How to listen

Receiving and playing audio and audio/video files from peacecast.us is easy.

To listen, you must have something you can use to listen to computer audio files. On this site, the audio files are in the “mp3″ format. So, you need a computer with speakers and a media player installed. Nearly every newer computer has both of these.

Beginning in June 2007, all peacecast.us posts will have a little media player right on the web page. All you have to do is click the player symbol and you’ll hear the program right away if your computer’s audio is set up properly (you hear the normal computer sounds).

Video does appear at this site too. Usually it will be YouTube-hosted or other Adobe Flash-based video that we produce. It’s the same deal, just click the thing and more likely than not, it will play.

Flash videos are just for watching at the site, and your computer must have a Flash plugin installed. If videos seem not to work for you, you may need to go HERE and get a free Flash plugin. However, most people do have this software in their systems already.

Not often but sometimes, we will post mp4 video. You’ll need a QuickTime plugin or the like to play these, and there might be a delay while they load. It is possible to download our mp4s and play them in a video ipod or other video player.

All the audio files also will play on a separate mp3 player like an iPod or SanDisk Sansa (among many, many others). To do that, you must download the files and save them to your device. You can download a file simply by right-clicking (on a PC mouse) the download link and choosing “Save target as” or “Save link as”. But there is a slicker way automatically to download every media file posted here. Keep reading…

The icon you see at left contains the link for this site’s podcast “feed”. Feeds are generated by websites so that other sites and other programs automatically can get an output of the original site’s content, as soon as it’s posted. The podcast feed for Peacecast.us gives you a list of up to the last ten podcast programs posted. The feed uses a format known as RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication”. You can read more about RSS HERE.

But wait a sec, don’t just click that feed symbol! What you want to do is hover your mouse cursor directly over the symbol (NOT the accompanying title), then copy and paste the contents of the link for the peacecast.us feed to a podcast receiver like Juice or the podcast receiving function built into Apple’s iTunes system. That’ll give you an automatic list of this site’s programs, and a quick way to get them downloaded.

Peacecast.us likes Juice, totally free software that does a great job of monitoring as many podcast feeds as you want. Just click the link at right, download Juice and install it on your system. This is a totally safe thing to do. Press the green “+” to get the feed adder window in Juice. To add a podcast, paste its feed link into the little window for “URL. Then “Save”. That’s it! Juice will fetch the feed for you, and download the mp3 files if you hit the green “arrows” button!

In iTunes, use the “Advanced” menu and select “Subscribe to podcast”. The process is similar for adding feeds.

Send email to info at peacecast dot us if you have any questions.