stream your pod­casts dir­ectly to your com­puter (or mobile device: iPhone, iPod Touch, etc).

But, if you want to keep all your com­puters syn­chron­ized, you simply point  your iTunes sub­scrip­tion at ‘your per­son­al­ized’ RSS pod­cast feed. Done.

The res­ult is that you now have one feed to remem­ber, but that feed now con­tains ALL your pod­cast sub­scrip­tions. All you have to do is sub­scribe to your Pod­Nova feed, sit back, and enjoy your pod­casts. Once per computer.


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2 responses to “How to synchronize your podcast feeds on many computers”

  1. Wendell Henry Avatar
    Wendell Henry

    Thanks for your sug­ges­tion. I still can­not get it to do exactly what I want. I often check for new pod­casts from both work and home. Even with Pod­Nova I still get the same pod­cast down­loaded to both com­puters. I am too cheap to own a real ipod that does fancy syncs so I just copy the files to my play­er. Thus I end up double down­load­ing and hav­ing double cop­ies on my player. 

    I need a ser­vice that remem­bers what I have down­loaded no mat­ter what com­puter I do it from . Do you know of a way to do what I want ?

    Thanks

    Wendell

  2. Brad Grier Avatar

    Hi Wendell, I’m not sure how you would do that with PodNova.

    One thing you may try is set­ting up a Drop­Box account. This is a secure shared dir­ect­ory. You install the applic­a­tion on both com­puters, and Drop­Box keeps spe­cif­ic dir­ect­or­ies syn­chron­ized. Then, when you use an applic­a­tions like iTunes or Song­bird, spe­cify your Drop­Box dir­ect­ory as the pod­cast dir­ect­ory, and it should man­age the sync for you.

    Warn­ing, I’ve not tested this so it may not work at all; I’m just cob­bling the vari­ous fea­tures of the applic­a­tions togeth­er to take a stab at a solu­tion. If you try it, let me know how it worked for you.

    – Brad

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