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Ben X

Direct mp3 download

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I want to listen to the thumbcasts on my G1 Android phone, on the tube; I can't do that by streaming it live, obv, because I lose reception underground. So it would seem I need to download them onto my computer and then transfer them as mp3s to my phone's audio library.

So, maybe I'm being an idiot, but I can't download and save the thumbcasts. If I click on the direct download link, it opens up a Quicktime page, which streams it, but the 'download' option only seems to be available to me if I buy Quicktime Pro. I'm not going to buy Quicktime Pro. Equally, my Android won't download it directly into its library, presumably for the same reasons.

Help me, Gamesmaster.

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Yeah, that works for me. In Firefox I got a .html filename when I did that, but you can just rename that to .mp3.

Also, unless you need it for something (having an Android I guess it's not iTunes) I'd remove Quicktime from my computer.

And then burn the computer.

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Ah hah! Yeah, it's "save link as", which tripped me up because in my mind that's completely different to "save target as", which is what I was looking for.

Thanks for helping a clueless idiot!

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Also a weird note on the MP3s for these podcasts:

I have a thumb drive that I carry around with me that has MP3 files on it because I can listen to them in my car through a CD player that has a USB port that will read MP3s.

It does not like WMAs as I have found out. It will play them but does not let me rewind or fast forward through them. I also can't pause a WMA because it will not start where it left off. Also if I turn off the device, it does not play where it left off in the WMA timeline when I turn it back on. This stuff doesn't really matter for 3 minute songs, but it is incredibly frustrating for long pieces of music and radio programs.

But what WMAs have to do with this are that all of the Idlethumbs MP3s are read as WMAs for whatever reason on my device. This is incredibly unwieldy unless I want to listen to the thumbs podcast straight through without stopping my car or touching any buttons for an hour or so.

So what I think is causing this is that the files may be saved out on a Macintosh computer. This could be wrong, but I regularly download radio programs from the ongoing archive for a local station here in Houston. I also listen to these in long car rides since I'm not much of a live radio listener. What I've found out is that if I save the radio show MP3s from the site archive on my iMac and throw it on to my thumb drive, they are also read as WMAs on the audio device in my car with the same problems. If I save the same MP3s on my WinXP PC and drop them on the thumb drive, they play fine with all fast forwarding, rewinding, and pause functions intact.

This is probably the most superfluous post about the podcast ever and I'm not really asking you guys to take me and my obscure car setup into consideration when saving out the MP3s. It's just something I noticed a long time ago and thought I'd blab about it in this thread.

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You should get rid of the quicktime browser plugin, I ways use the direct mp3 download and have no issues (because I don't use sucktime).

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There are a bunch of podcast downloading apps for the G1 which will automatically grab them for you podWeasel and DoggCatcher for example. podWeasel is something that I wrote and is, a little ropey but it is cheap / free :)

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There are a bunch of podcast downloading apps for the G1 which will automatically grab them for you podWeasel and DoggCatcher for example. podWeasel is something that I wrote and is, a little ropey but it is cheap / free :)

Oh, nice! Thanks, Mr C, I'll take a look at that!

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You should get rid of the quicktime browser plugin, I ways use the direct mp3 download and have no issues (because I don't use sucktime).

If QuickTime loads it up in Firefox, you can still just go File > Save Page as, and type in whatever.mp3 and it'll save the file out to disk as an mp3.

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G1 Android phone

Tangent: How are you liking it? My contract is coming to an end in November, and I'm pretty set on getting an Android phone. I really like the full array of input methods the G1 offers, but the Hero looks nicer in almost every other respect (aesthetics and tech specs). Or I could go for one of the Motorola ones on the way, I guess.

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I'm tempted with an android phone in a couple of months too, though I'd go for something other than the G1. Quite a few of my friends have them, and the battery life is atrocious even with only infrequent use of wifi and GPS.

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iPhone

They're a bit expensive and I don't like iTunes. If I were to go in that direction, it'd probably be an iPod Touch.

I'm tempted with an android phone in a couple of months too, though I'd go for something other than the G1. Quite a few of my friends have them, and the battery life is atrocious even with only infrequent use of wifi and GPS.

