I received a note from Lance Robinson about his new podcast receiver. I'm playing with it this afternoon and here are my first impressions.
Downloading the the software requires providing minimal registration info. The registration looks like the typical Dot Net Nuke registration page. The software requires either Windows 2000 or XP along with the .Net Framework 1.1.
Installation was quick and easy. There appears to be some good documentation, but me being a guy and this being a weekend, of course I didn't read it. After installation I started poking around to see what to do next. There are a half dozen or so feeds set up by default. Double clicking on the feeds didn't do anything so I tried the menu. I selected the first option to “Scan Now”. The application suggested that I should run “Catch Up” first. So I did that and then ran “Scan Now”. As things were downloading I flipped to the Media tab and was able to select a feed and start listening to it. So, all told, I was able to start listening to a feed in about 5 minutes from the time I downloaded the software.
So far I have only 2 very minor comments. The first is I would have the Media tab be the first tab since that's where the action is, where I assume I will be spending most of my time. Second, if I am listening to a feed while downloading others, the list on the right that is filtered by the feed will include unrelated feeds as they are downloaded. This is just an interface updating issue and I'm sure Lance is already working on it.
All in all, it was painless to set up and get started with. I like the application, I'm just not sure podcasting is for me yet, but I'll give it the old two week try and see how it goes.