Last week, we have release version 1.8 of the Podlove Publisher which is a substantial improvement to the things we recently added to version 1.7 of the software, specifically we put some more work into our integrations of App.net and Auphonic.

App.net

The App.net (ADN) posting service now supports setting a language annotation and cross-posting to a Patter room. Patter is the "chat rooms" of ADN and so you can now deliver your announcement to both the public timeline and a chat room, encouraging users to subscribe to the podcast's chat room in addition or as an alternative to following the podcasts' ADN account.

We are still exploring the possibilities with App.net and so these changes are just more toes being tipped in the pond to test the temperature. However, we think there is more to gain here which is why we keep investing in this module. We are now also listed in the official App.net directory.

Auphonic

Version 1.8 strongly enhances the integration with audio post-production service Auphonic. While release 1.7 allowed to import meta data from existing productions into Podlove, the new release now enables you to create productions with the information already typed into Podlove, to upload audio files directly to Auphonic, start productions remotely and get the results without ever having to go to the Auphonic web site at all.

You can select the source of the audio file for your production as you are used to with Auphonic: all the external services defined in your Auphonic account show up and so you can pass along media files via Dropbox, Amazon S3, SFTP or whatever you have configured to be a source.

But we also offer manual upload to Auphonic if your media file still resides on your computer. Please note that the manual upload actually passes the file directly to Auphonic. We are not uploading the file to your blog but take the direct route so that you are not missing out on speed or have to provide extra storage on your system. This is the very same experience you would have as when dealing directly with Auphonic with the only notable difference that you don't have to go there at all.

When creating a production, we take most relevant metadata from the Publisher and pass it along to Auphonic: title, subtitle, summary, the episode media file slug, license and publisher information.

If you work with chapter marks we recommend switching to "manual entry" (instead of using assets as a chapter source) so that you can benefit from the new integration too. The Auphonic module takes your chapter information and puts it into the production too.

We are currently omitting tags as these are difficult to access within WordPress.

We also do not support podcast and episode images to be uploaded automatically. You should set the podcast image in your Auphonic preset where you also define the output files and other settings. You can select the preset to apply to the production in the Auphonic module settings after authorization.

If you want to add an episode image or set other fields like the track number, you need to open and edit the production with Auphonic before starting the production. We currently discuss how we can improve these things in the future.

But the new integration should make working with Auphonic a lot easier, less error-prone and result in a much more reliable and quicker workflow for podcasters.