Help and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

[Introduction to Collectik ][Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)]

Introduction to Collectik

Collectik is a better way to organize your pocast listening, and a way to mix the best audio and video on the net for yourself and your friends. Here's how it works:

1. Sign up, it's free! Here's our registration page.

2. Tour around the site and find podcasts you want to listen to or watch

3. Add podcasts to your Collection to keep track of new episodes:

tick the collect button to add a podcast to your own Collection
add an RSS feed or media item in the sidebar, or use our Firefox plugin

4. Make a playlist or mixlist of the stuff you want to listen to or watch

every time you tick a show , it goes into your playlist
make mixlists to order your playlist just how you want it

5. Listen to your playlist or mixlist:

subscribe to your playlist or mixlist in iTunes or Juice, or
just listen using the Big Contact Flash Player on your playlist & mixlist page. You don't have to download anything, just press play.

To find out more about the ideas behind collectik, visit About Collectik.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What's Collectik all about then?

What is Collectik used for?

Collectik helps you organize, find, listen and share great audio and video podcasts on the net. You can keep all your podcast subscriptions on your Collection page (think of this like your album collection, but one that gets updated everytime a podcast is updated), and make a Playlist (like a mixtape that gets updated every time you add a new show). You can even put your playlist in just the order you want using the Mixmaker. You can play your playlist and mixlists on a flashplayer, or subscribe in iTunes or Juice, or stream an m3u.

And Collectik is also a neighbourhood of podcast lovers, which helps you find the best stuff out there from people who share your taste.

How does Collectik help me manage podcasts?

Rather than letting podcast episodes gather in a big, un-listened (and hard-drive-eating) pile on your computer, Collectik lets you glance at a Collection of all your podcast subscriptions, and "Tick" individual shows to make a Playlist of just episodes you want to hear. You can listen on your Playlists & Mixlists page using the flash player,

, or you can subscribe in iTunes or Juice (instead of subscribing to many podcasts), and you'll download only the shows you want. You can also let others do the work for you: you can subscribe to someone else's Playlist.

How does Collectik help me find podcasts?

You can:

Search for key words
Use our Tag Cloud to do a search
See what shows and podcasts are "Hot" (most popular in the past 24 hours)
Find other Collectik users with taste you share and add them as Friends or subscribe to their Playlist, or just browse their Collection

How does Collectik help me share podcasts?

By making a Collection, you can show other people the podcasts you like. When you make a Playlist, it gives you many ways to listen (and share):

Anyone can subscribe to your Playlist in iTunes or Juice
Anyone can listen to your playlists or mixlists with the flash player, or m3u streams in their favourite media player
Other Collectik users can add you to their Friends list, or add your Playlist to their Collection
You can tag podcast shows to make a special Playlist
You can make a mixlist, and send it to friends by email

Why would I want to share podcasts?

A good question! One good reason is to help other people find great stuff on the net. And to get their help in finding the best stuff. The internet is full of great media, but it can be hard to sort though it all. Collectik lets you, and everybody else, do the sorting.

I use iTunes to manage podcasts. Why would I use Collectik?

Instead of subscribing to many podcasts in iTunes, and having your hard-drive fill up with episodes you don't listen to, you can:

Use Collectik to manage a Collection of podcasts
Make a Playlist only of those shows you definitely want to listen to, and download
Subscribe to your Collectik Playlist in iTunes, and automatically download just the episodes you want, or:
If you listen to podcasts at your computer, use the flashplayer on your Playlists & Mixlists page, to listen while you work

There are other benefits of using Collectik, including joining a community of people filtering the best media on the net.

I use Juice to manage podcasts. Why would I use Collectik?

