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So recently I upgraded my cell phone to the HTC Hero Android Phone (Sprint).

While this isn’t my first phone, that could play MP3 files, its the first one I wanted to replace my Apple iPod nano 8 GB Blue (4th Generation).

This led me to being rather spoiled by the iPod and iTunes, work together. Of the podcast catchers I have experimented with in the past week, none of the them knew how to tell if I had listened to a podcast. This of course makes sense as that isn’t one of the variables the MSDOS file system (which at least my Android uses) knows of.  And while I know there a few good Android Apps that do podcatching, I would prefer that my computer keep my podcasts, and dishes them out to the Android, ala iPod / iTunes.

So here is what I would like to see in a PodCatcher:

Computer side:

• Be able to download regular podcasts
• Be able to download paid podcasts (ie: with login information)
• Generate a simple table to give to the Android based player.

Android (or other phone) side:

• Be able to play MP3 files
• Update simple table for Computer side to check

The table I think is key, currently I try using gPodder to send my music to, the bad thing is it doesn’t know how to tell if I have listened to the episode, its controls are simplistic at best. This means manually updating the client every time I want automatically update it so that it erases the old MP3s. The client on the Android will play the file, and then edit the table (perhaps in SQLite format) so that the next time the computer based side checks it will be able to know which episodes have been listened to.  As another side idea, instead of having it like iTunes used to have it where it was a Yes No toggle of have you listened to it, make it so it can take:

• 0 — haven’t listened to any of it
• 1– started but not finished
• 2– finished

Do you have any comments? Would this type of Open source catcher work?