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.

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!

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.

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

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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.

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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.

Do you have a story? Do you have a passion? What new media tools are you using to get your message out there! You may not get a million people to hear your out in the first week of putting your story out there. However, there are tools that allow you to reach an audience that is eager to hear what you have to say!

You can download the theme by CLICKING HERE.

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.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a social media junkie! Of course, twitter is a major tool for me to communicate and connect with so many in the gpsn.tv community.

There are only three flash flavors to choose from which each come in three sizes. However, I must say that anything is an improvement over the old twitter badge as shown here.

You can get your badge at http://Twitter.com/widgets

A Talk Amongst Those Who Plan To Podcast For Years To Come

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In this episode, I share a talk with some folks who are pretty well known in the podcasting community. If there was any doubt as to whether podcasting is working for folks, I hope this conversation will put your mind to ease.

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@gspn.tv or call me. My phone number is on the top of the the Equipment Page.

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Being the early adopter that I am, I thought it sounded great. I miss the “tracking” feature where I used to get sms updates when someone sent me an @reply on Twitter. So what did I do? I went to the site and checked it out. When I got there, I saw an extremely vague website.

In fact, there’s no links at all on the site to explain how the service works at all. There’s not even a privacy statement! Instead, at the top of the page, it simply asks you to give them your Twitter Username and Password with the phrase “Your password is safe with us. No worries!”

I THINK NOT!

Don’t do it people! There are ways that this type of service can be done without needing your password!. Just below the username and password fields, there’s a question that says “Support Twply on your first login?” There are two radio buttons where you can choose to answer “Yep, go ahead!” or “No thanks!”

That’s all it says. When I read it, I’m thinking they are asking for donations! Right?

NOPE!

Basically, what happens is that if you click “Yep, go ahead!,” without notifying you, the service LOGS INTO YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT and makes a post ON YOUR ACCOUNT saying “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!”

As it turns out, this is what they author of the site considers supporting Twply on your first login. Two things have obviously happened. The site is gaining a massive number of new users every minute. Why? Well, I have about 1,600 people who follow me on Twitter. Over time, I’ve developed a relationship of trust with most of them. If they were to see a message from me giving such a glowing endorsement of a site that says I just started using this service, please come check it out, people would respond.

But what about the password? One might hesitate, but through this “social engineering” marketing plot, people are giving away their passwords by the droves! Why? Well, go back to the hypothetical scenario I gave before. People might say, “Well Cliff obviously trusted them enough with his password” and knowing that someone they “TRUST” sent a message saying the service is good, and then you see that it says.. “Don’t worry, your password is safe with us!” Well, people just type it in and move forward through the process.

So what’s the big deal? 1) They have your password and shouldn’t need it to do the service they are doing! 2) They don’t explain what “supporting them” means. (There is a difference between supporting a service and endorsing a service! 3) There’s no privacy policy 4) They send out a tweet in the “first person” as if YOU were the one endorsing the site! 5) Read on, because it gets worse!

YOUR INFORMATION HAS BEEN SOLD!
I’m not kidding. You can see this “FOR SALE PAGE. In the information about the site, they write “All advertising is running through word of mouth on twitter, we used a very different method. The method is not loved by everyone but we clearly ask on the homepage weather to use it or not. If they choose to “support us” then a message with the link of twply will be sent out to the users.”

The worst part is that the site actually sold! That’s right, access to literally thousands of Twitter accounts just sold for a measly $1,200.00.

I could go on and on about this one. However, I don’t think I need to say any more to convince you that this is one site that you don’t want to be an early adopter on! Have you already given them your Twitter ID and password? CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY!

As for your email address. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a bit of increased spam traffic coming in as result of the sale of this site!

Podcast Answer Man Episode 090
Podcasting Is Dead? I Disagree! A Talk With Michael W Geoghegan

Right Click Here To Download

In this episode, I talk with Michael W Geoghegan regarding his recent comments about the statement of podcasting made in his blog regarding the demise of Podango.

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@gspn.tv or call me. My phone number is on the top of the the Equipment Page.

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Podcast Answer Man Episode 089
Sad News Regarding Podango

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This weekend, I learned of some very shocking and extremely sad news regarding Podango. On Friday, December 26th, the president of Podango, Douglas G. Smith, published an entry on the Podango company blog. In the post, Doug writes, “Our ability to continue operations past the end of this year (2008) is in question. We do not want any of you, or any of your shows to be negatively affected by this uncertainty and so we are encouraging you to begin taking all necessary steps to secure your data or begin moving to another hosting provider.” … “As of today, the last day to move or secure your data is December 31st.”