Instead of subscribing to many podcasts in Juice, and having your hard-drive fill up with episodes you don't listen to, you can:

Use Collectik to manage a Collection of podcasts
Make a Playlist only of those shows you definitely want to listen to, and download
Subscribe to your Collectik Playlist in Juice, and automatically download just the episodes you want.
If you listen to podcasts at your computer, use the flashplayer on your Playlists & Mixlists page, to listen while you work

There are other benefits of using Collectik, including joining a community of people filtering the best media on the net.

I would like my podcast to get added to Collectik, what do I do?

Podcasts are added by users of Collectik, so one way would be to encourage your listeners to join Collectik, and add your podcast to their Collection. We have some code for you to put in your sidebar that'll let listeners add your podcasts to their Collectik.

Registering and Logging-In

How much does Collectik cost?: Collectik is free to use. We might offer a paid premium service for a souped-up version of Collectik, but that won't have any impact on our free service.
Do I have to register?: Yes and No. You can use Collectik to search for good audio and video, or to listen to great playlists. But if you want to make your own Collection, you will have to register.
I can't log in - what's going on?: The most likely culprit is cookies. You must enable Cookies in your browser in order to register and log in to Collectik.

Podcasts, Feeds, RSS and other beasts

What is a podcast?: A podcast a way to deliver media files (audio and video) to your computer, through a subscription. Public broadcasters, big media companies, and regular people make audio and video available through podcasts. It's just a different way (than TV or radio) to get audio and video you want. The nice thing is you get to choose from content from all over the world, and you can listen or watch whenever you like.; Podcasts work by letting you subscribe to a "feed", which is just a file that gets updated every time there is a new episode to download. You can subscribe to a podcast in a podcatcher and download the episodes, and listen when you like.; Collectik helps you manage many subscriptions to podcasts. You can create your own Collectik Playlist (which you would subscribe to in your podcatcher), so you'll only download the shows you want to listen to.; For more information about podcasting, see wikipedia's podcast page.
Why should I care about podcasts?: Podcasts give you choices: space and time; mainstream media or independent media. Radio, TV and cable are limited to stations in your geographic area, and generally you have to listen or watch when the shows are on. Podcasting lets you choose from shows from all over the world: there are thousands of podcasts, and more coming online every day. Podcasters include: Public Broadcasters (BBC, NPR, and ARN), Big Media (CNN, Fox, New York Times), and regular people (LibriVox, In Over Your Head) great content out there.
What is a Feed? What is RSS?: It's like a subscription service for websites. A "feed," or an "RSS feed" is a way to get alerted every time a website gets updated. RSS means Really Simple Syndication, and it's often displayed on a website with an orange icon , and one of: "feed" "rss" "xml" "subscribe" or "syndication."; When you subscribe to a podcast feed in Collectik, for instance, you will see the title of new episodes as they appear, and usually a brief description, and a link to media files (audio or video). Collectik lets you make a Playlist of just the shows you want to listen to. By subscribing to the feed of your Playlist in a podcatcher (such as iTunes or Juice), you will automatically download audio or video you want.; For more information about Feeds and RSS, see wikipedia's RSS page.
Does Collectik work with RSS feeds that aren't podcasts?: Yes. Although Collectik is built specially for podcasts, it can be used to manage videocast feeds and regular (text) RSS feeds as well.
Does Collectik work will all kinds of RSS feeds?: Currently, Collectik does not support RDF and Atom feeds.

Finding Things

How do I find a podcast I like?

Collectik gives you many options:

Search by keywords
Search by tags
See Hot podcasts and shows (most popular in past 24 hours)
Find other Collectik users who share your taste, add them to your Friends list

How does Search work?

Type in a keyword to searchpodcasts, shows, tags and usernames.
Press return or click Search to start the search
Review your results, organized into tabs by podcasts, shows and users.
You can add a podcast to your Collection, Tick a show to add it to your Playlist; or add a Friend from these results, or
You can make a Mixlist from the shows returned in your search.

How does the Advanced Search work?

