1 - Follow the links to download the file. (You may be referred to a mirror site; choose one near where you are located to get the file quickly.) When your browser asks you where to save the file, choose the Desktop, as shown in Figure below. A file called Juice22Setup.exe — the numbers in the name change as new versions are released — is stored on your desktop.
2 - Close your browser, and find the Juice22Setup.exe file on the desktop. Make sure other applications are closed before beginning the installation. Double-click the file icon to open the installer application, and click the Next button in the dialog box that opens. You may read the License Agreement, which is a GNU General Public License that allows you to modify the software and that requires you provide the same rights to anyone to whom you may choose to distribute the software in the future. We'll assume you're okay with these conditions, so click the I Agree button.
3 - The next dialog box asks where you want to store the file, suggesting C:\Program Files\Juice, which we recommend you accept. Click the Next button.
4 - The installer now asks if you want to install all the components of the application and whether you would like to have a desktop shortcut to Juice, which is checked by default. If you want to crowd your desktop with icons, accept this. The other option presented, however, is important, because you want your podcatcher to do most of its work without asking you when it can go do its business. We suggest that you check the "Add to Startup Group" box, shown in Figure below, which makes Windows open the application every time you launch your PC. Doing this should not open any security holes on your PC, but it ensures that, when you want your podcasts, they'll already be downloaded. If you don't enable Juice to load at launch, you have to wait for podcasts to download whenever you open the application. Now click the Install button.
Caution : If you travel frequently or have a computer at work or elsewhere that you shouldn't be using for personal reasons, it's a good idea not to check the "Add to Startup Group" box so that Juice does not go to work downloading dozens of megabytes worth of podcasts when you log in to a wireless hotspot or while your boss is waiting for an important e-mail message from you.
5 - Juice installs, listing the files it is modifying. The last dialog box tells you that the application has been installed successfully and asks whether you want to see the Readme file (we don't need no stinkin' manuals when we have a Wiley Bible close at hand!) and launch the application. Click the Finish button to open the application.
6 - When Juice opens, the first thing it asks is if you would like to review a list of file types that it is not currently set to handle. The "Yes" radio button is selected by default; click OK.
7 - The window that opens is the File Type Preferences pane of the Juice application, shown in Figure below. You see a list of file types, indicated by file extension names or HTML tags, which are automatically handled by Juice whenever you click them in your browser. For each box you check, Juice becomes the default application to handle that file type when it is found by any other application, such as your browser. This means that if you've selected .rss in this pane and then you click an RSS feed on someone's site, Juice opens and adds the subscription automatically. The problem is if you click a text RSS feed, Juice subscribes to it. So we suggest that you leave this file type unchecked, so that your text RSS aggregator can handle those. The other options provided refer to podcast feeds, or feeds that are likely to contain video or audio, and are much less likely to conflict with other RSS readers. You can subscribe manually to feeds that include podcast files — Juice ignores all the text postings and downloads only the audio files. After making your choices, click the Save button.
8 - Finally, the File Type Preferences includes a check box to "enforce these settings at startup." You want to check this box so that Juice overrides other applications that may think it is their job to deal with these file types. After checking this box, click the Save button. The Juice application is installed. When you quit the application, it asks if you want to keep it running in the background. Again, with the same caveats about when you may want to disable background downloading, we suggest you leave the application running by checking the Yes radio button. Check the "Don't ask me again" box to avoid this dialog box in the future.
Now let's configure Juice to handle the various formats and tags in which you may find podcasts when surfing the Web, as well as how to store podcasts according to your preferences. Consider, for example, how you might listen to a series of short program, say of two to five minutes in length, compared to longer shows. Saving several short programs and listening to them in a single sitting makes sense for some listeners, but if your podcatcher is configured to toss programs after 14 or 21 days, you may not have more than one stored at any time. On the other hand, if you fall behind on listening to a longer show, perhaps a daily one-hour program from National Public Radio, having the podcatcher dump older programs so that you can get caught up is a good plan.
Setting Juice to regularly check subscriptions is what makes the podcatcher work when you are away. Click the Scheduler button (it looks like a clock and calendar) to open the Scheduler. Juice can visit servers up to three times a day, at times you specify, or on a regular interval of between 12 hours and every 30 minutes. It's probably best to have the podcatcher working at night, when you aren't using the computer. Like e-mail, podcasts can take up your whole day if you don't limit how often new ones show up on your system. However, if you know your favorite podcasters are updating their shows at certain times of the day, setting the podcatcher to check shortly after those times can keep you up-to-the-moment.
Next, select the General pane in the Preferences panel, shown in Figure 3.7, which covers the general behavior of the application. Juice should be left running in the background so it can continue to check for new podcasts when you aren't using it. The other important preference is the fifth box from the top, "Catchup skips older episodes permanently," which skips ahead of programs in your downloaded shows list without erasing them so you can hear the most recent podcast. You'll need to go back to play skipped shows manually, as Juice will ignore them in the future.
We don't suggest selecting the box for "Play downloads right after they're downloaded," because the podcatcher then counts them as played when looking for most recent unplayed programs. Click the Save button. You can tell Juice how long to hold onto files on a per-subscription basis, which we cover later.
Finally, select what media player you want to use when listening to a podcast. We've moved to the Player pane of the Juice Preferences, where the media players available are listed by the application. We've selected Windows Media Player, but you can choose your favorite and Juice hands files automatically to it for playback or synchronization with a portable player.
Two player-specific options are displayed here, as well.
When passing files to iTunes, Juice can label the file as a custom genre, which iTunes uses to sort programs. By default, it hands files to iTunes as a "Podcast," but you could use something else, such as "News" if you use more than one podcatcher to segregate different types of programs. For example, you could use Juice to download news programs, passing them to iTunes with that genre label and find a folder on your iPod called "News," while a different podcatcher downloaded your music podcasts and loaded them in a different genre.
With Winamp, a Windows media application, the option is "Play button enqueues selected track." "Enqueues" isn't actually a word, but it means that the file is added to a list of files to play according to a last-in-last-played basis. If other files are playing or are queued to be played, the latest file goes to the end of the line.
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