How atrocious is atrocious? I have to plug in my current phone pretty much every evening as it is, so I'm kind of accustomed to that. That said, the Hero apparently has better battery life. But no keyboard. I'd quite like a keyboard. Then again, we got a non-functional display model in at work for photographic purposes, and the keyboard felt awful. But the keys on those dummy display models often feel crap, so I'm not sure how much to make of that. I'd quite like something with tactile input as an option, but it seems like one of those "pick two out of your three wanted criteria" situations.

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If they use a lot of wifi or start arsing around with GPS, they're lucky to get 4 hours. Software updates may have improved this since, as I was speaking to them about it more than 4 months ago. They tend to carry chargers around with them though, and charging once a day seems to be the minimum.

To be fair, I also know people with iphones that tend to run out on them before they're done with a days work.

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I use my iPhone for all sorts of things and usually charge every 3 or 4 days. Turning off bluetooth and lowering the brightness helps.

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Tangent: How are you liking it? My contract is coming to an end in November, and I'm pretty set on getting an Android phone. I really like the full array of input methods the G1 offers, but the Hero looks nicer in almost every other respect (aesthetics and tech specs). Or I could go for one of the Motorola ones on the way, I guess.

I really enjoy my ADP1 (similar to the G1). Before this I owned a few Windows Mobile phones, and I really hated them. One of the things I really like about the ADP1 is that it doesn't require any special treatment. Attach it to the computer, and it behaves like a normal USB device, including a USB mass storage device. I also like the ability to update the software without losing anything. (Sure, the iPhone allows you to backup everything before the flash and then puts it all back). The basic software for the Android is ok, and there is a lot of good gratis software to improve the phone. For example "Locale" is awesome, when I enter the office it will automatically put the phone in silent mode. When I get home it will change the ring tone volume to max. The battery time is ok, I usually charge it once every 2 days (don't want to walk around with less that 25% of battery time, here's a graph of a 7 day period of using, not really useful :P). Of course that doesn't say much about how I use the phone. When you disable the fancy stuff like GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth (and tone down the seriously bright screen, I have it set at 2/10) it can last quite some time. Wifi and GPS really suck the power out of the device. On a fully charged phone it will run out of juice in 4 hours when you use GPS.

Anyway... I like the phone, because I actually own the damn thing and I have pretty much full control on how I want to use it.

In a few weeks I'll get an iPhone from my new job. Not sure if I'm going to use that phone or simply sure the simcard in my ADP1.

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I think the G1's pretty good, but I don't have anything to compare it to. There are a few little oddities in the UI - stuff that you want to do but seemingly can't, and some unintuitive methods, but it's pretty good overall. The touchscreen's good, and the music works well. Shame you can't do much with video at the moment - it's Youtube only so far. The battery life hasn't caused me any problems yet, but I'm quite careful not to overuse it if I'm not going to get to a charger in a while!

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The battery problem isn't a phone problem so much as an App problem.

The GPS, when enabled, isn't actually running unless an application is using it. The trick is that apps aren't stopped so much as minimized when you move away from them meaning that they can still be keeping the GPS active even if they're not using it in a sensible fashion.

Another thing you can do is hold a lock on the processor to stop the phone from going to sleep fully which is great if you want to wake the phone up, do some work and go back to sleep. However if you don't release the lock the cpu never goes to sleep so bye bye battery.

Both these things only afflict badly written apps*. The next update (1.6 aka donut) includes a program which shows you which apps are using all your battery.

LG and Motorola both has Android devices coming soon and I think there is a general rumour of an HTC refresh of the G1 too.

*The Android application lifecycle is odd so it's not surprising it's causing problems - certainly tripped me up

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One of the things I really like about the ADP1 is that it doesn't require any special treatment. Attach it to the computer, and it behaves like a normal USB device, including a USB mass storage device. I also like the ability to update the software without losing anything.

Yeah, that's something I really value, and a reason I haven't updated my hopelessly ancient MP3 player.

I think there is a general rumour of an HTC refresh of the G1 too.

I'd be very interested in that. Any rough estimate of a release date? Probably after my phone-acquiring window, I suppose. Bugger.

Thanks for the info, everyone.

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