Click Advanced Search to display the options;
Type in a keyword;
Select the Collections you want to search: anyone's, yours, Friends' or a specific user;
If desired, limit the results to only Recommended shows, or new today (optional);
Select what to include: everything, enclosures (audio and/or video), audio only, video only;
Click Search.
Review your results, organized into tabs by podcasts, shows and users.
You can add a podcast to your Collection; Tick a show to add it to your Playlist; or add a Friend from these results, or
You can make a Mixlist from the shows returned in your search.

What are Hot Podcasts?

Hot Podcasts are the podcasts added to the most Collections in the past 24 hours.

What are Hot Shows?

Hot Shows are the shows added to the most Playlists in the past 24 hours.

Recommending, Sharing and Friends

Who are my Friends?

Friends are other Collectik users who share your taste. You can add another Collectik user to your Friends list by clicking on the "Add" button

underneath their avatar (the little picture icon by their name). Your Friends list will show you all your Friends, and the three most recent shows added to their Playlist.

How do I find Friends?

The easiest way is to find a podcast or a show you like. Click on the green "Collectors" icon to see who is collecting that podcast, or the red "Ticks" icon to find out who has Ticked that show to add it to thier Playlist, and you'll get taken to their Collection page. There you can see what else they like. You can also check out their Profile to see a bit about them. Add them to your list of Friends if you like their Collection.

How do I update my Profile?

Click My Account in the upper right menue
Add your location and a paragraph or two of text about yourself
Customize your avatar with an image you upload. (jpg, gif, png)
Click Save Changes

How do I recommend podcast shows?

There's a little grey star

beside podcast show titles. If you click on that it'll turn gold

, which means you've recommended that podcast show.

Why would I recommend podcast shows?

To help Friends and other people find good stuff. Collectik keeps track of the most recommended podcast shows. And even better, your Friends can put your Recommended Playlist in their Collection, so they will see every time you recommend a show. And you could add a Playlist of all your Friends' Recommendations to your Collection.

How can tags help me share podcasts?

You can tag shows "forBob" to make a special forBob Playlist. Bob could add this Playlist to his Collection, and then every time you tag another item forBob, it'll show up in his Collection.

Collectors, Ticks,Tags, and Other Animals

What does Collectik mean?

Collect Podcasts. Tick Shows. We combined the verbs, then took away the second "c" because, well, we're not quite sure why, but we like it.

What does Tick mean?

You "tick" a show to put it in your Playlist. You untick it to take it out. Nothing to do with blood-sucking parasites.

What does Autotick mean?

When you click the Autotick button

on a podcast in your Collection, all new shows from that podcast will be ticked automatically in the future and added to your Playlist when the podcast is updated.

What are Collectors?

The Collectors of a certain podcast are the Collectik users who have added that podcast to their Collection. Or you could say, Collectik users are Collectors of the best audio and video the net has to offer.

What are Tags?

Tags are just words Collectik users (including you) can associate with podcasts and shows. For instance, you might want to tag a humorous show, "funny." You can do this by clicking "edit tags" under a podcast, or show title. You can do a few useful things with tags:

use the tag cloud to search for podcasts and shows with a certain tag
use the search bar to search for podcasts and shows with a certain tag
tag shows a certain way to make a special Playlist (for instance you could tag "Mom" everything you think your mother might like to hear).

What is a Tag Cloud?

A Tag Cloud is a ... cloud of tags. It's a collection of the most commen tags. In Collectik, you can find the Tag Cloud at the bottom of most pages. Click on any tag in the cloud and Collectik will return a search of all shows and podcasts with that Tag.

Collections, Playlists, and the Mix Maker

What is a Collection?

Think of your Collection as a watchlist of podcasts. It gets updated automatically every time there's new show in any of the podcasts in your Collection. And you can sift through your Collection, tick shows you want to add to your Playlist.

What can I put in my Collectik Collection?

Your Collection is made up of valid RSS feeds. Normally you would add podcast feeds (usually displayed as: Feed, RSS, XML often with a little orange button

), though you can add any valid RSS feed.

