Beta Test Scouta for iTunes on Windows

Last week we released the Scouta Agent for Mac: a nifty piece of software that checks what podcast and vodcast subscriptions you have in iTunes, and uses those to provide personal recommendations. It then continues to provide recommendations based on what your watching and listening to in iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and the Apple TV.

Clinton, our application developer, is full tilt into development of the Windows version. As you’d expect, we’re eager to start testing how it runs, and see if we can pick up some of the bugs early. So, this is a call-out to anyone who uses iTunes on Windows to subscribe to podcasts and vodcasts.

The initial testing won’t do much, the updates aren’t actually send to our database, but it shouldn’t be too long before we can turn them on and you’ll start receiving recommendations.

If you’d be interested in helping us test, email feedback@scouta.com.

Scouta Launches Software for iTunes

Yesterday we made a release that I think is Scouta’s biggest event: we released our Agent for iTunes.

When Graeme and I first talked about the Scouta concept back in 2005, the key to it’s acceptance was ease of use. Graeme then spent weeks building a proof of concept that would allow our recommendations to be based on a member’s iTunes library. That has since been redesigned and improved, and yesterday was made public.

Basically the Mac version of our Scouta Agent for iTunes will update a member’s Scouta account with their podcast and vodcast subscriptions. It will then provide recommendations based on those that are listened to or watched. The clever part, if we do say so ourselves, is that it will only take into account the ones that you’ve almost completely watched or listened to. We figure that if you’ve only listened to a few minutes of a half hour show, it’s not a favorite.

What’s even cooler is it also works seamlessly with iPods, iPhones, and the Apple TV. I listen to podcasts on my iPod every day, and now watch video podcasts on my Apple TV. The new software means Scouta gives me personal recommendations without any extra effort. I literally just watch and listen to shows on these devices, and I receive new recommendations that are sent straight to the iPod or Apple TV.

The Windows version is currently in development, and should be available soon! We also hope to look into working with other media players. So, if there are any people who are keen to help us add support for other media software, let us know.

We also spent the best part of a month working on improving the look of the site, and adding some extra features that put conversations and activity updates right in to a member’s My Scouta page. It means that if you have friends using Scouta, or have joined a Scouta Group, you can easily share podcasts or video, or stay a part of the conversations.

Many thanks to Clint, our Agent developer, and Simon, our web developer, who have been tirelessly working on the code, making it an ace service that we’re all really proud of.

You can read about and download the Scouta Agent for iTunes here.

Tip: Scouta faves and recommendation on your iPod

So, if you’ve been playing with Scouta a bit and have some recommendation generated for you, it is really, really easy to take those recommendations and get some of them onto your iPod. This means you can end up with an always-ready feed of new podcasts to watch and listen to on your iPod from your Scouta recommendations.

Not all generated recommendations are compatible with iTunes and the iPod playing formats, but happily iTunes figures that out in a nice friendly way so we don’t have to bother about it.

Here’s how:

1. Firstly, you’ll need to be a Scouta member if you want to get your own recommendations. Join up at http://scouta.com/members/join if you haven’t already.
2. On your MyScouta page, there are two lists — one called favorites and the other called recommended. See under the headings, there’s a subscribe in itunes link. Clicking on those links will start your iTunes and go to the podcast section, where it will add these links as RSS feeds. (If you haven’t joined yet and want to see a MyScouta page, have a look at mine)
3. iTunes will read the feed and start downloading the files it can use with iTunes or the iPod.

Okay, you now have one or two new RSS feeds coming into yout iTunes. What next? Make sure your iPod is downloading the podcasts and videos for these feeds - when you sync your iPod, look on the Podcasts tab to make sure that you are downloading the relevant feeds. They will be called something like Scouta: recommendations for username and Scouta: username’s items. They’ll be named the same on your iPod too.

The recommendations… feed is your recommendations generated by scouta, whereas the items… list is the set of faves you’ve added to scouta yourself or given good ratings to.
I use this feature a lot to serve up fresh podcasts for my commute. Each day is a surprise, but the power of the recommendation system is that I’m almost always served up something interesting. Try it. But be warned. Once you set this going, you get pretty quickly frustrated having to go back to searching for podcasts by hand.

And for bonus points, you can do the same with groups as well — so get your friends together, make a group, and you can all listen/watch the same stuff together as you all add stuff to the group together. This works beautifully for a community working together on something.. This is a great way to all be on the same page by sharing a set of audio and video favourites.