Installing The Spellcatcher
Why Should I Install The Spellcatcher?
The Spellcatcher is a kind of "podcatcher", a program that automatically downloads new episodes of your favorite podcasts to your computer just as soon as they are posted, so you can listen to them right away.
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The Spellcatcher
The #1 Reason To Install Spellcatcher
It is the only method by which normal podcasters can get any compensation to support their shows. The website & servers backing the Spellcaster make it possible & practical for large advertizers to buy many ad placements in numerous podcast shows that have audiences too tiny for the advertizers to bother with otherwise. Thanks to the Spellcatcher's back-end network, you can support the podcasters you love merely by choosing to use the Spellcatcher to fetch their latest episodes.
Less Work
Without a podcatcher, you'd would have to manually browse to the websites of your favorite shows by hand to look at their podcast feed. You would need to examine each post to determine if you've already downloaded it before or not.
Remembers Download History So You Don't Have To
Sometimes you might forget which episodes you've already seen, and you'd waste your time & bandwidth downloading shows you've already played, but don't recall until you play them.
Faster, More Diligent Than Downloading Episodes By Hand
The Spellcatcher can be set to check for new episodes several times a day as a scheduled task. This means you get to hear your podcasts about current events while they are still current. The time you save can be used to play more of the podcasts you love!
The Only Podcatcher Under Active Development
All other known dedicated PC podcatchers appear to be dead projects. This means no new features will ever be made for them. Some non-podcatcher software is capable of fetching podcasts but is not made for this purpose, and so do the job poorly. Indeed, the reason the Spellcatcher was developed in the first place is because all other software would try to download the entire back catalog of a podcast feed's old, out-of-date, irrelevant episodes, with no option to download future episodes only. Downloading a single feed's back catalog could take days & fill up an entire hard drive. Personally, I subscribe to many feeds, so this waste of time & resources is so objectionable that I decided to write a whole new podcatcher from scratch to prevent it!
Future Development
This first version of the Spellcatcher is made for Windows operating systems. As long as the Spellcatcher succeeds, further improvements can include versions for other platforms, localization of content/advertizing, and other features that make life easier for podcasters, such as tools to create valid XML atom feeds for their shows. Many more features can be developed, so long as this basic endeavour succeeds!