Patent ID: 8015167

Claim:
A method comprising: based on monitoring a media feed that provides notification of content available for playback: from the media feed, receiving multiple pointers to content stored at each of multiple different locations over a network, including receiving a first pointer identifying a first remote location over the network in which to retrieve the content and receiving a second pointer identifying a second remote location over the network in which to retrieve the content, and from the media feed, receiving metadata for each of the multiple pointers, including corresponding metadata associated with the first pointer and metadata associated with the second pointer, the metadata for each respective pointer specifying a type of download application needed to retrieve the content via the respective pointer; tracking a presence of resident download applications on a computer system that are available to retrieve the content; identifying, based on metadata associated with the first pointer, that the first pointer requires use of a first particular type of download application on the computer system to retrieve the content from the first remote location via the first pointer; and identifying, based on metadata associated with the second pointer that the second pointer requires use of a second particular type of resident download application on the computer system to retrieve the content from the second remote location via the second pointer; based on metadata associated with the pointers as generated by a publisher of the content, identifying a relative priority associated with the first pointer and the second pointer; selecting a pointer of the multiple pointers to retrieve the content based on the metadata and presence of the resident download applications on the computer system, wherein selecting the pointer includes selecting the first pointer to retrieve the content in response to detecting that the first pointer has a higher relative priority than the second pointer as indicated by the metadata provided by the publisher of the content; and initiating retrieval of the content over the network via use of the selected pointer.