Best FREE RSS program???

[Crumbles]

Is there a good FREE RSS program (for videocasts such as HAK.5) that will let me add the feeds and let me set it to automatically download the video file for me?  BESIDES iTunes :P ???  Oh, and also allows me to minimize it to the systray so I don't have to stare at it open in the taskbar all the time.

Thanks in advance.  Just curious what you guys use.

[mubix]

I forget what it's called but it's something like mypodder or podcastready, you can google either and find it I'm sure, but that would be my suggestion for a non-iTunes rss feed downloader.

Now, if you want something more robust, try Miro.

[deleted]

Try Opera, it dosent auto download things but you just click the link. You can minimize it to the sys tray.

[Crumbles]

I forget what it's called but it's something like mypodder or podcastready, you can google either and find it I'm sure, but that would be my suggestion for a non-iTunes rss feed downloader.

Now, if you want something more robust, try Miro.

Wow, that podcastready thing is a heap!!!  Thanks for the suggestion though, but that program is terrible!  Miro seems to be WAY to bulky to just have a simple program that will download files for me via RSS...  Plus, I'm not even sure it does that...

Try Opera, it dosent auto download things but you just click the link. You can minimize it to the sys tray.

If I were going to do that, I would just download them in uTorrent.  The reason for the automation is so the videos can download while I'm at work and be ready when I sit down at my desk at home.

[Sparda]

hpodder + cron

[Crumbles]

hpodder + cron

Sorry... Windows..

I just downloaded Juice... going to try it out.  I'll report back how it is.  I had to right it to all hell to get it to work on Vista...

[Chris Gerling]

RSS bandit is light and good

http://www.rssbandit.org/

[Crumbles]

RSS bandit is light and good

http://www.rssbandit.org/

RSS Bandit looks pretty nice as well.  However, it does look to be a little more bloated than what I need.

Thank you all for your replies, I appreciate it very much.  After installing Juice, it appears to do exactly what I need, and only what I need.  Lightweight, and pretty nice.

Check it out if you are interested: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

Pics: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/screenshots/index.php

[digip]

http://o.mengue.free.fr/blog/2007/02/22/21...ng-cmd-and-wget

[digip]

Fuk it. I decided to just make my own using a few things I found online. This uses WGET to download the feed, search and replace strings with VBS to make links to files and then downloads them using WGET. Only thing left to do is just make it prompt you for the URL to the podcast. Im lazy and just made the URL in the bat script point to the XVID feed as a test.

http://www.twistedpairrecords.com/digip/wget_podcast.rar

Everything is in the Rar file. Let me know if you have any problems getting it to work.

Readme:

Generic Podcast Downloader using WGET and VBS
By DigiP 02/06/2008

SearchAndReplace.vbs from "experts-exchange.com"
(http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_21676958.html)


Intructions:
Edit the "wget_PodCast.bat" file before running it and replace 
"http://www.hak5.org/rss/xvid.xml" with the URL of the Podcast
you want to download. So long as the Podcast saves the URLs to
Download starting with "<enclosure url=" it will do the rest 
for you.

-DigiP

"wget_PodCast.bat":

@echo off
echo. > list.xml
:: (Generic Podcast Downloader)
:: "DigiP PodCast Streamer" by DigiP 02/06/2008
:: Change "http://www.hak5.org/rss/xvid.xml" 
:: to the URL of your podcast RSS Feed.
:: This runs through the downloaded Feed and 
:: creates links from just the "enclosure" section of the Feed.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

set rss=rss.xml

wget -O %rss% http://www.hak5.org/rss/xvid.xml --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

find "<enclosure" %rss% >> list.xml

::Sometimes VBS gets an error because it goes through too fast, so I added the ping.
ping 127.0.0.1 > nul

start SearchAndReplace.vbs list.xml "<enclosure url=" "<a href="
ping 127.0.0.1 > nul
start SearchAndReplace.vbs list.xml "length" ">a</a><"
ping 127.0.0.1 > nul
start SearchAndReplace.vbs list.xml "<=" ""
ping 127.0.0.1 > nul
start SearchAndReplace.vbs list.xml "/>" ""
ping 127.0.0.1 > nul


::::::
:: If you want a log file to append to, 
:: uncomment the next line and remove the one "without" the append-output command.
::wget -N -c -F --input-file="list.xml" --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)" --append-output="mylog.txt"

wget -d -o "debug.txt" -N -c -F --input-file="list.xml" --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
::   -N is for TImestamping. Will not download unless file is newer than one already downloaded.
::      -c will continue partial downlaods in the event that it was canceled or times out.
::         -F forces it to read list.xml as an HTML file and looks for links to download.
:: --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)" is set so server does not block wget spider.


del %rss%

"SearchAndReplace.vbs":

Option Explicit
' Does a text find and replace operation on a specified file.
' Written by Eric Phelps
' http://www.ericphelps.com