In case you don’t have a calendar in front of you, that’s less than five full days from the date of the notice till the time that it is “possible” that Podango content producers will no longer have access to any of the content they’ve uploaded to the Podango servers and any and all rss feeds hosted by Podango cease to exist.

You may remember that I was considering a two year contract with Podango for the entire gspn.tv network. In this audio episode of the Podcast Answer Man, I share the story of why I chose not to sign with Podango at the very last minute.

Also in the episode, I talk with Todd Cochrane from GeekNewsCentral.com and Rawvoice.com. I brought Todd online because he has a hosting company that is a one of a few hosting options for these Podango content producers who are looking for a new home.

I know that many of you in the gspn.tv and PodastAnswerMan.com are personally affected by this news. My heart goes out to you! I can’t imagine that you saw yourself spending your holiday break working on a podcast show transition such as this.

One last thing mentioned in this episode was Michael W. Geoghegan’s blog entry asserting that this is further proof that “podcasting is dead.” Michael, I love and respect you man… I certainly agree that podcasting didn’t turn out to be what so many folks in the old days thought it would become. However, it’s far from dead. In a way.. Actually, in a BIG WAY, I’m glad it didn’t turn out the way everyone had thought it would. I’m totally digging the path that podcasting has taken me down!

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@gspn.tv or call me. My phone number is on the top of the the Equipment Page.

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So I opened my email this morning (Sunday, December 28th, 2008) and noticed that many people had written to tell me that they were getting error messages when trying to download episodes of our podcasts.

I’ve been with Libsyn.com for three years now. And before I go any further, let me tell you that overall, I’ve been an EXTREMELY SATISFIED customer for the most part. When they first started out, things were a bit rocky. However, at the time, they were about the only independent folks out there who had a simple level cost, unlimited bandwidth media delivery plan available. Couple that with the fact that the cost was better than awesome, they had a hard time keeping up with the demand at first.

As for the past two years, my service with Libsyn has been pretty smooth sailing with only the occasional bump in the road. Okay, I know, mixed metaphors, but hey, it’s just a blog post right?

I’m writing this blog entry for a few reasons. First off, I wanted to be able to simply point listeners to this post when answering all the emails asking if there is something wrong with their subscriptions to our premium content at gspn.tv.

So for those of you who were wondering, you likely received one of two errors over the weekend. Either iTunes showed you something like “(err=500)” when trying to download the files from our rss feeds, or you got an “Internal Server Error” if you tried to either access the file via the web or using our gspn.tv iPhone Application.

I want to assure you that there is nothing wrong with your subscription and this was simply a random outage that Libsyn.com, the company that we pay to host and deliver our media content, had experienced over the weekend. Everything is back up and running now.

Another reason I wanted to make this post was to make public a suggestion that I recently made to Libsyn’s support staff. Actually, I’ve made this suggestion about three or four times in the past as well, but it’s never been followed through on. I’m wondering if I were to propose this suggestion here in my blog, if enough people were to comment on this post that they think it’s a great idea, and perhaps implement it.

It’s a real simple idea….

As soon as anyone on the libsyn support staff is aware of an issue that affects “multiple user accounts,” simply open up a blog entry on the Support Blog at http://support.libsyn.com.

Again, I want to interject that I’m a HUGE FAN of the Libsyn Support Team. I’ve never had an issue with Libsyn that was not resolved within a matter of minute or at most a few short hours of my notifying them of my issues. However, let me share with you my recent email support ticket to explain what I’m talking about here.

At 2:01pm, I finally found enough time to actually send a support ticket regarding the issue with Libsyn.com. I had already confirmed that it was not just an issue with my account by doing a search on Twitter. Here is the contents of that initial email:

I have three accounts with libsyn and I’m getting (err=500) errors in iTunes as are most of my listeners.

Can you investigate?

My three user ids are in the subject line of this email

At 4:22pm (Mind you that it is the weekend) I got the following response

Hello Cliff,


We checked your three accounts, and your files appear to be active and available for download. If you still experience difficulty, please send us the link to any affected file, and we’ll look further into the issue.


Please contact us if you have any other questions.


Thank you,

*******(I’m removing name)

Of course this prompted me to write back by saying….

******,

I appreciate you looking into my account. It does appear to be working now.

Could you do me a favor? Is it possible that when Libsyn has these sort of issues, that you guys ACKNOWLEGE that there WAS an issue? (I’m not yelling with my words… I’m not upset or irrate.. Just making a point..)

You see, your message simply makes it sound as if there was never an issue at all with my account, or that you can’t confirm that there was an issue on my account.

