July 31, 2005

Science News Podcasts

Here are a few good sites that offer science news podcasts. If there are other you'd like to recommend, please do so.

Science AT NASA
Science and Society
Science Friday (NPR) - they also have a good explanation of how to use the files
SETI Podcast
Quirks and Quarks (CBC Radio)

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NewsGator and FeedStation (podcasts)

Now that I'm spending some more time with NewsGator (to see if it does a better job than Bloglines with the bold/unread indicator with database search feeds), I've also downloaded the FeedStation beta.

I have subscribed to several podcast feeds. When I open up the feed in NewsGator, I get the option to add each audio file to a My Podcasts folder, which I guess is synched to a FeedStation folder on my C: drive. The selected files get downloaded to my C: drive, and then I can listen to the files when I want in Media Player (or I suppose I could export them to my iPod if I had one).

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Bloglines: Bold/Undread feature not working w/ database feeds?

Lately, I've been having problems with my database search feeds in Bloglines not going bold when there's new content. This includes my feeds with ProQuest, PubMed, HubMed and EiV2 (though not Astro Data System)--and it happens with some feeds, not all of them. There are new records, but the feeds aren't showing up in bold. Has anyone else been seeing this?

It's frustruating because I'm showing patrons how to use the feeds offered by these database providers, and while I'm explaining how the reader works I have to give the proviso that the bold/unread feature may not work with these feeds.

I've sent a e-mail to the Bloglines help desk, and we'll see how successful that goes. I'm not sure if it's Bloglines, the databases, or my computer/browser (I've tried 2 computers in IE and Firefox). I've copied the OPML file into Newsgator's Web Edition, and I'll see how the database search feeds show up in this reader.

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