App Spotlight: Mediafly (beta)
It seems like more and more podcast players for webOS are popping up these days, especially as the App Catalog begins to move into full swing. One of these recent additions is Mediafly, developed by obtiva. It looks like it has some strong potential, but can it rival one of our favorites?
Setup and Interface
/o:p>
The interface of Media Fly is well done and pleasant on the eyes. It’s a breeze to navigate around the different sections of the program, and as a nice touch, they’ve smartly utilized the dropdown menu to allow you to jump to different parts of the application.
Mediafly account
One of the prerequisites of using the program to its fullest potential is signing up for a Mediafly.com account. This account allows you to manage your podcasts and playlists from a central point across multiple platforms, including iPhones and iPods, Squeezeboxes, Sansa PMP's, Zunes, and more.
Account setup
Quick, fairly painless, free, unfortunately necessary, signing up for a mediafly.com account requires a trip to the mediafly website. The process takes about 5 minutes to complete.
From here, you can "link" your device to your account.
Management:
Managing podcasts and playlists through the online portal is easy enough. The feeds available here closely mirror the ones you can browse though in the application. The biggest difference, of course, is that you can add and delete podcasts from the website, but not on the device itself.
Feeds and playlists managed here are sync'd to any "linked" devices.
Use/o:p>
From here, the program works like you’d expect it to. Before setting up the required mediafly account, you are able to browse a list of “popular” podcasts, segregated by genre. After setting the account up, you’ll have access to the content of “My Channels", which are the feeds and playlists you've added through the website.
Mediafly uses the native media program to handle both audio and video podcasts. While usable, there are other podcast players with transport controls offering more utility.
Performance:/o:p>
It’s in early beta, so issues are to be expected. I've experienced a few hiccups, such as the program suddenly forgetting my login credentials for my mediafly.com account, hangups while searching for podcasts, and errors while attempting to stream video podcasts. The application as a whole is quite stable, though, and none of the performance issues are show stoppers.
Pricing:
It's too early to tell for certain what pricing is going to be, but I'd guess it'll be either free or 99 cents, seeing as the iPhone version (audio+video) is currently free.
Summary:/o:p>
The idea of being able to manage all of your podcast subscriptions and playlists through a single online account for multiple devices and platforms is really quite clever, but I'd really like to be able to manage all of that content from the device itself. I would also prefer not to have to use the native streaming audio and video programs webOS currently offers for playback of my content. To answer the question I asked before the break: For now, I'm sticking with DrPodder as my primary podcast player.
Mediafly for the Pre is certainly on its way to be coming a robust podcast player, and even in its early form (version 0.17, as of this writing), it's there in many ways.
Mediafly can be downloaded from the homebrew app catalog, or directly from the mediafly website.
