June 27, 2005

Curious George: It ain't stealin'! I read a lot of musicblogs, but it's kinda a pain in the ass to download each track individually... I like RSS feeders, but they don't automatically pick up the files (at least, Thunderbird doesn't). Is there a similar software that just cruises blogs you subscribe to, and downloads anything with .mp3 after it? Ideally, this should sync with iTunes so that I could have daily playlists...
  • Any podcasting software does this automatically - assuming the music blogs you're subscribed to produce podcast feeds.
  • IPodder (free) is pretty good, I've found. I thought IPodderX (pay) was brain-damaged, however. Both automatically make iTunes playlists for each "feed" you set up.
  • Down Them All, and extension for Firefox, will download all links on a page for you. You can also download all links with a specific extension (just .mp3), or you could create a catagory to download (like Music, containing .mp3, .mid, .wav, .etc). Or you could just checkbox the one you want to download.
  • You kill their bandwidth, doing that. And take away their only claim to be legal (by presenting commentary). If you love music blogs, please rethink this.
  • iPodder looks to be about exactly what I want, but I run osX 10.2.8. I'm lookin' now, but any suggestions for something compatible?
  • I believe this is one of the problems that Odeo was created to address. I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet though, so take that with a grain of salt.
  • jb: No you don't. Down Them all only downloads two at a time. That doesn't kill their bandwidth at all. And you still visit the page and read the commentary. Er, wait. Are you talking about my link or the Ipodder ones?
  • It does challenge the legality of the sites. If most of the traffic is just using software to spider the site and rip the tracks, then it puts their legal standing, already fairly tenuous, at a serious disadvantage.
  • On a somewhat related note, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling on file-sharing today.
  • Middleclasstool, if the sites are seriously worried, then they should not put the .mp3s in their RSS. Very simple. Done. Or if you are talking about using DownThemAll...how are you assuming anyone would discover the use of it? Are music orgs going to pull server logs and look for any non IE/Firefox downloads? In that edge case, they won't find any. DownThemAll, as a plugin, will show up as Firefox in the logs. Information put on the web with no access restriction can and will be "spidered", and this is not (IMHO) unethical. This is especially so in the case where a site goes out of its way to provide the information in spiderable form, as in RSS.
  • I imagine one could use wget for this purpose. Have it grab all URLs in the RSS feed...
  • Re OSX 10.2.x ... You could try some older versions of IPodder. all versions here
  • Mr. K: I've been running Safari since I upgraded to X, but that might be the thing that makes me switch to Firefox. Better than trying to figure out how the fuck to run wget through terminal. Unix can bite my balls. jb: I have about 150 different music blogs on RSS, and I try to wade through them as best I can. I have no real problem eating up their bandwidth (because, you know, I already do it by downloading pretty much everything on the blogs), and still read the sites. I just find it tedius to download each, each time.
  • ARRRGH! Sweet mother fuck! Ok, so firefox thinks it's the first time evah every time it opens (and gives me a warning as such). It doesn't remember that I've installed the stupid fucking plugin, it demands to be mounted as a disk... ARRRGH!
  • I have about 150 different music blogs on RSS, and I try to wade through them as best I can. I have no real problem eating up their bandwidth (because, you know, I already do it by downloading pretty much everything on the blogs), and still read the sites. I just find it tedius to download each, each time....posted by js this explains the dark circles under the eyes...and the word is "tedious." Gawd, did you go to a retard school?
  • Hums along happily with Iko Iko.
  • I don't think iPodder will do what you want. I tried, and came away disappointed. I installed it and tooled around with it for a while, but couldn't get it to download anything that wasn't actually a podcast. I don't really know what makes something a podcast instead of a random mp3 on a page, so I gave up and asked the monkeys. Mr. Knickerbocker's firefox extension seems to be an excellent way to download all the files off a page without all the clicking. It's something you can easily click and walk away from. The solution that almost came out of my thread (I said I'd set it up and see how it worked, but haven't quite gotten around to it yet) should do it automatically every hour/day/whenever.
  • Better than trying to figure out how the fuck to run wget through terminal. Unix can bite my balls. Whoops, I missed that the first time around. Keep at it, terminal is your friend! Gawd, did you go to a retard school? I'm a grad student at Michigan State--studying Rhetoric & Writing and teaching first year composition and professional writing. O_o
  • Smallish: I was at Deconstructo's home last night, desperately working on my overdue Monkeyfilter mix. He knows exactly what school I go to... I saw your previous thread only after I stopped putting os X in the search terms (because I do go to Retard School). You want what I want. I'm sending a couple of hardcore geek friends the question, but so far the best I've seen is the wget utility run through terminal. And since I can't fuckin' figure out how to even parse my disc's structure under terminal, I can't even figure out how to install the damned thing. I hate to say it, but I'm kinda pining for the good ol' days when I had DOS on my Hercules Monochrome.
  • js: I hope you get Firefox working on your mac. Sorry I can't offer advice there. (Rebooting? or actually, it sounds like a profile problem. Try this, converting the advice to mac equivelents) There's a couple other download extensions that do the same, DTA is just the one I happen to use. smallish bear, I would've made the same recommendation for you, if my internet wasn't down at the time (and if my eyes didn't glaze over whenever I see iFoo).
  • It just so happens that the today's release of version 4.9 of iTunes introduces support for podcasts natively! Sounds awesome, I haven't tried it yet though. Good luck. There's a new iPod updater, too, if you have one of those.
  • Smallish: I was at Deconstructo's home last night, desperately working on my overdue Monkeyfilter mix. He knows exactly what school I go to... And I was referring to the middle school he went to, where "invented" speling wuz gud enuf too passed. It isn't his fault.
  • I don't know anything about music blogs but want to find out more. Is there a meta site for music blogs? I did some googling and eventually landed up at emp3world which has all kinds of free mp3s but looks like back alley. There's also mp3shits.com, mp3center.com wtf?
  • forks made a huge list sorted by genre on the monkeywiki (link on the main page).
  • Cool, thanks jb!
  • You might try to install Free Download Manager, from www.freedownloadmanager.org, and then use the Flashgot extension for Firefox. That way you get your downloads fast easy and in one place. I haven't fiddled enough to do it automatically on a set of blogs, so if anyone knows a way, welcome.