It’s clear, by looking at the attached image, or LINKED HERE: http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/363/1755611919.png that you guys were clearly having issues with people getting Internal Server Errors…

My only concern is that this email response simply does not confirm that there was ever an issue and the http://support.libsyn.com support blog would make it appear as though you have not had any system wide issues since Monday, November 24th…

Is it too much to ask to post to the blog when you guys realize that there is a support issue that is clearly affecting several users?

I don’t mind my media not being served 100% of the time. For what I pay for my media hosting with you, I’m okay with 96% to 98% uptime with an occasional 12 hour issue once a year…. Just communicate with us so we know that you are aware of this stuff and that you’re working on it…

Is this doable?

Cliff

Next, I got the following response….

Hello

Sorry for the frustration. It was not our intention to avoid acknowledging an issue with the service this weekend.

To be honest, we noticed a couple of these reports yesterday early but really receive the bulk of complaints by this afternoon, which is when we (support staff) took action and contacted the tech team to alert them to the issue. Being the weekend following a holiday, the tech and support teams are actually spread around the country in various places, so we had to work quickly to communicate the problem to the team that could fix it and work on fixing the problem that caused the errors as well as fixing the erroneous files and alerting users. That is where our efforts were concentrated as opposed to posting to the support blog.

Again I apologize for the frustration. Please let us know if you have any other questions or problems.

Thanks
********

And then I responded again wit this….

*******,

I can appreciate that. Perhaps for those who come back to check their email on Monday morning, only to find emails piled up from their listeners alerting them to the issue, do you see how maybe posting just a quick note that there was an issue over the weekend that had been resolved might help keep someone from searching for an issue more than they need to?

I appreciate that it’s the weekend and that you guys did resolve the issue. Maybe I’m just being picky and I simply need more sleep.


It’s just that when I get a report of an issue from my listeners, the first place I go to is to the Support Blog. I know there have been other documented outages since the November blog date.. Even if you were to wait till you get back in the office on the next normal business day… It would be just so awesome to know that a quick look at the support blog tells me that you are aware of an issue and that you are either working to fix it or have already fixed it. This keeps me from filling out support tickets and really puts my mind at ease.

I appreciate all you guys do!

Cliff

Okay, so am I out of mind to suggest that they consider making it a policy that if any support issue arises that affects multiple customer accounts that the first person who realizes the issue meets this criteria should take two minutes, log into the support blog and simply say “Hey, we are aware of an issue and we’re on it!”

What are your thoughts?

Until then, simply remember that you can search twitter for the phrase “Is Libsyn Down” and you will likely find out very quickly if it’s just your account or a system wide issue.

That’s right! Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application over Wi-Fi and cellular network. I must admit that I was surprised to see the ability to do this via the cellular network. It makes me wonder why I can download a fifty megabyte podcast episode over the cell notwork but not a three megabyte song from iTunes. Who cares, we got our podcast downloads right?

Don’t Break Out The Party Hats Just Yet!
I must say that as an end user and as a podcaster, I’m not happy with the implementation of downloading podcasts via the iPhone / iPod Touch. Let me share a few reasons why.

Fumbling Between Two Applications:
The first thing I don’t like is that it closes down the iPod Application to launch the iTunes wi-fi Application. Once we finish downloading our podcast episode(s), we have to close the iTunes app and then go back and re-open the iPod application to browse to the new podcast to play it. Seems a bit clunky to me. Not typical of Apple to have so many steps. More on this as you read on.

Taking RSS Out Of The Equation:
The second thing I don’t like is that it it get’s new podcast data from iTunes instead of the original rss feed. This means that if we used a “One Click Install” option to subscribe to a podcast, when we click “Get More Episodes…” we are taken to the “What’s Hot” list in the podcast section of the wi-fi iTunes podcast section.

Let me give you a better example. Let’s just say that we were to go to the iTunes Store on our computer, we do a search for Podcast Answer Man, and click on the “Subscribe” button from the Podcast Answer Man podcast page “in iTunes.” If we go through this process, then when we click on “Get More Episodes…” in the iPod application, it will take us directly to the Podcast Answer Man Page in the iTunes wi-fi store and give us options to download more episodes that Apple is currently aware of. More on the aware of part of this in just a moment.

However, let’s just say that that we wanted to skip the iTunes store and subscribe the podcast directly. If you have never done this before, you simply click on “Advanced” in the menu of iTunes and then click on “Subscribe To Podcast” and then enter in the url of the rss feed.

