What Happens When You Give A Nun A Microphone And An RSS Feed?

As a podcast consultant, one of my greatest rewards of my work is the fact that I get to interact with so many wonderful and uniquely different clients on a regular basis. I’ve worked with the former chief engineer of Corvette, many nationally syndicated television show hosts from pro fishermen to garden experts, traditional radio broadcasts hosts, book authors, dentists, chiropractors, and even priests and nuns.

Today, I want to highlight just one of my clients. Actually, it’s two people who worked together to find an effective use of podcasting for their message. In the photo below, you can see both Sister Julie and Sister Maxine from ANunsLife.org. (Note: Click On Image To Enlarge)

The reason why I want to highlight this client is because I’m very impressed at how quickly Sister Julie and Sister Maxine have moved forward in their journey in podcasting. Sister Julie contacted me several months ago to purchase audio equipment, as she had a desire to record some audio to release audio on her blog to compliment the written content she was already providing to a growing community. She and Sister Maxine took to podcasting like a fish to water. Not long after, she hired me to consult with her on the possibility of doing live broadcasts of her podcasts. Since then, she’s been producing live audio content, releasing the recordings, afterward, in their rss feed, on a consistent basis.

As you can see above, these nuns have even gone so far as to take their podcasting to a live audience. I’m excited to see my clients really get involved in building a community around their content. Sister Julie and Sister Maxine have an amazing relationship with their audience.

Just this morning, I received another email from Sister Julie, asking about expanding their equipment further to allow for an expansion in the number of guests that they can have participate in their recordings with them. Not only that, but she’s requesting some additional consulting time to help take the audio quality of her shows to the next level. Something I already have specific steps that she can take to make it sound more like a professional audio broadcast that would rival any FM radio talk show.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Click the play button above to hear the audio from the recording made when the photos above were taken. You’ll notice that the recording made available in their podcasts are currently the audio recordings from TalkShoe, the service I set them up with for their live shows. The simply dial into the live conference call set up by TalkShoe using their JK Audio Broadcast Host to send all the audio from their microphones and mixer board to those on the live call.

I’m very proud of the progress Sister Julie and Sister Maxine have made. It just goes to show that more and more people are out there launchign new podcasts, an industry that is GROWING! It makes me wonder, if two catholic nuns are producing a regular podcast, and you’re not, why? They picked it up pretty quickly! If you need help, don’t suffer from paralysis by analysis any longer. Hire me today and I’ll have you up and running with your own podcast in no time!

How Kindle For PC Will Help My Podcasting Efforts

I’ve been a huge fan of the Kindle for iPhone application ever since it came out. I do not own a Kindle personally. In fact, I don’t even desire to own a Kindle. Why? Because I actually love reading books on my iPhone. I can change the text size in such a way that it makes it a perfect device for me to burn through pages of books whenever I have a few minutes of free time here and there.

A while back, the Kindle for iPhone app added the functionality to both add highlight and take notes on any section within a book. This was a major improvement above simply “bookmarking” a page.

This is important to me, because my major gripe about reading a book digitally was that I couldn’t highlight it and write notes in the margin like I could with a paper book. This functionality gave me the ability to do both.

So why am I so excited about the Kindle for the PC? It’s because I often want to share a quote from a book in a podcast. As much as I enjoy reading a book on the iPhone, trying to share quotes from books, on the iPhone, while talking into a microphone is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Kindle for the PC saves the day!

The Kindle for the pc does not, yet, allow you to add notes and highlight sections of books, though that functionality is coming soon. However, because the Kindle for the PC will sync with my Amazon Account just like my Kindle for iPhone will, I’m able to VIEW all the bookmarks, notes, and highlights that I made in the iPhone on my PC.

Here is an example of a highlighted page:

Here is an example of a note I entered:

You can bet I’ll be sharing a great deal more insights from the books I’m reading in my podcasts. I’m very excited.

You can download Kindle for PC right now by Clicking Here.

