We have a very basic user interface to allow them to add additional episodes to their custom feed. Very useful if someone is taking a long trip and knows that they have time to listen to an additional episode or two. I use this a lot when traveling for business, usually grabbing an extra episode of each book to which I’m subscribed.

In effect, you could use this to skip episodes, as most podcasters are set up to only retrieve the most recent episode. So if you just listened to #5 and wanted to skip 6, the last episode added to the feed, you’d need to manually say “release one more”, putting #7 at the top and most recent. Your podcatcher, upon sync, would then only grab #7. Kludgy, but doable.

“And is there (or is there likely to be) a Podiobooks API available?”

We’ve talked about it. The engine that powers the site was designed to be utilized by sites other than Podiobooks.com. So I’ll give you a qualified yes. If we had an interesting project to work towards… sure!

re: “offer[ing] a cohort of learners ’shared experience’ so that the stimulus for discussion is based on a common rhythm of ‘newness’.” this is something I need to think about a lot more. The original intention was just to provide individual start date feeds, but being able to schedule “as if in realtime replays” across a group of learners acting as if they were a cohort, but following along at different points in time, is just such a beautifully quirrky to problem to think about.

NB it’s quite possible for a group of individuals to follow a single feed at the same pace and start date simply by sharing a feed URL, of course…

Your podiobooks “custom serialized feed generation process” ability to “look for confirmation that prior episodes have been accessed before sending the next file” sounds really useful, particularly where it’s important for the listener to hear every episode in sequence.

One of the issues with the WP daily feed plugin we commissioned is that if someone goes away then several unread posts will stack up. Using the date stamped feed url makes it tricky to “pause” the delivery of the feed, which is what your algorithm does natively and invisibly/in the background. (A less seemless/more clunky approach would be to use ID keyed feeds and have the use “pause” the delivery of the feed).

Just by the by, in podiobooks, is there also an ability for the user to “skip” chapters without listening to them?

And is there (or is there likely to be) a Podiobooks API available?

Happy to discuss that and more with you as necessary. And thanks for spreading the word of Podiobooks.com!

E.