Note: A podcast feed is NOT the same as the webpage of the podcast. For instance, the LibriVox webpage is here: http://librivox.org and their podcast feed is here: http://librivox.org/podcast.xml.

Also note, at the moment Collectik does not support Atom or RDF formats.

Oh yeah, you can also add links to media files (mp3, ogg, mov, wmv etc); these will go directly into your Playlist.

How do I put a podcast in my Collection?

You can enter a podcast feed in the sidebar and press: "Add to Collectik"
You can install our Firefox plugin, and right-click on a feed to "Collectik This!"
You can browse through Collectik, and anytime a podcast suits your fancy, you can click the "Collect" button and it'll get added to your Collection.

How do I remove a podcast from my Collection?

Underneath a podcast title, you'll see a "Remove" button

. Click that, and you'll remove it from your Collection.

How do I get more information on a podcast in Collectik?

Underneath a podcast title, you'll see "tags": words Collectik users have associated with that podcast. And if you click on a podcast title, it will bring you to a page that gives you more information about that podcast, including:

a link to the podcast website
the URL of the RSS feed (http://www.forexample.com/podcast.xml)
a description of the podcast (if the podcaster has provided one)
a list of recent podcast shows, including information about those shows (if the podcaster has provided descriptions)
links to the Collectors of the podcast (other Collectik users who put it in their Collection)
links to the Ticks of the shows (other Collectik users who have ticken a show to add it to their Playlist).

Can I change the way my Collection is organized?

In the menu bar, you can go to My Account: Preferences, and you can sort by:

alphabetical, latest update, or most new items
1-5 shows displayed

At the moment you cannot rearrange the order of display of your feeds. But we are working on that!

What is a Playlist?

Your Playlist is everything from your Collection that you want to download. You "Tick" shows that appear in your Collection to add them to your Playlist. You can listen to your Playlist with the flashplayer,

, or subscribe to your Playlist in iTunes or Juice to download just the stuff you want to hear.

Why would I subscribe to my Playlist in iTunes or Juice?

Instead of subscribing to tons of podcasts in iTunes or Juice, you can manage your podcasts in Collectik, and make a Playlist of just the things you want to download. Because Collectik is web-based, you can manage your podcasts from anywhere, including work, or while you are traveling. And the other great thing is that it helps your friends find good stuff.

How do I subscribe to my Playlist in iTunes?

Here are two ways:

On your Collectik page, go to your Playlists. Click on "iTunes 1-click" iTunes will launch, and your Playlist will be added.
In your iTunes player, go to Advanced: Subscribe to Podcast: and enter the following URL: http://limelight.collectik.net/collectik/xml/home/YOURUSERNAME

How do I subscribe to my Playlist in Juice?

In JuiceReceiver, press Add Subscription: and enter the following URL: http://limelight.collectik.net/collectik/xml/home/YOURUSERNAME

Can I subscribe to anyone's Playlist in Collectik?

Yes! Just click on the Collect icon

beside a Playlist, and it'll be added to your Collection. You could also subscribe to their Recommended Playlist, or a Playlist made up of everything your Friends Recommend. Or a Playlist of everything your Friends recommend, tagged "music."

Can I subscribe to anyone's Playlist in iTunes or Juice?

Yes! Cool, eh? See "How do I subscribe to my Playlist in iTunes?" above. Substitute someone else's username for YOURUSERNAME.

What is the Mix Maker?

The Mix Maker is a way to make special Playlists, sort of like mixtapes. For podcasts. You Select shows from your playlist or a search, drag them to the Mix box, rearrange them, and save your mixlist. It's easy.

What can I put in Collectik?

What can I put in Collectik?