133 Podcast Answer Man – Leo Laporte Admits Nobody Cares About Video

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Podcast Answer Man Episode 133
Leo Laporte Admits Nobody Cares About Video

Right Click Here To Download

In episode 130, I shared some audio clips from a talk that Leo Laporte gave at the Online News Association Conference in San Francisco recently.

In that talk, Leo had shared that he made over 1.5 million dollars last year from advertising on his podcast network. Soon after sharing this revenues from the previous year, he stated that “Podcasting, essentially, is dead.”

Of course, in that episode, I argued that podcasting is what earned Leo his 1.5 million dollars, not live video. In fact, I played audio clips from his talk where Leo shared that with us.

In this episode, I share two very important things from two different podcasts that Leo produces. In episode 13 of This Week In Google, Leo shared that this year, Leo has already earned 2.5 million dollars from his podcasting. Doesn’t sound like a dead industry to me.

However, even more shocking than that, I was blown away by something that Leo shared in This Week In Tech episode 218. If you go and try to find the quote I’m talking about in the episode from the TWiT.tv website, you will not be able to find it. In fact, the episode had been pulled offline, edited, and re-released without the quote included in the episode.

Luckily, I had my original copy in the recycle bin on my laptop. In this episode, I share the audio where Leo says… “This is nuts… I spent all this money to broadcast video. Who’s watchin’? Nobody’s watchin’ video. They all just listen in their car. Nobody wants this.”

I admire and respect Leo Laporte a great deal. I credit him for my inspiration to get into podcasting. As shared in this episode, I’ve found great success in finding my passion in the field of podcasting and have found a way to support a family of five with a career in podcasting myself.

I know that Leo doesn’t really believe that podcasting is dead. However, those are the words he spoke. Those words were spoken to a great number of people who don’t understand podcasting at all. I got upset with Leo when he said that because he was setting up a powerful story about the power behind podcasting and then totally turned a possibly interested crowd away form the thought of pursuing podcasting.

Discuss podcasting with other listeners in the Podcast Answer Man section of the gspn.tv Community Forum.

EQUIPMENT SALES: Please consider purchasing from me when making your next purchase for audio gear to improve the sound of your podcast. Email me at Cliff@Ravenscraft.org or call me at 859-757-1399.

PODCAST CONSULTING: I’m also available for one on one podcast consulting. Whether you want someone to get everything set up for you or you just need a little help along the way, I’d love to work with you. I’m able to demonstrate using screen sharing technology during our call which makes it just like I was there sitting next to you at the computer. If you are interested, email me at Cliff@Ravenscraft.org or call me at 859-757-1399.

Subscribe To The Podcast Answer Man Podcast:

Plus Members Subscribe Using Plus Feed Generator.

Individuals Have The Power In New Media!

New media has radically changed our world! In the past, if you wanted to literally broadcast a message to the world, the only way to really reach a mass audience was through traditional media outlets such as television networks, news papers, etc. Even then, your message may have been limited to the geographical reach of of the media outlet of your choice.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a music artist going on a week long tour in another state with your band and you actually happen to witness baggage handlers tossing your $3,500 guitar around in what seems to be like a game to them, causing significant damage. Let’s pretend that you have several others from the plane who also witnessed this event taking place and when you confronted the airline staff about your issue they seemed uninterested in your claim.

If this were ten years ago, what could you possibly do? Do you think the major networks would put your story on 20/20? Fat chance! Do you think you would get your local news station to cover your report of damaged luggage from the airline? Yeah right! Ten years ago, you may have blogged about the event and it’s possible that you may have reached a few hundred people with you sad story.

Okay, what if it were today? In our hyper-connected world we are all networked together with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. With the tools available to us today, if we have an interesting story to tell and depending upon how much passion as we can muster to tell our story, the possibilities of how far we can spread our story is nearly limitless!

In the spring of 2008, the band Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour. Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. He discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people Dave communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss.

Dave promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that he would write and produce three songs about his experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.

To date Dave has written the first two of his three songs and just released the first video in the trilogy. The response has been incredible so far. Everyone involved in the recording of the track and filming/editing of the video has volunteered their time and pre-production work is underway for the filming of the second song due out later this summer.

