Possible Solution for International Listeners?
We’ve received quite a few emails from folks that would like to listen to the podcast but can’t seem to get more than a few minutes into each episode. The vast majority of these complaints seems to be coming from locations overseas from the United States. I’ve been going back and forth with our hosting company’s tech support department, and neither I nor the tech support guys can find a problem on the hosting end of things, but I am still reluctant to assume that the problem is on the listener’s end. The volume of complaints and the common thread of international location (both Europe and Asia) seems to indicate that location has more to do with the problem than user error. Until this situation is resolved on a more permanent level, I have taken steps that will hopefully allow our international listeners to get each episode in its entirety.
Above the built-in player in each podcast post, you will find a link to “Download via Rapidshare.” Rapidshare is an ad-based file distribution service. Unfortunately there is a daily limit to the amount a user can download from Rapidshare. You will only be able to download one episode per day. Also, you will have to wait for a countdown of a few minutes before being able to start downloading the file. It is well known that there are ways to circumvent these annoyances, and I’m sure Google can provide you with specifics. Again, we regret that our international listeners have had to jump through so many hoops, and we are continuing to seek out a solution to the problem. Thank you for your continued patience.
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When Randy and I ran TheFourthRail.com, we’d often hear from readers who said the site hadn’t loaded for them in a month or more. Invariably, these readers would be from South America or other non-North American locales.
Apparently, the problem stemmed from international ISPs restricting access to the site. I’m not a techie guy, but I’ll bet the source of the problems are the ISPs.
05 Dec 2006 at 6:59 pm
QuoteI’m in France and when I download the podcast using Itunes, the end of the podcast is often missing, sometimes up to 20min missing. But when I download it directly from the direct link in the page of the podcast, it seems to work quite well.
06 Dec 2006 at 3:48 am
QuoteI’m in England and have had the same problem on a few of the podcasts when downloading through IE but whenever I’ve used Opera there’s been no problem.
06 Dec 2006 at 12:58 pm
QuoteFor what it’s worth, I listened to your most recent podcast and it crapped out at 10 minutes or so. I would up having to download it. I’m in the US, but I do use Firefox.
And, to deepen the mystery, I think Crankcast uses the same applet or whatever for inline listening, but their always works for me.
06 Dec 2006 at 1:56 pm
Quotei am in buenos aires and had no problem whatsoever when i listened to it from the site (though when i tried to listen to it through itunes it too lost 20 minutes or so).
06 Dec 2006 at 7:26 pm
QuoteUpdate: an earlier podcast worked for me just fine, and now I’ve gone back to the most recent one, and it’s fine for me as well. So it was just a one-time thing for me; ignore my earlier post (especially its poor grammar).
06 Dec 2006 at 7:40 pm
QuoteThanks for the input everybody. So, has anybody had any problems with the podcast when they download the file directly? If not, there is no need for the Rapidshare option.
It’s starting to sound like the problem occurs with the inline player or when iTunes is used. It may have been pure chance that the majority of the complaints were coming from overseas.
07 Dec 2006 at 12:48 pm
QuoteI’m in England and I’m generally unable to listen to the full podcast.
07 Dec 2006 at 3:09 pm
QuoteStones_Throw, what method are you using to listen to the podcast when it fails?
Are you using the inline player, the subscription feed, or the direct download link?
07 Dec 2006 at 4:41 pm
QuoteYes, yes YES!!!!! It works!!! I’ve been trying for close to a month to download complete podcasts and even with the help of the great comic pants staff, was unable until today. Using Rapidshare I downloaded the podcast, all of it (not just the first 5 or 10 minutes of it). I’ll try tomorrow to download another one (reached my limit for today), but I think this is the way to go for me.
I tried downloading 8 podcasts, using all three methods (ipod, direct download and popup) and none of them worked, so thanks a lot for this guys, your podcasts rock!
08 Dec 2006 at 2:28 pm
QuoteGlad you’re enjoying it, gabox. Hopefully our hosting company and I can come up with a way to make the other methods work like they’re supposed to.
09 Dec 2006 at 2:11 am
QuoteOh, I forgot to mention, I’m an international viewer, am currently in Japan for a year. I figure(d), the problem was at my end, though I’ve had no other problem accesing any other stuff by internet, but whatever. Thanks a lot guys.
09 Dec 2006 at 6:24 am
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