URLs that point to:

XML and RSS feeds (podcasts, video casts, blogs, newsfeed, etc) that end in .xml or .rss. For instance: http://www.examplepodcast.com/podcast.xml or http://www.somewebsite.com/feed.rss
Audio and video media files (mp3, ogg, aif, rm, avi, mov, qt)

Collectik supports 96 different audio and video file formats - whether your player will let you listen to them is another matter! Here is the complete list.AUDIO: 32kadpcm, amr, amr-wb, basic (au & snd), cn, dat12, dsr-es201108, dvi4, evrc, evrc0, g722, g.722.1, g723, g726-16, g726-24, g726-32, g726-40, g728, g729, g729D, g729E, gsm, gsm-efr, l8, l16, l20, l24, lpc, midi (mid midi & kar), mpa, mpa-robust, mp4a-latm, mpeg (mpga mp2 & mp3), ogg, parityfec, pcma, pcmu, prs.sid, qcelp, red, smv, smv0, telephone-event, tone, vdvi, vnd.3gpp.iufp, vnd.cisco.nse, vnd.cns.anp1, vnd.cns.inf1, vnd.digital-winds, vnd.everad.plj, vnd.lucent.voice, vnd.nortel.vbk, vnd.nuera.ecelp4800, vnd.nuera.ecelp7470, vnd.nuera.ecelp9600, vnd.octel.sbc, vnd.qcelp, vnd.rhetorex.32kadpcm, vnd.vmx.cvsd, x-aiff (aif, aiff & aifc), x-alaw-basic, x-mpegurl (m3u), x-pn-realaudio (ram & ra), x-pn-realaudio-plugin, vnd.rn-realmedia (rm), x-wav VIDEO: bmpeg, bt656, celb, dv, h261, h263, h263-1998, h263-2000, jpeg, mp1s, mp2p, mp2t, mp4v-es, mpv, mpeg (mpeg, mpg & mpe), nv, parityfec, pointer, quicktime (qt & mov), smpte292m, vnd.fvt, vnd.motorola.video, vnd.motorola.videop, vnd.mpegurl (mxu m4u), vnd.nokia.interleaved-multimedia, vnd.objectvideo, vnd.vivo, x-msvideo (avi), x-sgi-movie (movie)

What CAN'T I put in Collectik?

URLs that point to:

a podcast or website (for instance: http://www.examplepodcast.com) ... please add the feed URL instead
RDF and Atom feeds
Links to Google Video or YouTube
Flash files
images, pdf, cgi scripts, powerpoint or other files that are not audio or video

Can I put a link to an mp3 file in Collectik?

Yes. Adding a link to any audio file (including mp3, ogg vorbis, speex) in your Collectik will put that link into your Playlist.

Can I put a link to a wmv file in Collectik?

Yes. Addin a link to any video file (including wmv, mov, avi) in your Collectik will put that link into your Playlist.

Can I put a link to a blog in Collectik?

You can put any valid RSS or XML feed, including blog feeds (http://blog.example.com/feed.xml) into Collectik, but you can't add the blog's URL (http://blog.example.com). Except you can't add RDF or Atom feeds currently.

Collectik won't let me add links: what's going on?

Here are a few things that might be causing problems:

Are you logged in? You can only add to your Collection if you are logged in.
Are you trying to add a static URL instead of a feed? Collectik accepts feeds, but not static URLs
Are you trying to add a link to a PDF or a photo? That won't work, unfortunately.
Are you adding an Atom or RDF format feed? Unfortunately, Collectik does not yet support these formats.

Where does Collectik keep all these podcast files?

That's a trick question right? We don't actually keep the files at all. We just keep URLs of where the files are hosted by someone else. So we don't keep any media files, we just keep track of where they live in a big, bad database.

Do you support all kinds of RSS feeds?

Not yet. Currently, we support XML and RSS but not Atom or RDF.

Why can't I collect videos from Google Video and YouTube (and the like)?

Google and YouTube display their movies as Flash, so you can't download the media files using RSS. We'd like to find a way around this problem. We'll keep you posted and if you have any ideas, get in touch.

