Live Video from LiveNation (TEST)

Save and Sync Your Playlist with Your NPR User Account

originally posted on the Inside NPR.org blog on npr.org 7.21.10

Today we’ve added features to the NPR media player allowing you to save and sync your playlist across multiple computers for the first time.

The NPR community engages with our stories across many platforms and devices. With this new feature, we’ve taken our first steps toward allowing you access to your favorite stories from whatever device you’re using.

The new playlist allows you to sync your saved stories with your NPR account

Users of NPR.org who are registered and log in on the site can click the new ‘Save Playlist’ button found just above the playlist in the NPR media player to save stories to their NPR user account. If you’re not logged in when you try to use this feature, you’ll be prompted with a link to visit the NPR log in page where you can sign in or create a new account.

Once you’ve logged in and saved your playlist, all the items will be synced with your NPR user account. This means the next time you visit NPR.org and log in, the media player will retrieve your saved stories so you can listen no matter which computer you created your playlist on. So whether you’re on your desktop at home, on the go with the laptop, or listening from the office – you’ll have your favorite stories with you wherever you are.

If you choose not to log in, the media player will continue to save your playlist items on your computer for up to seven days, just like it did before. So while we hope this new feature encourages you to log in and be more active members of the NPR community, you’ll continue to have the same ability to save stories in your playlist you’ve always had.

To make this all happen, NPR’s application development team created our first ‘API wrapper.’ The wrapper is a new customized layer between a user's playlist data and the NPR Story-API that works with the media player to make it easier to store and retrieve specific data elements. This gives us the ability to develop custom applications faster and with more security while maintaining the stability of our core APIs.

As mentioned in the beginning, this new feature is just the start and we’ll be bringing the ability to sync and save playlists to our mobile platforms in the future. We also want to learn more from you. How would you use your saved playlist? Share with other members of the NPR community on your profile page? Post to Facebook or LastFM? Let us know in the comments and tell us how we can make this experience better.

NewsHour / NPR BP Video

Google Audio Player

HTML 5 CSS / Javascript Player for iPad

00:00

Mobile Safari HTML 5 Video

HTML 5 video element for Mobile Safari on iPhone 3.x

HTML 5 video player: Ogg + H.264

HTML 5 video element for Firefox 3.5+ | Safari 4 | Chrome

HTML5 CSS / JS STYLED PLAYER

HTML 5 audio player using ogg vorbis styled with CSS and Javascript
working in Chrome and Firefox 3.5+ (sort of)

00:00

HTML5 Ogg + MP3 + Flash Player

*supported by Safari 4+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome

HTML5 Ogg Audio Player

*currently only supported by Mozilla Firefox 3.5+

NewsHour Lite Video Player

Video Coverage Courtesy of: PBS NewsHour and NPR News

Embeddable Player Test

Karl Denson Embedded Audio Player

First Listen

Live Video Test