Printcasting

We've spent many months developing Printcasting, and we're happy to say that about 80% of the features focused on magazine publishing are complete. But a few things are still in development. We're trying them out in a separate server from this beta site, and hope to launch them on the beta and later live sites within a few weeks.
Please refer to the following list of what's working on the beta site, and what's in development, as you test out Printcasting. And remember to let us know if you have ANY questions or feedback!
 
What's Working Well?

• -- Contributing RSS feeds that anyone can use in a Printcast magazine. (Note that only RSS feeds with full content available will work for Printcasting. If you need help enabling full contents in a feed, there are some pointers in the contextual help in the feed tool).
• -- Creating blogs on Printcasting.com, which can be used in Printcasts.
• -- Creating Printcasts that automatically update every day when new content is available. You will find out when new Printcast editions are available at the same time as your subscribers do. (Note: you may get e-mails about new editions 2-3 times a day while we're in beta. This is because we're testing out the update functionality).
• -- Creating ads. Right now, ads flow randomly into Printcasts, but they will soon be targeted to appear in Printcasts you select.
• -- Subscribing and unsubscribing to Printcasts.

Newly Updated Features

• -- NEW! We just revamped the Printcast directory so that it shows the most recently updated editions, along with the ability to drill down by category. Check it out here: http://www.printcasting.com/publisher/categorylist 
  This directory will soon be updated to include feeds.
• -- A "Share" link appears next to Printcasts in your workspace that includes widgets for promoting Printcasts on your blog. The widgets with thumbnails update whenever a new edition is published.
• -- The date, volume and edition of your Printcasts now show up in the headers.
• -- PDF previews for new Princast editions should be easier to read when you zoom in.
• -- You can report violations from Microsites (and soon, from feed previews too).

What's in Development?

• -- The ability to review and approve every edition of a Printcast before it comes out. This is partially working on our alpha, so let us know if you would like to help us test it out.
• -- The ability to choose individual articles that appear in each edition of a Printcast (assuming you have set it up to review and approve).
• Uploading a picture to create your own header image.
• -- Targeting ads to specific Printcasts.
• -- Paying for ads (e-commerce gateway). This will be the primary focus of the next 3 months of our development.
• -- Sharing ad revenue with publishers and contributors, and the Printcasting network. This is also a primary focus over the next 3 months.

 
Are there any known issues?

Here are some sticky areas we know about that we're working on. When We'll let you know when we have fixes in place.

• -- When you click links in the progress bar (for example, to change your header image or add a feed), sometimes the functionality will come up in a full screen window instead of in a popup. When this happens, you will get an error when you click the Continue button. The only workaround for now is to click your browser's BACK button a couple of times to return to the step you were on before, reloading the page, and then trying again. We're working on a fix that will prevent this, so stay tuned.
• -- When viewing your publications in Microsites, it may be difficult to read the text of articles even after you zoom in.

Which known issues have been fixed?

• -- There was a temporary problem that caused too many simultaneous PDFs to overwhelm the PDF generator we're using (it's an open soure server-side tool called html2ps). When that happened,, the next person to create a Printcast couldn't see a preview and Printcasting microsites didn't appear. We put a temporary fix in place that solved that problem, and are talking to some people who work on html2ps to find out how this kind of problem is normally avoided.
• -- Some articles included duplicate words or lines. No more!
• -- Occasionally stories appeared that saaid "No Posts." We believe this was related to old feeds which were in the system during earlier beta cycles, and it shouldn't happen anymore. But let us know if you see it again.

There are many more features we're planning that may be on this list, but we'll be updating it over time. So check back! And always feel free to let us know what YOU would like to see in Printcasting. Because in the end, YOU are the reason we started this site.
- The Printcasting Team