If you have a podcast, you probably provide an RSS or XML file for people to subscribe to. If you’re interested in tracking how many people are subscribing to your feed and you’re running Apache, I’ve just developed a simple script that counts repeat downloaders of the feed. I look for .rss in the URL but you can easily change that to .xml or whatever matches your feed.

You can download the script at http://trygnulinux.com/rsstrak

Thanks and leave any questions or suggestions in the comments.

I’m starting to believe in the power of audio to spread GNU/Linux. The nice thing about podcasts is that you can absorb them while doing other things but you can learn a lot. If you’re like me, you login to Youtube to check out some videos and you end up shifting over to some other page midstream. So you miss part of the video and basically you’re then listening to a (poor) podcast.

Why now? Well I fired up iTunes a couple weeks ago and searched for ‘Linux’. I then found some great podcasts: The Linux Action Show, LUGRadio, and The Linux Link Tech Show. There’s only one way to say it: Linux is cool software. You need to know about cool software so check these out!

Linux Action Show – quite entertaining, co-hosts Bryan and Chris have a good comedic chemistry and talk about Linux from a developer and systems integrator point of view. They do the news on their bi-weekly show, answer listener questions and offer reviews of hardware and software in the GNU/Linux community. Thanks to Bryan for the Linux is cool software idea. http://linuxactionshow.com

LUGRadio – this one’s from Britain and features four guys who have various perspectives on Linux(Jono is the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical). What’s nice about this one is that they have more hosts and seem to delve deeper into the aspects of community, freedom, and the direction various free software projects are going. They’re also hosting LUGRadio Live at the Metreon with exhibits and speakers on April 12-13th, 2008 so that might be fun to check out if you’re going to be nearby. Full access is $10 only available in advance(or free if you come from far away). http://lugradio.org

The Linux Link Tech Show – This the longest running Linux podcast or so they claim. They’ve had an impressive list of interviews in the past and this show feels quite down to earth with less of a radio show feel. http://tllts.org/

Enjoy and if you know of any other Linux/FOSS podcasts I should check out, leave a comment.