scrape your own podcast
September 20th, 2005 by heatherso, there’s no learning japanese podcast? wah wah wah. whine all i want, i still won’t be able to find one! i tried recording one myself and a friend laughed at me! but i’ve found another way that you can easily make podcasts from web pages.
i have found some free audio out there. check out some audio done by marsian as part of the Japanese Wikibook: … yeah, i can download it, file by file… but wouldn’t it be much nicer if there was an RSS feed i could just subscribe to, and it would notify me if there were updates? so it’s DIY time!
mfeeds scrapes pages with links to media files. “This lets you receive a podcast from any page that has [media files] on it”, oo goodie. And it generates a handy URL which you can paste into your podcast reader (software you can use to manage subscriptions to podcasts). See handy URL:
http://mfeeds.com/generate/scrape.cgi?url=http://ww6.tiki.ne.jp/~marsian/sound.htm
(these happen to be OGG files, so won’t play on b*tchy iPod or iTunes. but as I understand, OGG is a standard audio format used by WikiPedia and others who work on open standards).
but you can do this on any page with MP3 files too. the audio from japanese lessons on the MIT open course-ware site (though i don’t think you’ll see updates it still might be handy to ’scrape’ it all than download singly).
http://mfeeds.com/generate/scrape.cgi?url=http://web.mit.edu/21f.501/www/audio/Lesson3/
[edit]
also converted MP3 from NHK:
http://www.hickorytech.net/~nic111/
and a link to the feed
http://mfeeds.com/generate/scrape.cgi?url=http://www.hickorytech.net/~nic111/
September 21st, 2005 at 4:47 am
I’m in Japan at the moment, learning the language, and I have considered putting out a weekly podcast for other Japanese learners. I wasn’t sure how much demand there would be, though.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:11 pm
yes yes yes! there’s loads of demand!
i get tons of hits on this site, and people emailing me asking me if i found anything like that. just do it! you’ll be the first.
i tried making one myself, but my language skills are non existent.
please, go for it!
September 27th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
thanks for mentioning our show on your site. we have something that might be what you are looking for. trying to put the final touches on it. so don’t tell anyone. i want it to be a surprise.
October 3rd, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Have we looked at
http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/
perchance ?
3 weekly lessons, starts over at very elementary level each year, has transcription included……….
October 3rd, 2005 at 7:52 pm
yeah… it *looks* good, but………
i clicked on the link, and thought it look familiar, and i wondered why i hadn’t used the resource. i went to add it to my delicious bookmarks, and noticed i had originally posted it on 2005-08-10… and remarked: “requires real player plugin”…… i really don’t like real player.
i’ve basically ignored anything that requires me to have my head attached to my machine in order to use it. i like to be able to print off things to read, and download into my MP3 player any audio. i guess i’m missing out.
alas! thanks for stopping by and sharing the link. love the name, btw.
October 14th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
You can get those NHK lessons in mp3 format at http://mp3japan.freenethost.net/
I too would love a nice mp3 series for those learning Japanese. I’ve pretty well worn out my Pimsleurs and am ready to move on.
October 14th, 2005 at 8:03 pm
yeah! that’s def the best audio resource i’ve found so far for free. NHK should cop on and give an MP3 feed. i imaghine eventually they may.
i’m posting over here more now:
http://www.japanesejapanese.com/index.php/2005/10/05/best-free-japanese-audio-resource-so-far/
November 6th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
hello, what happens with the mp3japanfreenethost is not working any more??
November 7th, 2005 at 11:18 am
oh thanks for reminding me!
the link has moved!
this is the correct link for the site:
http://www.hickorytech.net/~nic111/
this is the correct link for the feed:
http://mfeeds.com/generate/scrape.cgi?url=http://www.hickorytech.net/~nic111/