Ok first lesson in blogging, get your facts sorted. I started writing this entry with a long list of bugfixes and feature requests for my common RSS readers. But then I went to the sites for PocketRSS and Blogmatrix Sparks! and realised that they bo...

This website is going to disappear in the next 48 hours and will reappear on Wednesday or Thursday with a brand new look ... and lots of interesting toys for you to play with.

Please stand by and sorry for the interruption.

Based on preliminary feedback we've received on 1.7.19, the following changes are implemented (and available in the next version):

• The ability to pause downloads and all processes associated with converting radio programs to MP3s
• The ability to set the process priority for the conversion program
• The ability to cancel downloads and radio programs will in progress
• A better way to discover radio stations

There's more to come, obviously.

Sparks! can now be configured using the preferences (File > Preferences...) to connect to the Internet before recording a radio program. This will be useful for you folks still using modems.

This has not been tested yet! Please send your feedback.

The Help > Report a bug and Help > Request a feature menu items now direct the user to the forums for support.

Sparks! used to attempt to synchronize (i.e. find out what has changed) all its OPML directories at startup. How often this actually happens can now be changed:

An upcoming version will allow more explicit synchronization.

There's a new button with the Radio's weekday schedule that will toggle between all weekdays being set and no weekdays being set.

One of the neater features of Jäger that we've added back into Sparks! is the ability to monitor sites that don't have syndication feeds. When you attempt to add a site to Sparks! and a feed is not detected, the following dialog is displayed:

The meaning and use of these are pretty select explanitory. The great thing about the checking for changed links option is that it will turn almost any newspaper into a weblog!

There's a few minor bugs here. "Jäger" needs to be changed to "Sparks!" and the third option needs to disappear as it no longer has any meaning in Sparks!

It is much easier to change the Category of a weblog, the Playlist of Radio Stations and Podcasters, and to move weblogs between "My Playlists" and "My Podcasters" in Sparks 1.7.19.

To change the Playlist of a podcaster (or radio station), right click on it and select Change Playlist...:

To change the Category of a weblog, right click on it and select Categorize...:

These actions will bring up "Categorize" dialog:

From here you can:

• Move weblogs back and forth between "My Podcasters" and "My Weblogs"
• Change the Category/Playlist
• Create whole new Categories/Playlists (simply by typing in the name)

In previous versions you had to drag and drop the weblogs. You can still do this but it is no longer necessary.

The layout and control of the panes is much smarter in version 1.7.19. The three panes of Sparks are:

• The Tree, on the left hand side. The Search Field sits above the Tree and the Controls below the Tree.
• The Browser, on the right hand side. The Status Area sits below the Browser and shows what is being downloaded by the browser
• The Results List sits above the Browser. The Results List is only displayed in "three pane mode" and shows useful information available in the Tree. The Location Area is above the Browser and Results List and tells what the browser is displaying.

Here's what's new:

• While reading items in "My Weblogs", Sparks! will reconfigure itself to the "two pane" mode. In all other items, Sparks! will work in the normal three pane mode.
• You can reconfigure this using the two-pane/three-pane buttons in the Controls area.
• The Results List tries to display useful information. For example, in "My Podcasts" it will display all available podcasts and podcasters.
• Selecting an item in the Tree will select the most closely related item in the Results List
• Selecting an item in the Results List will select the corresponding item in the Tree.
• The Tree will collapse all previously expanded "paths" when a new path is opened. This keeps the display much neater.

Media files (audio and video files) are now displayed in the browser when viewing the weblog, podcast or radio station and their various entries. Clicking on the graphic will initiate a download or playing as appropriate.

If a download is started Sparks! will prompt you when it is finished to play the file.

It's also worth mentioning that if you download a media file stored under "My Weblogs", Sparks! will ask you if you want to reclassify the blog under "My Podcasts".

As mentioned in the previous entry, Sparks! now has a number of extensions that allow you do extra things with links dragged to the application.

To get to the extensions menu, select Action > Subscribe, Record or Import..., press the "+" button next to the location bar, press F5 or drag a URL to Sparks! (future versions will allow files to dropped also).

A very useful trick: if you're reading a webpage in Sparks! and you see a link you like, just drag it over to the left-hand pane and off you go!

Send to Del.icio.us

This will post a link to Del.icio.us. The "Del.icio.us User" and "Tags" are remembered after the first time you enter them.

