The latest version of iPodderX has been reeking havoc on podcaster's stats recently. The updated product has a bug that causes the podcast client to continually request the same file over and over again. I heard about the bug a couple of days ago and checked my server logs. Sure enough, requests from iPodderX were up ten fold. I don't think it's affecting my bandwidth, just the records for numbers of hits. So it's a nuisance and I'd like the folks at iPodderX to fix it.

Meanwhile, over at LibSyn the new and cool stats engine has been down for a couple of days. supposedly it's due to them re-tooling as a result of the iPodderX issue, but I can be sure that's the whole story :(

Also, I see on the blog over at Podcast Alley that they will soon be offering a "My Alley" service to streamline the management of podcast subscriptions. The space is starting to get crowded with Odeo, Big Contact, PodNova, PodBlaze, PodFeed, Podcast Alley and others jockeying to be THE place for finding and managing podcasts.

For the record, I never send my listeners over to Podcast Alley to vote. Why should I promote another site who'll make money due to the fact that they'll sell advertising based on the readers that I send them. I also don't like their rating system. Why should someone have to vote every month? It's ridiculous and certainly doesn't help me to find podcasts that I will enjoy. It only helps people to find the most "popular" ones, or at least the ones who know how to rig the voting best.

Finally, I see there was a big new release by the folks over at the iPodder podcast client. Hopefully there won't be multiple file hits coming from this release.