What is an mp3? ogg?

mp3 is a compressed audio file, that you can play on a computer or an, um, mp3 player (like an iPod). mp3 is currently the standard audio file format on the web. Ogg Vorbis is an open audio format similar to mp3.

What is a mov? wmv? avi?

These are all digital video files that you can play on a computer or a portable player (like an iPod).

What is an m3u?

m3u is a streaming playlist file format. When you are connected to the Internet, the m3u file gives your player (iTunes, Quicktime, Winamp, RealPlayer) a list of URLs containing audio files, and tells the player to play each file in sequence. m3us allow you to listen, for instance, to your Collectik Playlist without downloading any files.

Beware though, players tend to be finicky about m3us, and we won't guarantee that it'll always work the way you'd like it to.

Importing and Exporting

Will you please give me my data back?

Yes. It's yours, why would we keep it? We can export your Collection as an OPML file.

Will Collectik let me export in OPML?

Yes. This gives you an OPML file which is a list of your Collectik subscriptions. Here's how to do it:

In the Collectik upper right navigation menu, go to My Account: click on Export tab.
Right-click the Download OPML file link

Will Collectik let me import OPML?

Yes. Importing an OPML file of RSS subscriptions (from iTunes or Juice) will populate your Collection with those podcasts. Here's how to do it:

In the upper right navigation menu, go to My Account: click on Import tab
Browse your hard drive and find the OPML file you want
Click Import and you've just populated your Collection with your RSS subscriptions

Can I export my podcast subscriptions from iTunes and import them into Collectik?

Yes! Here's how:

go to your Podcast page in iTunes
in the menu: File:Export:Save As OPML
go to Collectik
in the menu: My Account:Import OPML
browse and find your file, and press "Import"

You're done!

Can I export my podcasts from Juice and import them into Collectik?

Yes! Here's how:

open Juice
in the menu: File:Export to OPML
Save As name.opml
go to Collectik
in the menu: My Account:Import OPML
browse and find your file, and press "Import"

You're done!

Privacy

Can I make my Collection private or hide some of the podcasts in my Collection?: Currently all Collections are completely public.
Can I make my Playlist private or hide specific shows in my Playlist?: Currently all Playlists are completely public.
Will you sell my email to spammers?: No. Unless you're our grandmother, in which case all bets are off. She likes all kinds of e-mail, even spam.

Tools and such

Do you have a Firefox plug in?

Yes! If you have Firefox 1.5 or above, you can install this plugin, and then right-click on valid links or media files while you are surfing the web, and add them you your Collectik. Download this: Collectik This! Firefox1.5 Plugin

Can listeners can automatically add my podcast to their Collectik?

Yes! Add this code to your website to let people easily add your podcast, videocast or RSS feed to Collectik. We have a groovy button, too.

<a target="_blank"
href="http://limelight.collectik.net/collectik/ra.rb?what=http://myblog.net/rss">
<img src="http://limelight.collectik.net/collectik/d3elements/collectikbutton.png" 
title="Add this to Collectik" border="0"                  
height="15" width="80" vspace="2"/> </a>

Be sure to substitute the address of your RSS feed for 'myblog.net/rss'!

I'd like to build a widget for Collectik, do you have an API?

Not right now, but send us an email at contact AT collectik DOT net and let us know what you're thinking, and we hope we can work something out.

More info about Collectik

Who is behind Collectik?: Collectik.net is owned by Collectik Software Inc., founded by Chris Goringe, Kristen McQuillin, Hugh McGuire, who met through the Internet public domain audio literature project, librivox.org.; For more information about Collectik, or to give us some feedback, please send us an email to: collectik AT gmail DOT com
Where is Collectik located?: Interstellar Headquarters of of Collectik Software Inc. is technically Montreal, Quebec, Canada; but let's just say the company is pretty virtual and geographically dispersed, so that with different timezones, we generally manage a 24 hour work cycle.