Podcasting Workshop

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Welcome to the Podcasting Workshop. On this post I have some links and notes that we will need for the workshop today.

First of all What is Podcasting and why is it becoming so popular?
It is a way of setting up a radio station on the web. The good thing is that it lets your user listen on whenever they want. They don’t miss the show if they tune in late. Every listener of yours can get the program from start to finish whenever they want to listen to it. The best part is that if your listener has an iPod or similar portable audio player, the podcasts can be automatically transferred from his computer to his player.

Podcasts are very easy to set up, you don’t need to be an expert in web technologies or audio engineering. Most of the tools that are used are free or cheap. All you need is a good story to tell.

More and more people are buying little portable music players like the iPod. The competition is heating up – Apple, Creative and the Koreans. The prices are going down. With podcasting you can make local, audience targeted program and feed these players.

Is Podcasting related to Blogging?
Yes, Podcasting works over the blogging infrastructure. Think of Podcasts as audio blogs. People who read a lot of blogs use a software called aggregator. Examples of aggregator tools are Bloglines, Newsgator etc. On your aggregator, you can specify what blogs you like. The aggregator will bring the content from those blogs to you.

Similarly, for podcasts we use a podcast aggregator or podcast client. On these clients you can specify what podcasts you like. The client will download the podcasts.

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Here you see an example of a client. Now is a good time to download a Podcast client and check this our for ourselves.

You can also get a list of popular podcasts at Podcastalley.

How do I create my audio program for podcasting?
This is what you will need


  1. A PC or a Mac

  2. A sound editing software that can save the files as MP3. I recommend Audacity.
    It is a free software and very good.

  3. A microphone or a portable recorder (if you want to record audio outdoors,
    you will also need a line in cable that connects the recorder to your computer)

  4. An account on a site called rizzn,
    a free service)

All you have to do is record your sound, save it as mp3. Create an account at Rizzn. They will give you an email address. They will also provide you with your podcast URL. This is the URL (or web address that your friends will use to tune into your podcast). Email your audio file to the email address provided by Rizzn. In about five minutes, your program will be online.

What if I have a longer audio or video clip, can I still use Rizzn?
Rizzn is a free service, right now they don’t specify any limit on the audio but as you are using email, you may not be able to send in longer (more than 10 mins maybe) audio files. A good idea would be to break your program into smaller chunks and then email Rizzn.

If you have your own server space, then you don’t have to use Rizzn. Copy your audio files to your server. Remember that this server should be visible on the web.

Again using two free services Blogger and Feedburner, you can set up a podcast. Here is an excellent tutorial on how to Podcast with Blogger and Feedburner

Where can I learn more?
There is more at Wikipedia: Podcasting

15 thoughts on “Podcasting Workshop”

  1. Hi Preetam,This is awesome! You are using Blogging to educate your students about a different “avatar” of Blogging; namely podcasting.Kaiz.

    Reply

  2. ohhh creative ???this “creative” is not that “creative”….hehe i posted a wrong comment agothis class is good !i like it ,thak u Preeta

    Reply

  3. I checked it out after a few referral hits from podcasts by jroller bloggers. It’s a pretty cool idea. But after listening in to a few podcasts and hunting in vain for something like a Top10 recommended podcasts list, I lost interest quite quickly.Most people are not natural DJs, and their delivery is not of as high a standard as the professional DJs that people are usually used to on radio stations.Sometimes, the topic doesn’t capture your attention, accents you are not used to, monotonous speech, bad sound quality, or it’s just one person droning on and on about himself etc …. It is quite an effort (and more time-consuming than text blogging) to make your podcast interesting enough to make strangers on the net to want to come back and listen to you some more. :D If anybody can recommend a podcast, say, with the wacky entertainment value of Daniel Ong on Perfect10 radio, please do and I will give podcasts another try. :D

    Reply

  5. Coco, yes will make a strong plan to drop by your place and getting some podcasts going.Kaizer, it is far easier editing my notes on the blog than the older method where I used to write them in dreamweaver and then uploadThanks Rika. I enjoy your pictures. Roxanne,I would agree with the points you mentioned in your comment. It does take more effort to podcast and some of more active podcasters have actually slowed down. My interest is more at getting thematic Podcasts out. Like doing a travel show where we interview people who have visited some interesting place. Podcasting is good here as such focussed content the local radio station may not be willing to pick up. Anyway, having grown up on stories like Lord Jim, I am interested in all things past in Singapore. I enjoy reading your blog.

    Reply

  6. Nice…! Hey Preetam, help me lobby Mr Brown & Miyagi to do a public workshop in the library (with you even) on how to do podcasting.

    Reply

  7. Hey … I’m the guy behind blipmedia. A little clarification – you can in fact make podcasts longer than 10 minutes. two or three hours seems to be the limit. We have HTTP uploading options, as well, so as long as your connection doesn’t time out, you can get rather large files uploaded to our service with no problem.

    Reply

  8. Hi .. this is a brilliant find. Thanks forsharing the great info with me.What’s interesting for me is the moreI read your stuff the more I find thisblog (post) so helpful……Also it’s great to read other people’s posts……

    Reply

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