When we started to think about the future of Ziepod, we came up with many new ideas, and couple of innovative ideas, too. Then we looked at Ziepod and understood that its user interface couldn't handle that much and decided to upgrade it before reaching to the version 1. And after long hours and days of development and implementation, new releases of Ziepod and Ziepod+ came out.

Have to say that during this development process, we got many feedbacks from out dedicated users. With this new release, we answered most requested features but there are still plenty of requested features to be added in upcoming releases. So we just wanted to let you know this fact.

Spacious Environment to Experience Podcasts Better

The main aspect of this new release is to provide more spacious and flexible environment for all actions you can perform with Ziepod. To give an example, now you can manage your downloads in much spacious environment. Or in case of the playlist, you can see more information about items in your playlist. Popup notifier is also one of upgraded components to show more in less space, as shown below.

Reaching out to the Podcasting World ... Perfected

As you know, Ziepod users from all around the world are rating podcast episodes while they are listening to podcasts with Ziepod and those rated episodes are listed in the 'Ratings' tab of the ziepod.com. With this new release, you can also reach those rated episodes from inside Ziepod, which means that Ziepod helps you reach quality content in anyway.

Ziepod+ becomes a 'Complete Solution'

This new release is especially a turning point for Ziepod+ as we wanted to make it a complete solution for both podcasts and blogosphere. Now you will have more control over retrieved content as it enables you to monitor and filter retrieved content, as well as experiencing it in web-sytle presentation, as shown below.

One set of new features of Ziepod+ is related to content filtering. Virtual channels and word watchdogs of Ziepod+ will help you monitor retrieved content from your subscriptions for special words and will inform you of their occurances so that you can read or listen to them as soon as they are detected. Another new feature is the bulk channels. You can combine many feeds into a bulk channel and then treat them as one feed if you have Ziepod+.

New Ziepod+ also enhances your downloading experience. While you can put a limit on your download bandwidth usage, you can also monitor your downloads via new external panel, shown above. This new panel lets you keep an eye on your downloads anytime, even if Ziepod is minimized. Since it is a transparent, it doesn't intervene with other windows on your screen.

We not only added new features into Ziepod+ but also improve existing ones. For example, its dockable video panel now can be used in all visual modes. You can even watch videos even if Ziepod is minimized.

Another empowered new feature is that you will be able to browse multiple webpages at the same time on the Internet thanks to the upgraded tabbed browsing feature.

All in all

When all new features are listed, it becomes a long list. Here we mentioned highlights but there are also small and very effective new features as well. For example, new Ziepod can replace the name of downloaded file with the title of its associated post, which is a very requested feature by the way.

What we are saying is that there are many improvments coming with the new version, small or big doesn't matter. What is important for us is that we hope Ziepod helps you experience podcasts better and let you enjoy your time in that world.

As last words, this release is especially important step for the future of Ziepod as its user interface becomes more flexible, which will allow us to embed more features in it in upcoming versions. Hope you like it. Enjoy the ride! ... and have a happy and prosperous new year!

To learn more about this release, check out the following links.

Download Ziepod (2676 KB)

Download Ziepod+ (3404 KB)

Release Notes for Ziepod v0.99.8 (raw)

Release Notes for Ziepod+ v0.99.8 (raw)

Upgrade Instructions

Feature Overview of Ziepod

Feature Ovewview of Ziepod+