I have an XML/RSS podcast feed that links to all of my organization's podcasts. The mp3 files themselves are stored on our FTP, which the XML feed links to.
I'd like to start tracking how many times a podcast is getting played/downloaded. The mp3 files are played in one of three ways:
1) Through our website, via links that go directly to the mp3 file.
2) Through our app, in its podcast section. The app allows you to play any our podcasts, but I'm not sure if playing the podcasts on the app is trackable.
3) Through downloads/plays of our podcasts from the XML feed.
I admittedly don't understand how this works very well. Is there a way to track plays for all of these podcasts through one service? I've looked at Feedburner and Blubrry.
The easiest way to track the downloads of your podcast episodes (e.g., mp3 files on your server) is using a software for graphical log analysis, such as Awstats. In many cases it comes as a pre-installed package in your web server and, if you have a hosting provider, it will be probably available to the customers via the Control Panel.
In case you don't have access neither to the server logs nor to log analysis tools, you can follow the official Technical Specifications for podcasts by Apple, where you'll find instructions to implement alternative ways to track the number of times that each episode has been downloaded (see section "Tracking Usage").
Finally, you could also give a look to third-party services such as Podtrac.
Related
Is there a way to have one product definition and have it publish to multiple sites? I am looking for this ability specifically in DNN or Umbraco, either with free or paid extensions. I did install both the platforms and played with the free extensions and looked for any extension offering such functionality but did not find one. Any links or pointers are highly appreciated!
I had looked up for this info in many places before reaching over to the expert pool here, hoping to get some hints;
In umbraco there is the built in /base extension (http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/reference/umbraco-base) which enables you to access product data that is maintained in Umbraco from other websites. Base is REST-ish so the implementation is well documented - you can access the data as XML or JSON (Returning Json instead of XML with Umbraco Base).
Also as the implementation is REST-ish the other websites that consume the content maintained in the core site could be written in anything that can consume a REST feed eg html & javascript.
It's not 100% clear to me what setup you're after, but if you're looking to set up a traditional Authoring/Delivery configuration - one of the few paid offerings Umbraco has is called Courier. It's a very reasonably priced (~$135USD,/99EUR) deployment manager that handles syncing content between two sites, i.e., Authoring and a Delivery server.
It's a very smart tool that manages content, configuration, and dependencies. It's neat and also supports a great open-source project!
If you're looking to setup something more like a centralized product database that is used by many sites - amelvin is on good pointer with BASE. They have a nice api where you may also set up your own webservice (beyond their own webservice functaionality!).
If you need this centralized product data to notify the other sites to update their caches - i encourage you to look into the 'distributedCall' functionality.
There's a bit of documentation on distributed calls in this load-balancing tutorial that may help understand the concept a bit better.
...Hope this helps get pointed in the right direction.
Our app is a sort-of self-service website builder for a particular industry. We need to be able to store the HTML and image files for each customer's site so that users can easily access and edit them. I'd really like to be able to store the files on S3, but potentially other places like Box.net, Google Docs, Dropbox, and Rackspace Cloud Files.
It would be easiest if there there some common file system API that I could use over these repositories, but unfortunately everything is proprietary. So I've got to implement something. FTP or SFTP is the obvious choice, but it's a lot of work. WebDAV will also be a pain.
Our server-side code is Java.
Please someone give me a magic solution which is fast, easy, standards-based, and will solve all my problems perfectly without any effort on my part. Please?
Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but we built http://mover.io to address this kind of thing. We currently support 13 different end points and we have a GUI interface and an API for interfacing with all these cloud storage providers.
So, yes, this is probably 1000th question on the subject. However, my question is somewhat different from others that were asked about this, so please bear with me:
I am looking to develop a single mobile-app that targets the three/four popular and/or growing mobile platforms (Iphone, Android, WinPhone7, RIM). This application is an extension of an existing SaaS system that my startup currently offers. This mobile-app would provide a quick-and-simple way to view up-to-date status & chart & report information for the data that SaaS application collects. Connection to the internet is required 100%. No data entry besides username/password. App is very simple with 5-6 "pages".
In phase 1, all that would need to be supported is for user to log in, get to see current status of his data stored in the cloud, get access to a few live reports
In phase 2, I'd like to be able to offer push-notification of certain key events from my servers in the cloud
My goals are:
1) The back-end processing that generates data for reports is already written in ASP.NET MVC2. I want to re-use it. It can be exposed as either a WCF service or published on a mobile-friendly website
2) I'd like to be able to deploy the patches faster than through the official app-stores/marketplaces.
