Hi everyone, I just discovered Justcast, which works in conjunction with Dropbox to host your own podcast RSS feed using your Dropbox account.
Here are the steps.
- Go to www.theJustcast.com and click Sign Up Now, type in your dropbox login details, and give it permission to use your account. It will automatically create an Example subfolder under Dropbox > apps > Justcast.
- Find some mp3 or other media files on your computer, and paste them in that example folder from step 1.
- After the files have finished uploading to Dropbox, go back in your Justcast account in your browser, it will show you the folder has x many files in it. activate the Edit link below the folder name.
- There will be many fields on this page for putting in your own podcast description, author name, twitter handle, etc. if this is just for your personal use for transferring files, then The only important ones there are the public or private radio buttons. I think perhaps if you leave it public then it will be published for anyone to discover and subscribe to. If you choose Private, then they randomize the rss feed URL and do not publish it. Activate the update button at the bottom, and then activate the link that is the name of the folder.
- There are a few options on this page for how to distribute the link to your podcast feed, there are links to put it on Facebook, Twitter, or email. If you copy the link that just says RSS, that will be fine for the next step.
- Open your podcast app of choice, add a new podcast, and paste in the address from the previous step, and that's it.
- Optional, to make it easier for you or others to type the podcast RSS feed in step 6, you can take the long RSS feed URL from step 5 and turn it into a shortened URL through sites like Bit.ly, etc. as an example I created a sample podcast feed for you to try out. before I shortened it, the feed address looked like this: http://www.thejustcast.com/shows/b8750ea377073f2f0efb33d04e9d91dbc9ad3f4...
and here is the shortened link: www.tinyurl.com/justcastTest
You can add either one in your podcatcher.
Here is their video to further demo these steps (mostly visually, but you get the idea) https://vimeo.com/76843050
Justcast has a free and a paid Pro option. The free version lets you have 3 files in your folder at any one time. the paid version (at the time of this posting, was $5/month or $50 USD a year) took away any restrictions as to the number of files.
There are many ways to transfer files from our computers to our iDevices, but I was looking for a one-click solution. Basically I wanted to be able to have a special folder somewhere on my computer, and somehow have everything in that folder automatically downloaded to my iDevice. Since I update my podcasts with just a single click on a regular basis, doesn't it make sense to have any extra audio I wanted on my device to be transferred that way as well. I don't think there is an easier way than this, once you get it set up.
Naturally this was designed for creating your own podcast, but I personally find it much more useful for sending audio files to my iPhone.
This is the first time I’ve posted anything like this. I wasn’t sure where to put it so will start with the forum. If you have suggestions for how I can shorten it or clean it up, feel free.