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- iTunes on the iPad.
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- Searching for a podcast.
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- Episode selected to download.
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- “Item over 20MB” message.
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- TWiT website.
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- I now want the full-sized video podcast.
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- Clear the address bar.
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- Enter G then paste.
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- After URL pasted, tap the GO button.
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- GoodReader opens and begins download.
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- When finished, tap the filename.
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- Enjoy the netcast!
One of my earliest posts shortly after starting Glasskeys.com was a huge 5 part series on how to bypass the “Item over 20MB” download limit for iTunes podcasts if an iPad or iPhone is connected via 3G only (no Wi-Fi). Thanks to my love of Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech podcast (I even have a TWiT brick), I was motivated to find a quicker method to download my beloved video netcast whilst using 3G. I then remembered my short ghttp trick post on how to modify an anchor tag URL to force the Safari browser to download a file directly to GoodReader storage.
Finally, putting 2 and 2 together, it becomes trivially easy to download content by copying a video link in Safari, typing the all important “g” character in an empty address bar, then finally pasting the video link after the g character. Hit the Go button and the netcast will then begin to automatically download in GoodReader, and strangely will not make a peep about the size of the video being larger than 20MB.
Please keep in mind if you use this trick often, your mobile carrier will happily charge you outrageous fees if you go over your monthly data plan limit. So again, please keep an eye on the number of bits you have allotted and remaining on your current monthly plan if you decide to use this technique. Consult the screenshots above for the “step-by-step”.
Incidentally, the next post on this topic – yes there is another way I have found to do this – bypasses both the mobile carrier file size limit and the limit that cloud storage providers place on maximum file size.
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NOTE (05 Dec, 2011): As promised here is the other way, a technique utilising RAR files, from a iOS + Windows user perspective.
Update (11 Dec, 2011): iOS + Mac users will be shortly to follow click here for the RAR file technique.
Glasskeys
glasskeys.com 
Brilliant workaround! Also, it’s a good note about being mindful about data plan limits when doing this. Does the next post on the topic work via the data plan as well?
By: Sophia on 11/27/2011
at 3:58 pm
Sophia,
Yes, with data plan you are spot on. You still have to pay the bandwidth costs == as always, the more you download the more you pay, especially if you go over your limit — but you won’t have to worry about the size of the file you are downloading. This upcoming technique will also help people that commonly have poor and/or spotty cellular data connections. (quite common in America I am afraid, but not so much in Western Europe & Asia).
For example, some cloud storage services place maximum file sizes at 25MB. The next post will show how to get around that as well.
I am taking a break atm and will resume writing the text, steps, mac screenshots out tonight & the windows portion tomorrow. This will be one of the Nook “SD Card” type of tutorials.
This time around, I will show my readers that use Windows OS better attention. I recently purchased a cheapy win laptop to help make my posts better for those readers.
Cheers,
Stephen
By: glasskeys on 11/27/2011
at 7:31 pm