Yeah, after thirty days, it’s not exactly new, but Justin.tv is still more fun that YouTube.
Category: Podcasting
BigBlueBall IM Podcast #11 is out
For those of you who were wondering when you’d hear the next BigBlueBall Instant Messaging Podcast, your wait is over. BigBlueBall Podcast #11 is now out with the latest IM news. This show includes a special member-contributed surprise — the premier of The BigBlueBall Song.
So what’s up with the delay? Was it a slow news month in the IM world? Was my agent negotiating for a better contract? I wish! The reality is much more mundane. Sometimes life conspires to devour all available time. Between business trips to D.C. and Houston, major life changes, helping my daughter in Santa Barbara resolve car issues and juggling several intense projects, the podcast got pushed back.
The part that takes the most time with the podcast is the editing, and I’d like to move away from doing any major editing at all. The one thing that stops me is my lack of knowledge in the area of audio recording. Normally, I use Skype with Skylook to record the show, then bring it into Audacity to add in the musical intro, bumpers and outro.
What I’d like to do is record the entire show “live,” including the music and any prerecorded parts (i.e. listener call-in segments). What I need is the ability to create a queue of those prerecorded bits, such that I can click “play” at the appropriate moment. Then when the entire show is recorded, the only editing I’d do might be compressing or normalizing the audio (and hopefully I can minimize that, too).
If you’ve got some advice for how to do this on Windows XP, preferably with Audacity, please let me know.
Phillip Torrone on Podcasting
Torrone came to fame working at Engadget.com producting great how-to’s. He now works at MakeZine.com which is sort of like the old Popular Mechanics but for the modern age. His podcast for Make uses low-end, accessible solutions (just what I’m looking for!). He used to use Skype (which I love) but now uses Gizmo Project because it makes recording brainlessly simple. Which makes me wonder… why doesn’t Skype incorporate recording? Seems like a no-brainer. Good stuff.
technorati tags: portablemediaexpo, podcastexpo, podcasting
Podcasting at Yahoo!
Joe Hayashi is the product manager for the recently launched Yahoo! Podcasts. It’s a podcasting directory with search capability and folksonomy-style tags, giving you multiple ways of browsing for interesting podcasts. They’ve also done some nice things that allow you to listen to to podcasts directly through their site — even controlling the playback speed.
Yahoo! Podcasts has been out for about a month, and they’ve already learned a few things:
First, who is listening to podcasts? One thing they’ve seen is that over 80% of the audience is men, ages 30-44 (the typical “early-adopter” market). But… women are stronger in the younger demographic.
Listeners outnumber subscribers by 2:1. Among subscribers, the average subscribes to over three podcasts.
Community matters. Listeners can rate podcasts or add tags to podcasts, providing lateral navigation.
Metadata is the lifeline to your listeners.
- Create and use show notes; be specific.
- Create and use album art. Use iTunes tags.
- Use a duration
- Spell check
- Match ID3 tags to episode information
- Use an RSS validator
Yahoo sees podcasting broadening and growing, and there is a lot of opportunity for more, different genres and new forms of podcasts. New tools will bring in new publishers, which in turn will broaden the audience. Podcasts will move from iPods and PCs to phones, TVs, PSP and other devices down the road. Video or vidcasts are coming. And monetization is coming (marketing, advertising, premium content). The market is still very young.
Podcasting Expo, Day One
Greetings from the floor of the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference! This morning’s keynote speakers included Jason Calcanis and Leo Laporte.
Calcanis, as you may know, founded Weblogs, Inc., which he recently sold to AOL for the tidy sum of $12 million. He presented what he felt to be the key areas of opportunity for making money in podcasting. What are those opportunities? It really boiled down to just two: Creating software that makes it extremely easy for people to create and publish podcasts (a big gap, currently); and creating good podcasts (i.e. having or hiring talent). Bottom line: If you have talent, you have an opportunity. If you don’t…
Leo Laporte is an author, radio personality, former host of TechTV’s The Screensavers and of course, a podcaster himself. He was extremely personable and very enthusiastic about podcasting, because it lets you talk about what you love — without being “owned” by a broadcaster. He felt that radio was dying, mainly because everything has become so homogenized and controlled by the two mega-corporations that control most radio stations. Podcasting provides the answer.
Laporte didn’t address the issue of a business model, instead taking a more philosophical approach. His felt you should do what you love, and the money will follow. He included with some practical advice for being relaxed, natural, and comfortable in your podcast, and knowing what your audience wants.
Laporte will be broadcasting live from the show tomorrow morning on KFI 640AM (available via online stream) and again for his podcast TWiT in the afternoon.