Category: podcasting

Feedburner makes pro services free

This was a bit of welcome news for any podcaster using Feedburner for their RSS feeds… Total Stats Pro and MyBrand are now free. Here’s how Feedburner describes these two services:

FeedBurner Stats PRO
PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the “Item Views” checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand
The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the “My Account” tab after you’ve signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website’s domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the “My Account” link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click “MyBrand”. Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you’ll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

I use Feedburner for the Nonprofit Law Podcast and suggest it for other clients if they have hosting covered. Total Stats Pro is a nice add-on… The MyBrand option is very cool… it keeps your RSS feed “in house” (under your own domain name instead of feedburner.com), which is a really nice feature. Try it out!

iTunes podcast submissions are down

Apple’s not able to process new podcast requests for iTunes for the time-being. Check out the message here. Once it goes away, apparently, that will mean the problem’s fixed.

UPDATE – Thursday July 5th – iTunes is still down for new submissions. This is rather surprising… I expected this to get fixed sooner rather than later. I suspect some people in Cupertino got their Independence Day holiday after all… or this problem is bigger than one would think.

UPDATE – Monday July 9th, 7 PM EDT – it looks like submissions are back up, but given the comment from this morning, it might be spotty.

Garageband on iPhone?

Forgot to post this from the other day… someone’s dreaming of Garageband on iPhone. Not sure if this is (a) feasible, or (b) practical, but it would certainly be cool to be able to use the iPhone as a podcast recording device. It would require a dock connector gizmo that could hook up to a decent microphone (or mixer). Might be nice to haul the iPhone around rather than a laptop for mobile recording…

Making the microphone upgrade

You’ve started to podcast, and you were smart… you used the built-in microphone in your computer or you bought an inexpensive USB mic. You like it… it’s not a fad. Let’s make your show sound better with a microphone upgrade!

The best mics for recording your voice are condenser microphones. The sound is simply warmer and more professional. I could go all geeky and explain how and why these sound better, but quite frankly that’s some other guy’s blog…

A couple of suggestions:

The Samson C01U… this mic sounds great and it has the added advantage of plugging right into your computer directly with USB. It has great sound, and it’s relatively inexpensive for what you get… usually around $90.

The Samson is great if you only have one person. If you have a multi-person podcast where everyone is in the same room, it’s time to go to a multi-mic setup. The problem with the Samson for this is really a problem with USB… you can only have one sound input for the vast majority of computers, so even if you have multiple USB ports, the computer can only handle one mic at a time.

The solution? A mixer… this is a device that sits outside of your computer that takes in multiple audio devices (i.e. more than one mic!) and mixes it all together into one signal that goes into your computer. I use a Behringer mixer and Behringer condenser microphones for the bulk of my multi-mic setups. The microphones need what is called “phantom power” from the mixer to work properly, and my mixer has phantom power for two mics. That’s a good starting point for most podcasters, unless you have some zany morning zoo crew kind of show with 74 people in the room. Good luck to you on that… but I digress.

For beginners, I suggest a mixer that connects to the USB port of your computer. There are several good ones, but I like the Alesis best. That will run you about $100-150. Next, you’ll need some mics… I like the Behringer‘s I use (<$50), but there are some other good inexpensive ones by Samson as well (about $70). You’ll need to get some XLR cables for the mics… they connect to the mixer and power the mics… they’ll run $10-15 apiece (and you can get them from your local Radio Shack or online).

As Steve Jobs would say…. boom! You’ve got an upgraded mic setup for pretty cheap. You’ll be amazed how much better your show sounds with better mics!

iPhone: podcastable?

MacWorld reports that the iPhone will support developers to create applications for the device:

This capability is being exposed through the full version of Safari that will run on the iPhone, said Jobs, using “Web 2.0”-style technologies like AJAX that will enable developers to create content that “looks and behaves exactly like apps,” integrated with the iPhone and iPhone services.

Ok, so this could be exciting. If you’ve read my ramblings before, I’ve been hoping that there would be some way for the iPhone to wirelessly nab podcasts on the fly. It seemed that the version of iTunes on the iPhone would not do this, but perhaps a developer would be able to tap into the Safari development capability and hack up a podcatcher? THAT would make the iPhone super cool for podcast consumers… no more need to sync up with the computer for the latest episode of [enter fave nineball media production podcast here]. Slow? definitely if you’re just on the mobile signal… fast as heck if you’re in a WiFi hotspot. Get on it developers!

Podshow’s Suck Less bashing

I definitely don’t want this blog to devolve into Podshow bashing, but they seem to keep tripping over themselves lately. The latest innovation from the network is a listener feedback system called “Suck Less” (as in… “help us suck less”). It’s basically a demographic questionnaire that gets users points for gift cards and the like. In promoting this, Podshow has slapped a pre-roll ad to every one of their podcasts, and that has met with grumbling from a lot of podcasters. Check out the latest Podcast 411 for some thoughts on that… including one author who decided not to go with Podshow because he did not like the preroll ad. It’s even come to the point where some enterprising individuals have posted instructions for listeners on how to use iTunes to automatically trim the preroll ads from Podshow podcasts…

I’ve never been a fan of preroll ads… 60 seconds is a long ad for something that presupposes that some members of the network (apparently) suck at what they do. Not something I’d want my listeners to hear before my shows start…

Blog World Expo

Register Now at Blog WorldThe Blog World Expo in Vegas this fall bills itself as “The first and only tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media.” Something tells me there are some other heirs to that title, but no matter. Looks like this one has a lineup of big hitter companies sponsoring it, and frankly… Ontario, CA…. Vegas…. Ontario, CA… Vegas. Hmmm.

I’m tentatively hitting the New Media Expo in Ontario this September, but if the buzz on this show builds up, I might just be heading to Vegas too.

Jobs and Gates: Cats and dogs livin’ together

Last night Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat on the same stage together and had a virtual love-in over their competing product lines… full coverage here… nothing earth-shattering to report, however. Earlier in the day Jobs revealed that the Apple TV will soon sport a new source of content… some fly by night operation called YouTube. Yeah, like THAT’LL work…

(sarcasm off)

Hooking up with Google for the iPhone seems to be paying off in other ways… YouTube, as you may recall is owned by Google. This new option gives every Apple TV owner a whole new universe of content… some good, some not. It also firmly entrenches the video podcaster as a major contributor to Apple TV entertainment since many (if not most) video podcasts have a home on YouTube as well. Ninjas and Tiki Bars for everyone!