If we were to do this, when we click on “Get More Episodes…” in the iPod Application, it WILL NOT take us to the Podcast Answer Man page in iTunes. Instead, it will take us to the “What’s Hot” section in the iTunes wi-fi application for podcasts. This happens even if we use the same rss feed that is registered in the iTunes Store. NOT COOL APPLE!!!!

Another issue is that the iTunes store does not stay consistently synced with podcast rss feeds. I might release an episode of a podcast at 8am and it might not show up in the iTunes listing until it next syncs with the rss feed at 5pm later that day, or whenever they choose to resync.

Of course, there are a ton of podcasts that are not listed in iTunes. So for those podcasts that we are subscribed to, we are out of luck.

No Syncing Back To The Computer:
A third thing that I do not like is that you when you do a search in the iTunes wi-fi store for a podcast and you download an episode, it DOES NOT sync back to your computer! What’s up with that? Did they do any testing on this functionality at all?

What They Should Have Done!
What they should have done was to turn the iPod podcast functionality into an rss reader. When we click “Get More Episodes” it should read the RSS FEED, show us a list of episodes available in the feed and give us the option to download whatever episodes we want to download right there INSIDE the iPod application.

They should have given the ability to subscribe to a podcast right there from the iPod Application by entering an rss feed as well. Basically, the iPod functionality on the iPhone / iPod Touch should function much like the “podcast section” in iTunes, distinct and feature rich and completely usable, independent of the iTunes Store.

Oh, and of course, whatever we would subscribe to or download on the iPod App should sync back to the computer as well.

I like that they allow us to browse the Podcast directory in the iTunes Wi-Fi store. I really am. However, the fact that you can “subscribe” to a podcast and they don’t sync back to the computer. It makes me ask… “Why bother?”

I guess I’m just thankful that they finally approved the gspn.tv Application in the App Store. At least my listeners have some sort of access to the latest content that I produce on the go, including all my premium, password protected content.

What are your thoughts? Share a comment and Join The Conversation!

While I am able to take an existing Wordpress Theme and modify it to meet my client’s needs, I must tell you that I can not take credit for the original designs that I’ve used. I’ve been an affiliate with Revolution Themes for quite some time. And as such, I’ve recommended several clients to use these great themes as the foundation for their online presence.

Effective this morning, my favorite themes are going Open Source with a brand new site named RevolutionTwo.com. What this means is that these themes are now going to be made available for free to the public.

My first thought was how in the world was the team behind these awesome designs ever going to make a living and to continue to be able to provide support for those who use the themes? I learned that they are now offering either a one year or lifetime membership to full support on all their themes.

As a long time customer of theirs, I can tell you that their support for these forums are second to none! Personally, I know the cost of getting a decent web site designed. It would cost no less than $1,000 and likely much more to have a site that looks as good as these themes. For only $99 you get unlimited access to all the Revolution Two Themes and you get full support for 1 year. For only $149 you get a lifetime membership allowing you unlimited support and access to all themes.

I would like to point out that I’m available to help on a one on one basis in learning how to customize these themes to meet your needs. I charge $95 per hour for my services. So you can see how much of a good deal the theme support membership can be!

If you choose to use the Revolution Two themes and/or membership, I’d love it if you would be willing to come to PodcastAnswerMan.com and click on the banner that links to them in the sidebar so that I can get the affiliate commission on the referral.

True be told, there is no shortage of bloggers that are suggesting that “podcasting is dead“. I’m here to shout from the mountain top that this simply is not true! Podcasting is not only alive, it is thriving!

When I started podcasting in 2005, I didn’t know anyone locally who had ever heard of a podcast. Today, almost everyone I know is aware that their local church “podcasts” their weekend sermons, that their local news station makes the evening news available via podcast, or that their favorite tv show is likely to have an “official podcast” put out by either the creator, wriiters, or producers of their favorite tv show.

For those of you who do not know this about me, I left a very successful career in insurance after 11 years to pursue a career in podcasting full time. I’m now entering my eleventh month and I’ve not experienced a single dime of debt from day one. I’m consistently contacted by people who hear about me via word of mouth and who want to be consulted about how to start their own podcast.

I’ve fallen in love the the medium of delivering content via rss technology that I’m working on a business model that will allow me to earn a majority of my income from producing my own content alone. Just a few short months ago, I decided to take my podcasts to a partial premium content model, charging $10 per month. In just a few short months, I’ve already have already had one 163 people join up as gspn.tv Plus Members, with new members added daily.

I introduce the fact that I was an insurance agent for eleven years to explain to you that that the insurance industry as a whole is an industry that is always the last to embrace the latest technology. Many insurance companies still do not accept credit card payments on their websites. Most of those that do, still charge you up to five dollars for the convenience.