'Force "cscript"
Main
Wscript.Quit 0

Sub Main()
Dim fil 'As Scripting.File
Dim fils 'As Scripting.Files
Dim fol 'As Scripting.Folder
Dim fols 'As Scripting.Folders
Dim fs 'As Scripting.FileSystemObject
Dim strDirectories() 'As String
Dim strFileTypes 'As String
Dim lngCounter 'As Long
Dim strOldText 'As String
Dim strNewText 'As String
Dim strFileName 'As String
Const READONLY = 1
Const HIDDEN = 2
Const SYSTEM = 4
    '''''''''' Get arguments ''''''''''
    Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    If Wscript.Arguments.Count < 2 Then
        MsgBox "You must pass a file name, old text, and new text on the command line:" & vbCrLf & "start /w " & Wscript.ScriptFullName & " C:MYDOCU~1README.TXT d: e:" & vbCrLf & "Would replace all instances of ""c:"" with ""d:"" in ""README.TXT""."
        Wscript.Quit 1
    End If
    strFileName = Wscript.Arguments(0)
    If Not fs.FileExists(strFileName) Then
        MsgBox Wscript.Arguments(0) & " is not a legitimate file name."
        Wscript.Quit 1
    End If
    Set fil = fs.GetFile(strFileName)
    strOldText = Wscript.Arguments(1)
    If Wscript.Arguments.Count = 3 Then
        strNewText = Wscript.Arguments(2)
    Else
        strNewText = ""
    End If
    If Wscript.ScriptFullName <> fil.Path Then
        If ((fil.Attributes And READONLY) = 0) Then
            If ((fil.Attributes And SYSTEM) = 0) Then
                If ((fil.Attributes And HIDDEN) = 0) Then
                    ReplaceText fil, strOldText, strNewText
                End If
            End If
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Sub Status (strMessage)
'If the program was run with CSCRIPT, this writes a
'line into the DOS box. If run with WSCRIPT, it does nothing.
Dim ts 'As Scripting.TextStream
Dim fs 'As Scripting.FileSystemObject
Const ForAppending = 8 'Scripting.IOMode
    If Lcase(Right(Wscript.FullName, 12)) = "cscript.exe" Then 
        Wscript.Echo strMessage
    End If
End Sub

Sub Force(sScriptEng)
'Forces this script to be run under the desired scripting host
'Valid sScriptEng arguments are "wscript" or "cscript"
'If you don't supply a valid name, Force will switch hosts...
    If Lcase(Right(Wscript.FullName, 12)) = "wscript.exe" Then
        'Running under WSCRIPT
        If Instr(1, Wscript.FullName, sScriptEng, 1) = 0 Then
            'Need to switch to CSCRIPT
            CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "cscript.exe " & Wscript.ScriptFullName
            Wscript.Quit
        End If
    Else
        'Running under CSCRIPT
        If Instr(1, Wscript.FullName, sScriptEng, 1) = 0 Then
            'Need to switch to WSCRIPT
            CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "wscript.exe " & Wscript.ScriptFullName
            Wscript.Quit
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Sub ReplaceText(objScriptingFile, strOldText, strNewText)
Dim ts 'As Scripting.TextStream
Dim strFileText 'As String
Dim strBuffer 'As String
Dim lngCharPosition 'As Long
Const ForReading = 1 'Scripting.IOMode
Const ForWriting = 2 'Scripting.IOMode
    Set ts = objScriptingFile.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading)
    strFileText = ts.ReadAll
    ts.Close
    Set ts = objScriptingFile.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading)
    lngCharPosition = Instr(1, strFileText, strOldText, vbBinaryCompare)
    If lngCharPosition = 0 Then 
        Exit Sub
    End If
    strBuffer = ""
    Status objScriptingFile.Path
    Do While lngCharPosition <> 0
        Status "    ..." & Mid(strFileText, lngCharPosition - 10, Len(strOldText) + 20) & "..."
        strBuffer = strBuffer & Left(strFileText, lngCharPosition - 1) & strNewText
        strFileText = Mid(strFileText, lngCharPosition + Len(strOldText))
        lngCharPosition = Instr(1, strFileText, strOldText, vbBinaryCompare)
    Loop
    strBuffer = strBuffer & strFileText
    Set ts = objScriptingFile.OpenAsTextStream(ForWriting)
    ts.Write strBuffer
    ts.Close
    Set ts = Nothing
End Sub

WGET is really starting to come in handy :)

Next step is to make this in VB6(or C#, etc) and incorporate wget as a resource file. This way it can be set to run from the systray and take more input like multiple feeds to add to it and tell it when to update the feeds, etc.

The Rar filed version now just asks you for the URL of the feed and does the rest from there. It does not download rss feeds to read, just the files from a podcast, such as avi, mp3, mp4, etc, that are listed in the "enclosure" tag.

[SomeoneE1se]

democracy fireant

and songbird might do this but I haven't used it in some time

[mubix]

Wow, that podcastready thing is a heap!!!  Thanks for the suggestion though, but that program is terrible!  Miro seems to be WAY to bulky to just have a simple program that will download files for me via RSS...  Plus, I'm not even sure it does that...

Sorry mate, when I used podcastready it was awesome, just run it when you go to bed, it remembers what you listen to and deletes it automagically.