You can also just double click on the "Send to Del.icio.us" item (with an empty URL) to get to your Del.icio.us home page.

Send to Movable Type Weblog

This will create a new entry in your Movable Type weblog (assuming you have one) posting the link with a sample message body (which obviously you can edit). The "Movable Type URL" and the "Tags" are remembered.

If you specify any "Tags" (tags are individual words with no spaces) a number of Technorati Tags will be added to your posting. These are very useful for allowing others to find and classify your posts.

Study the example above for the format of the URL you have to enter to specify your movable type account — essentially it's your main "mt.cgi" URL and "&blog_id=#", with "#" being whatever is appropriate for you (probably "1"). The next version of this will be a little smarter.

Send link by E-Mail

Need to tell someone about a link? This brings up your e-mail application with the link as the message body (to which you can add more text).

What's coming next?

What's coming? Well, an extension to tag and upload MP3 files, that's for sure! If you have any ideas, let us know.

There is now a single menu option to handle adding things to Sparks!: Action > Subscribe, Record or Import.... You'll also see this dialog when you drag a URL to Sparks!

You'll note a few things here:

• Everything to do with adding things to Sparks! is here: adding radio stations, adding weblogs and podcasters, and adding OPML directories.
• The menu items are greyed at different levels: Sparks! tries to determine what the best action for the URL or filename you've entered. If you've entered something that's clearly incompatible with an action it will be inactivated (the icon will go grey too) — for example, trying to add a file as a weblog.
• There's three extensions at the bottom of the list: Send to Del.ico.us, Send to Movable Type Weblog and Send link via e-mail. What these do should be fairly self-evident, but we'll explain further in an upcoming entry.

  Extensions are shipped as source code and it should be fairly easy to add new extensions yourself if you know a little Python.

BlogMatrix Sparks! 1.7.19-beta for Windows is available.

A list of what has been changed a what has been fixed will be posted later today but let's just say it's significant.

We thought that Sparks! 1.7.19-beta for Windows would be out yesterday, but there's a few more bug fixes (and related testing) that need to get into the product before we put this one out the door.

The number of changes in the version are quite substantial. Feature wise, the only major things missing are OPML Export and BitTorrent support (both of which we consider critical).

There's a fair number of mopping up exercises to be done bug wise, especially with making radio recording more reliable.

There's now a "Cleanup..." menu item at the "My Weblogs/Podcasts/Radio Stations" level, Category/Playlist level and the weblog/podcaster/radio level. This displays a menu item that lets you delete attachments (now called "Media Files") as a batch.

The main tree control — the left hand pane — will collapse any previously expanded paths when a new path is opened. Does this make any sense? It will when you see it — it makes the presentation that much cleaner.

Sparks! has two basic configurations — the two pane mode (the "tree" and the browser) and the three pane node (the "tree", the "list" and the browser).

The three pane mode is very useful when recording radio, looking for podcasts, browsing OPML directories and so forth. The list control allows you to quickly locate a particular item that you're looking for. The two pane mode is useful for weblog reading, where items are generally accessed sequentially (as opposed to randomly).

The next version of Sparks! will automatically hop between two pane and three panel mode depending on what you're looking at. If you a different default mode, you can switch between two and three pane mode using the control buttons at the bottom of the application.

It looks like the latest version of Sparks!'s mplayer (needed to record radio) wasn't Athalon friendly. Download and Unzip this file and save "mplayer.exe" into "C:/Program Files/BlogMatrix Sparks!/". The next version of Sparks! will ship with this version.

What's the Aha!, you ask? This version of mplayer can record Ogg Vorbis streams, such as this one (please test it for us!). Note that the resulting file is still stored as an MP3!

A user writes:

Unless I'm just missing it, it seems like Sparks puts all podcasts in the same playlist. It'd be great to have each podcast go to a different playlist for easier managing.

Sparks! does indeed support multiple playlists -- the playlist is simply the category that the podcaster/weblog/radio station is filed under.

• select My Podcasters
• right-click > New Playlist
• click on the New Playlist category that was created and rename to whatever you want it to be
• drag a podcast/weblog into the new playlist
• all (future) podcasts download from that podcaster will go into that Playlist

We'll an easier way of doing this before the 1.8 release.