Dave says that “United has demonstrated they know how to keep their airline in the forefront of their customer’s minds and I wanted this project to expand upon that satirically. I’ve been done “being angry” for quite some time and, if anything, I should thank United. They’ve given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. We had a pile of laughs making the recording and the video while the images are spinning on how to make “United: Song 2” even better than the first. So, thanks United! If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I’m glad it was you that did it. Now sit back and enjoy the show.”

Before you view this video, please note that the video was released on Monday, July 6th, 2009. I’m posting this blog entry and embedding this within only 60 hours of it’s release. As of the time I post this, the video has already been viewed by more than 466,539 times. [Read more]

Facebook Wall Like Theme For Your Community

I just came across the video embedded here that shows off a Wordpress theme that allows you to have your own version of a Facebook Wall for your community. I see real potential here for some podcasters. I’m thinking about possible uses of a gspn.tv Community Wall. I’m going to take some time to think on this one.

You can download the theme by CLICKING HERE.

Moving Feedburner Accounts To Google – WAIT FOR NOW!

Update 02/29/2009: I’ve recently given my own personal green light on the Feedburner to Google server transition. I encourage you to listen Episode 99 of Podcast Answer Man and check out show notes there for up to date details.

Anyone, who’s listened to the Podcast Answer Man Podcast, probably knows that I’ve been a huge fan of the Feedburner service from the earliest days of podcasting. It was not surprising, that as soon as Feeburner posted a little message on the account login screen saying they were moving all the feedburner accounts to Google, that my email inbox was flooded with questions as to how this change was going to affect our podcast feeds.

If you have not logged into your feedburner account recently, the message appears like this:

Basically, if you click on the “Learn More” link, it takes you to a Google Help Page titled ”
Transferring FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts FAQ.” Upon first glance, it would appear that the announcement is simply that they are merging the “account administration” with Feedburner and Google.

When Google acquired “Writely” (Now Google Docs), they did this same thing. Basically, it was as simply as clicking on a “transfer account to Google” link and if you already had a Google account, you just typed in that Google Username and Password and the account was then managed using your Google credentials from that point forward. If you didn’t have a Google account, you simply had to create one and that’s how you managed your account from that point forward.

I’m certain that this is “one” aspect of what Google is doing with Feedburner here and they intend to have all Feedburner User ID’s transferred to Google User ID’s by February 28, 2009.

However, this announcement states that log in credentials are not the only thing that will be changing with this transition. They make mention that that those who are using the “My Brand” feature of Feedburner, will need to update their CNam registries.

Not only that, but it would appear that they “might possibly” be changing the actual location of our podcasts feeds from “http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOUR-FEED-NAME-HERE” to something else. Although they do not clearly tell us what the new feed format will be in this notice.

Of course, wanting to be ahead of the curve, I wanted to go ahead and bite the bullet and do the transition on all of my feeds (have move more than thirty of them) so that I could figure out how this process is going to work and what the end result would be.

However, as soon as I choose the “move your account now” option, I got this error:

So it would appear that whatever the new feed structure will be, it is possible that someone else may have already chosen to have created an account on the new feed server using your feed’s unique name. This is not cool at all and the account transfer seems to be an all or nothing at this point.

In the mean time, I’ve created a “http://feedburner.google.com” account with my Google Log In. I’ve even gone so far as to set up a test feed and noticed that it gave me a “http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MY-FEED-NAME-HERE” feed address.

At this point, I wish I had more information to give you. Google has plenty of time between now and February 28th to figure all this out. My suggestion at this point is to ride out the storm for just a bit and not make and changes just yet.

When I know more, I’ll post here and likely release and audio podcast edition of Podcast Answer Man to give the full details of what is happening when I know more.

Until then, I’m going to rest assured by this Q&A from the blog entry on the Google site:

Q: How long will the feeds.feedburner.com/myfeedname address work?

A: It is our intent to keep backward compatibility with your feed address as long as this service exists.

Just keep in mind, if during the process, you run into any issues. I am available for one on one phone consulting. However, as I said, I would not make any changes to your feedburner account until things get ironed out a little be more.

Next Page »