Do I Need an iPod for That?

Anders Lijeholm presents to breakout session participants the how-tos and whys of podcasting.

Contact Anders: Email: ALiljeholm@omsi.edu Phone: 503.797.4000

Resources from presentation

This site will check your blog or podcast RSS feed and make sure you have created it correctly. A valid feed will download on all programs without any errors: http://feedvalidator.org/

This is one of many tracking sites that can help you count how many people are actually listening to your podcast: http://www.feedburner.com/

Update: Feedburner is now totally free! It used to provide good statistics for free and great statistics for money. But now it's all free.

Apple has several good pages on how to make your podcast work the best for the most people. While iTunes isn't the only way to get a podcast, it is the most popular: http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html & http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcastingfaq.html

Session Notes

You don't need an iPod to listen to a podcast. A podcast is an RSS feed that links to sound (or video) files that can be listened to on a computer or iPod-type device. Most podcasts are mp3 files, which are extremely compatible with any computer in the world.

As with other RSS feeds, listeners can just use one of your postings, or they can subscribe to your podcast and automatically have each episode downloaded to their computer.

OMSI uses an M-Audio product for recording the podcast. http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrackII-main.html

Audacity is a great free sound editing piece of software. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

iTunes doesn't host your podcast; they just link back to your webserver. Listing your podcast on iTunes is free, so is tracking your podcast with Feedburner.

Before you even get started, know your audience, and what sort of content you want your podcast to be about.

Update: After the event, I looked up to see if there are other podcast indexes besides iTunes. There are many, but not built into Windows Media Player or RealPlayer the way they're built into iTunes. All 3 players will play your podcast, but they aren't ways to find the podcast in the first place.

As for software to automatically assemble your podcast feed, there are some options, like FeedForAll, but they do cost quite a bit of money. Well, tens of dollars. If you need to have your podcast used by people who aren't comfortable with HTML, it's an option, but a teen volunteer might be more effective.

I just saw that ReadyTalk is providing free webinars and one is on podcasting! If you are interested, check it out and register here: http://www.readytalk.com/web-seminar-series/

Amy Sample Ward

Thanks for the workshop. We're about to start podcasting through our site & iTunes (crossing fingers). Hope to see you at KBOO

- Marc

Here are some whitepapers on podcasting from Oneupweb.

The Power and Principles of Podcasting: http://podgarden.oneupweb.com/landing/podgarden/podcast_principles/

The Value of Podcasting to Search Marketing: http://www.oneupweb.com/landing/pr/podcast_value/index.htm

Amy Sample Ward