And we start this series off with Juice. Juice used to be known as iPodder and has been around for a while. In the spirit of podcasts, Juice is free, and not only that but open source.

So, when you start up Juice you are presented with a window with four tabs; Downloads, Subscriptions, Directory and Cleanup. Subscriptions is where you’d want to start of course. Clicking Add will of course let you add your podcast, it’ll then do a download of the feed. One of the frustrating things I noticed about Juice is that it has to download the feed everytime. Even if it downloaded it during a general sync, when you click on a feed to look at it it’ll redownload it. That is a real big no-no for RSS readers (which podcatchers effectively are).

While you are browsing the feeds, they can have either a checkbox or a play symbol. You check the checkbox to download the cast. You then have to click the Download button, which once again downloads the RSS feed then continues downloading what you were after. The play symbol will open it up in your media player, either iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp. iTunes of course now supports podcasts (so look out for a review on that later), but Juice does automatically create playlists for them in the program.

The Downloads tab is where you’ll probably go most often, simply because it doesn’t have to reload the feeds all the time. Also, sometimes the feeds forget which episodes it has downloaded. Here each episode has either a grey, blue or green circle next to them. Grey meaning it was cancelled, blue meaning it is downloading, and green meaning that you can play it (by clicking on it no less). I’m not sure what else to say about this tab, so moving along

The podcast directory is OK. You just click on the Directory tab and select what you want to go through. However, it only gives the podcasts title, so finding out any more information will mean a trip to Google first.

Pros: Free; Decent interface.
Cons: Has to download the feed everytime; Some interface elements are confusing.
Verdict: A good podcast program that if I don’t find any better I guess I’ll be going back to.

Download: Juice