Starting this Monday, every Monday we present you a tip to help you make use of your Ziepod better. Today's tip is not a quick one but addresses an interesting topic in the context of automation.

Lets consider this scenario: You are sitting in front of your computer for couple of hours and there is a news podcast among your subscriptions that provides you news coverage every hour, like CNN Update, or NPR Hourly News. And you are tired of pressing download and play buttons and trying to maintain your playlist.

Instead of making things manually, Ziepod can automatically download and then play those news episodes while you are working on other things. Not only that, Ziepod can even keep your playlist empty aftering done playing. To do all these automated, you need to check couple of boxes and here is how to.

Step 1: Downloading episodes & adding them to the playlist automatically

Ok, assume that you subscribe to the CNN Update podcast which provides news coverage every hour. And you want Ziepod to download new episodes from that specific podcast automatically as soon as they are available. How to do that?

(1.1) Open the properties of that particular subscription by making a right click on it
(1.2) Select 'Properties' option.
(1.3) Switch to the 'Download' tab
(1.4) Check the first box, entitled "When new epsiodes are detected ..." and then select download all or download newest one option.
(1.5) Then to place newly downloaded episode to playlist automatically, check another box entitled Automatically add downloaded episodes to the playlist.

In fact, you may not want to download but to play it right away. Downloading is often used to feed your MP3 player or in case of low internet connection speed. Instead of downloading, you can stream the content by directly adding newly detected episodes to your playlist.

To do that, in the step (1.4), you should check the second box in the view and select add all to playlist or add the newest one to playlist option. As we don't use downloading, you can also skip the step (1.5). Now you can press 'OK' button to finish this step.

Step 2: Adjusting player for automation

At this point, new episode from your news channel is in the playlist, ready to be played. However, Ziepod isn't going to play it right away unless you set it so. Here is how to set.

(2.1) Open your preferences by using CTRL+P keyboard shortcut.
(2.2) Switch to the 'Playlist' tab
(2.3) Check the second box entitled Automatically play newly added episode ...
(2.4) Press 'OK' button to apply this change.

And aftering setting this, Ziepod will play new episodes as soon as they are added to the playlist. Do you think that is enough? Not quite.

Step 3: Removing played episode automatically

As new episodes are downloaded and played automatically, you will see how your playlist is getting crowded, unless you manually remove them. How about making that automated, too? Because, Ziepod can also automatically remove episode after it is played. Here is how to do that.

(3.1) Before pressing 'OK' in the step (2.4), in the same tab of the Preferences, check the box entitled Remove item from the playlist right after it is played. (3.2) Press 'OK' to apply these changes.

Now you can sit back or work on other things while listening to hourly news coverages from your favorite news agencies at the background, much like listening to radio.

This is a bit long "tip" but a perfect example showing the level of customization and automation that Ziepod offers to you. Hope you can make use of it as much as possible.

Have a great week,