3) I cannot afford to spend a lot of resources to target three-four proprietary platforms, for an app that is auxiliary to the vertical purpose of the business. I want to develop it once for all 3-4 platforms.
4) I do not have access, nor do I want to purchase a Macbook
5) I do want to deploy thru the vendor-specific application marketplaces
6) I'd like to stay way from proprietary languages/frameworks/lock-ins
Sounds like what I need is a shell around a mobile-friendly site that can be packaged as an app. Are there existing products that can make it REAL EASY for me to do so? Will doing so, preclude me from doing push notifications in phase 2?
Can anyone recommend a "shell" product that would make a wrapper around the website as well as Javascript library that would look the best across all 4 platforms. I've seen the names like Jqtouch, Jquery Mobile, etc... but not sure which ones are better for what I need.
Do I need PhoneGap? I am not 100% sure here. Can PhoneGap use online-only html/javascript pages to translate into native code or must html/javascript files be distributed with the application? I'd rather have the website itself drive the UI completely, as I can keep changing the website without various version approval processes from vendor market-stores.
Thank you for help
I don’t think you need Phonegap after reading about your project goals. You might consider a Web App instead of a native one if you 1) dont want to buy a mac (required for iOS even tho you can compile it in the cloud: https://build.phonegap.com/), and 2) want to apply and deploy updates anytime without going thru those platform independent marketplaces and approval processes.
jQuery Mobile would be an excellent choice, currently (at this very moment) in Alpha 3 but a very stable one and you can deploy your system on any of those platforms. Note that if you focus your efforts in a Web App you can’t target the second phase you mentioned: Push Notifications.
If you decide going Native, then Push Notifications services can be deployed into your Phonegap project once you setup the proper web services and certificates (take a look # http://easyapns.com);
..and one quick note, the idea of phonegap is that all resources (html, js, images. etc) have to be distributed locally within the app and then getting online data (like reports, etc) using JSON from another web service, and that’s another easy task to accomplish. Phonegap DOES NOT compile your HTML files into native code (ObjectiveC or Java), it just load your Web App into a UIWebKit component at run time (in the case of an iOS app)
Another alternative could be using Titanium - http://www.appcelerator.com but this approach is more javascript oriented and your final app looks much more native. (not HTMLs here so I think thats a drawback for you)
Hope it helps :)
I am developing an ASP.NET intranet application that needs to have an interactive map interface.
There are some pretty neat Silverlight mapping plugins that I think could work well, specifically:
ArcGIS Silverlight API: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/silverlight/
DeepEarth mapping framework: http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
There are no doubt many more plugins out there that will allow easy interaction between ASP.NET and the mapping interface (please suggest some if I've missed the major players).
My major concern however is using these tools with local data sources. What is the best option here? All I need is some basic satellite imagery of moderate resolution and some overlays of cities and country borders. Can I download a dataset of these images? I dont really care if they are up to date or not, so long as the photos were taken in the last 20 years.
I want to be able to use local data sources because external internet connections could be very slow due to the nature of the organisation's work, Intranet communication will always be much faster.
To summarise:
1.) where can I find a dataset of moderate quality global satellite imagery?
2.) Which web based mapping plugin will allow me to plug into such a data source?
If I can get something like the DeepEarth demo (http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth) but grabbing the data from internal company servers I would be very happy.
You can check out the free geodata listing at:
- http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=1
Or have a look at:
http://downloads.cloudmade.com/
where cloudmade provides downloadable openstreetmap data converted to shape files.
I'm building a little play project and I'd like to use satellite images of a town inside deepzoom, what's the easiest way to get them? I'm sure there's a MUCH better way than PrtScn, I've tried google maps downloader but it doesn't download satellite images and it's company don't seem to be offering it anymore.
Take a look at Deep Earth, unless what you're trying to build is what deep earth give you - in which case it may remove all the fun ;)
http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
If you want to go your own way, then it used to be that you could just manually request the various image tiles directly from the MS Virtual Earth server hosting them, if you could calculate the quad keys and build the correct URL, thus bypassing their payment model. Whilst I know they were looking to cut out this loop hole, that's certainly what early versions of Deep Earth did.
Microsoft Virtual Earth has SOAP and AJAX-based services that you can use in your application. The service has a Staging and Production version. Using the Staging version is free, and could easily serve the needs of a "play project." The Production version costs money and can serve info to a large application with many users.
http://dev.live.com/VirtualEarth/
However there is some registration required to get working with the Staging sdk. You can get started here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc980844.aspx