Podscope Blog

Yes, thats right, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. We’ve rolled out some sweeping changes to our result page layout. The new layout eliminates those pesky “expand” buttons (a legacy feature) and presents the results in a new, cleaner looking, format.

Our more astute users will also notice the addition of two new links to the bottom of each result. Podscope results are now just one-click away from being on your Del.icio.us or Digg home pages.

So here’s your chance to tell us what you think. Do you like the new layout? Have we done something wrong? Is there something in our teeth?

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Podscope Team Leader

Well, its been quite a while coming, but we’ve made some changes to Podscope - and we’re quite pleased.

The most obvious new change is our front page, the new “listen-y” Podscope head now features a range of example searches. We included these to make getting-started easier for first-time audio search users. Heck, we even threw in a little javascript to make it fun to watch - ok, maybe it’s not that fun.

In the realm of substantive changes, today we unveil RSS search results. Die-hard users may have noticed this before, but we’re making them more obvious now so we can convince you to add Podscope results to your favorite podcast aggregator.

For those of you who don’t know (and even those of you who do) having search results delivered in RSS format allows for a whole range of display and playback options. The long and short of it is: RSS results make it easier for you to keep track of timely mentions of your favorite search-terms.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months. At the moment, we’re working hard to increase our harvesting capacity and to bring you more advanced search options and ranking.

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Team Leader - podscope.com

Well, Podcast411 was the first to have it - now everyone can benefit from Podscope’s embedded search program. Podcasters rejoice - if you want to give your website’s visitors the abillity to search your podcast using Podscope, check out Podscope Remote. There you’ll find the tools to create a custom embeddable Podscope search box.

At the moment we have 3 formats, but we’re listening - If there’s a format that we’re missing and you think is important let us know about it.

- In other news -

The lack of recent blog postings is a reflection of just how busy it is around here - for some reason it seems that summer has been especially busy. Stay tuned to Podscope in the comming weeks to see a surge of new content, new content types, and brand new search options.

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Team Leader - podscope.com

Well, now you know why my posts to this blog have been few and far-between. We just rolled out a major upgrade across the podscope.com webfarm.

New features include:

• Faster & more accurate searches
• Unlimited hits per item
• Sleeker less memory-intensive “uniplayer”
• A new layout for hits
• Sticky search mode
• And lastly…… VIDEO (and you thought I’d forgotten)

We’ve already added a few video podcasts and we’re looking forward to getting more submissions. Check it out!

Meanwhile, deep beneath the earth’s crust, in the TVEyes ultra-lair…

Work continues increasing the size and scale of our harvesting system. To date we’ve indexed more than 10 million spoken words. And we’re just getting warmed up - which is good because everyday more people are using podscope to find fresh, relevant, content.

Well I’m done tooting the podscope horn for today. Stay tuned, we’ve got some more neat features up our sleeves and keep posting comments! We read every one of them.

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Team Leader - podscope.com

Wow
The community response to our beta has been outstanding! I’d like to thank all those who left us feedback. Whether in the form of a thumbs-up or a helpful suggestion, we appreciate it!

Cori Schlegel, at kinrowan.net, was nice enough to put together a firefox plugin for podscope. Check it out!

While I’m thanking people, Maxim Oei is due a huge thank you from the podscope team. Without his help the podscope logos would still be little doodles on pieces of scrap paper.

Stay Tuned…
At the moment we’re working to improve our harvesting capacity. If you can’t find your podcast on podscope and you’ve submitted it - be patient - We’ll get to it. And there’s good news for searchers as well. We are making some adjustments to our scoring system so that relevance becomes even more meaningful.

Again, we’re always listening for feedback. So leave us some.

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Team Leader - podscope.com

Welcome to Podscope!

We’re excited to introduce the beta test of Podscope - the Internet’s first spoken-word search engine for Podcasts. If you’re as excited about this service as we are, you probably already know what a podcast is. But, for those of you who don’t know, a podcast is like a radio program which can be downloaded and played at any time. Wikipedia has a terrific entry on podcasting.

We’re starting our beta period on April 18th as a way of seeing how the platform holds up. During this time please be patient, the beta is to evaluate the system under load to determine areas needing improvement. Believe me when I say, we are very interested in feedback. So if you’re a listener or a podcaster, please, tell us what you like and what you think should be changed.

Thanks For Coming!

Dave Seltzer
Systems Architect
Team Leader - podscope.com