After this clever bit of youtube video, I suspect we won’t be hearing Steve Jobs say “boom” even once at next week’s MacWorld keynote. We will, however, hear a lot more about podcasting. Garageband is rumored to be getting some additional podcasting features… we’ll almost certainly see some expanded features, but it would be nice to see even tighter integration with a far improved iWeb interface. I haven’t typically suggested that my clients use Garageband yet, but it’s mainly because most of them work off Windows XP. Look for my thoughts on Steve’s announcements sometime Tuesday night.
Author: Tim
Sound improvement
Virtually every podcast client I have asks for tips on how to improve sound quality. There are a lot of different ways to achieve this, from voice technique to hardware to software… from time to time, I’ll throw out some tips in the blog to help your podcast sound better. My tip for this week is an amazing piece of (free!) software called Levelator by Gigavox Media. It does a very nice job of evening out loud voices to soft voices in a podcast. If your show includes interviews or a roundtable format, you probably notice that most of the voices come in at different levels, creating a bit of listener fatigue (especially when Mr. Loud Voice chimes in right after Mr. Low Talker). If you do not have a hardware compressor to even out the levels during recording (few do), this software can help in post-production. The best part is that the interface is a simple drag and drop, and it’s available for both Mac OS X and Windows. I’m just beginning to fool around with it a bit, but so far it’s performed beyond my initial expectations.
Check it out…
Happy New Year
Happy end of 2006 to everyone… here’s to an exciting and prosperous 2007! I anticipate some changes coming in this space in the first or second quarter of ’07… I’m not fully sure what these changes will be, so don’t acccuse me of being intentionally mysterious just yet!
I just finished reading the podcasting legal guide, Rules for the Revolution by Colette Vogele (download it here). While no guide can ever promise to be comprehensive, I think this is about as good as it gets in terms of covering the legal issues involving podcasting. For those of you, like me, who are relatively new to the universe of intellectual property law, this is a pretty valuable resource. Rather than suggest a blanket “all rights reserved” copyright tag for all of my client’s shows, it might suit some to look at the Creative Commons alternatives, depending on the nature of the podcast and whether there are commercial qualities to the production.
A new bit of blog functionality to mention… you may have noticed this blog is a bit schizophrenic, jumping from election and political law issues to podcasting with little to no warning. For those of you that care only about one particular issue, all posts are now labeled so you can segregate out the offendingly boring issues with one little click over on the right.
Resolution time… I promise to post more. On what, I have no idea… I just promise to post more.
CLE rush
The end of the year for some lawyers means compliance time… many states require lawyers to log a certain number of hours taking Continuing Legal Education (CLE) classes. As a proud member of the Oregon State Bar, I’m finishing up my three year requirement with a few weeks to spare. If you are a member of the OSB or the WSB, there is a great free CLE resource at freecle.com. It is a lifesaver if you need ethics credits in particular. Unfortunately, there aren’t any elimination of bias or child abuse reporting courses there, so the OSB will be getting some additional money out of me this year so I can learn about those (mandatory) subjects.
My holiday reading list will include Rules for the Revolution, the legal guide to podcasting. I hope to post a review in the near future…
rules for the revolution
Grand jury duty ends this week for me, so hopefully I can resume regular posting sometime soon. In the interim, I recommend listening to the latest Podcast 411 episode on the legal issues related to podcasting. Rob’s guest is Colette Vogele, an attorney from the Bay Area who is a co-author of Rules for the Revolution (wiki and pdf version), a legal guide for podcasters. Colette is also launching a new podcast on the subject soon… I look forward to listening and reviewing it here on the ol’ blog.
Light blogging month
I will be serving on a DC grand jury this month, which will keep me away from some of the usual daily exposure to the political and podcasting world. I’m hoping to use some of the downtime to pull out some tips from the podcast expo, as promised, however!
Greetings hip tranquil chicks!
I did an interview for the Hip Tranquil Chick podcast that we posted tonight. Welcome to all of you who heard our semi-rambling podcast discussion! If anyone has any questions on podcasting, feel free to ask them here in the comments section and I’ll address them in the blog! All questions from basic to advanced are welcome…
If the links aren’t working (I’ve been having some issues with Firefox browsers), feel free to email your questions to: tim(dot)mooney(at)yahoo(dot)com!
Podcast Expo thoughts
A while ago I noted that I was going to be listening to several of the presentations from the Portable Media Expo and give some of my thoughts. Wellll, given that I’m an election lawyer by day, and there’s that pesky election coming up… well, things got away from me. In any event, I am listening to a few of the sessions and I hope to pull out some tips and tricks that I’ll post later in the month.
Portable Media Expo
Two weeks ago, the Portable Media Expo was held in Ontario, California. I attended the inaugural show last year, but my work schedule was a little too tight to attend this year. Given the huge leaps podcasting has taken in the last 365 days, this year’s show focused less on the hobbyist aspects of podcasting, and more on the professional usage of the medium. Luckily, a bunch of podcasters in a room means the whole thing got recorded… I’ll be listening to some of the more relevant sessions and post my thoughts here in the coming weeks.