Now what do I do? =

• Find podcasts. Go to the main page and select a category. When you see a podcast you like, you can click the speaker icon to play the latest installment of the program. Click the podcast title to view a list of all shows.
• Create a list of favorite podcasts. When you find a podcast you like, you can add it to your list of favorites so you can find it again quickly (members only).
• Rate podcasts. Tell us what you think. Just click one of the five stars on the "Control Panel" on the upper right when you're looking at a podcast (members only).
• See what other people like You can search for members by name and see a list of the podcasts each member has in their favorites. Or click the link next to "call this a favorite" in the podcast control panel to see a list of other people who like the podcast you're looking at.
• Get notified when new podcasts are available. We'll send you an email each time one of your podcasts is updated (members only).
• Become a member. It's free and all we ask for is an email address.

Audio/playback problems

• Some podcasts don't play. 10,000 Podcasts uses Windows Media Player on your computer to play audio podcasts. Unfortunately, some podcasters don't publish their audio files in a format that Windows Media Player can play. Most typically, these podcasts use a format recognized by Apple's Quicktime player (available for free from Apple and included with iTunes). If a file doesn't play, first click the download link (with the left mouse button) to see if your computer recognizes the file automatically. If this doesn't work, try downloading the file to your desktop (right-click and choose the "Save Target As" option) and then try to find a player that will load the file. If that doesn't work, you might want to visit the podcaster's web site to see if a special player is needed. Some podcasts are delivered in a proprietary format know as "WordCast" which requires a special player to open.
• Podcasts take a long time to start playing or playback is interrupted. When you play the podcasts, they're coming directly from the podcast creator's web site. The podcast creator's site may be overloaded or your internet connection might be slow.
• Macintosh users not supported During this trial of 10,000 Podcasts, Mac users are not supported. Let us know if you've got a Mac! Click on Feedback.

Other issues

• "Please wait" appears when I view podcast details We keep a copy of information about the podcast on our server. If that copy hasn't been updated in a while, we reload it from podcast publisher. This usually only takes a few seconds and makes the page load faster for other users of 10,000 Podcasts, so please be patient.
• The site is slow or sluggish If the site isn't responding quickly, please let us know by filing a bug (it only takes a few seconds and you don't have to supply any personal information).
• How do I control the alerts? You can control the notfications for individual podcasts by checking (or unchecking) the box in the "Notify" column on your My Favorites page. When you add a podcast to your favorites, the notification option is turned on or off based on the "Notify me when new podcasts published" option you chose when you subscribed to the service. To change this, visit the Sign up page.
• There are no programs listed on the podcast details Sometimes podcasts are temporarily unavailable and sometimes the author decides to stop publishing. If there are no programs listed, click the "check for updates" link in the podcast control panel. If there's still nothing, click the "dead feed" link at the bottom of the page. We'll check it out and remove the dead ones.
• How do I save podcasts to my portable player? There can be several ways to do this. The easiest is to save the podcasts to a specific folder under "My Music" and include that folder when you sync your portable (using its included software). Alternately, if you can set up your MP3 player as a USB storage device, you can download files directly to your player when it's plugged in. For phones with memory cards, download the mp3 files to the "Media" folder on the memory card. The exact location varies from one phone to the next, so you'd better check with your phone manufacturer for precise directions.
• Do you really have 10,000 podcasts? Not yet, but we're working on it!
• Find a bug? Please report bugs with the Feedback feature