A majority of insurance agency offices today are still filled with up to 10’s or 100’s of four drawer letter file cabinets full of manila folders with years worth of paper copies of client policies. You’d laugh if I told you the number of agents I know that have an email address, but have no idea how to check or send an email. This is an extreme example, as most agents do use email on a daily basis. However I bet that less than 10% would know how to scan a document into pdf format and email it as an attachment. Being as technology driven as I am, the fact that the insurance industry simply could not keep up with my taste of early adoption was one of many factors that led me to make the switch to my new career.

I share all this background to share the following email I got from an insurance industry continuing education company. A quick look at their website will prove that they haven’t done a refresh of their web design in the past five years. However, this insurance related company has adopted the technology of podcasting.

With the trend that I’ve seen in the adoption of new technology, the following email is an early indication that your grandmother may be asking for an iPod for Christmas so she can subscribe to the podcast for AARP radio.

CEUNEWS

CEU.com Adds Downloadable Course Audio
Continuing education podcasts allow students to take material on the road

You’ve come to expect the best in convenient, high quality continuing education courses from CEU.com. After all, you just need a computer and an internet connection, and you can get the courses you need any time, day or night. What could be easier?

Well – what if you could study the course material when you are away from the computer? When you are driving, riding the train, or even working out at the gym? Now that’s convenient!

CEU.com is happy to announce that we now offer downloadable podcasts of our course audio. This means that when a student signs up for a course, he or she can save the audio to an iPod or other MP3 player. Then the course can go with the student on the road, to the gym, while doing housework – wherever an audio player can go. He or she can review the material as many times as necessary without having to sit at a computer the entire time.

Audio learning is a great way to conveniently incorporate brief study sessions into your daily routine, and this can actually improve your ability to learn. In his book 400 Ways to Stop Stress Now and Forever, G. Gaynor McTigue emphasizes that frequent, short study sessions are the best way to keep information fresh in your mind. Using this method of learning allows you to better understand and retain the material on a deeper level, and it is far superior to trying to “cram” all the material at once. You are also less likely to procrastinate, since these short sessions fit so painlessly into your schedule.

“At CEU.com, we pride ourselves in using technology to its greatest advantage,” said Bruce MacMillian, CEU’s president and CEO. “Making the audio from our courses downloadable makes perfect sense, and it’s a great use of the technology. Freeing our students to take the audio with them to review at their convenience will help them to retain and utilize the information to enhance their careers, and that’s what continuing education is all about.”

Downloadable course audio is now available at www.ceu.com.

Out of those nominated, only 10 podcasts for each category make it to the actual voting round. With 22 categories, this means that of the 1,874 podcasts nominated, only 220 are eligible for this year’s 15 day voting period.

I’m very honored to announce to you that SIX of the 220 podcasts nominated were gspn.tv podcasts!

Below are the podcasts that were nominated and for which category:

About The Church – Education
Weekly Lost Podcast – Entertainment
Full Time Mom – General
Musically Challenged – Podsafe Music
Almost Daily Devotional – Religion & Inspiration
Podcast Answer Man – Technology & Science

The voting will open up at http://PodcastAwards.com on October 23rd and will run for 15 days. In the nomination phase, each person was limited to one vote per category, period.

However, when official voting opens, each person is allowed to vote for their favorite podcast in each category EACH DAY for FIFTEEN DAYS.

It is vitally important that if you wish for gspn.tv podcasts to have a chance of winning an award, that you vote each and every day once the voting opens. If you are willing to make this commitment to proving that the gspn.tv Community is one of the most engaged audiences out there, please let me us know that we can count on your daily vote by TELLING US HERE!

From what I understand, prongs on the adapters, that plug into the wall, can break off and remain stuck in the power outlet which creates a serious risk of electric shock. Users can either exchange their adapters in an Apple store, or order a replacement online.

If you have not seen the Mac v/s PC commercials, you really should see them all!

Here is one of my favorites:

Several weeks ago, news came out that Microsoft was going to pour THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS into a Microsoft ad/marketing campaign. What was shocking about this story was that they announced that Bill Gates was to appear in the new ads and that they had hired Jerry Seinfeld to bring some talent to the campaign.

Here are their first two attempts at this campaign with Jerry:

Attempt 1:

Attempt 2:

It is no surprise that Microsoft said bye bye to Jerry! I must say, that regardless what hidden meaning may or may not be tucked into these commercials, it just seemed to be lost on the masses, including myself.

However, the latest advertisement coming from the Microsoft ad campaign is what we have all been waiting for. Something that deals DIRECTLY with the Mac v/s PC ad campaign. Let’s face it, Microsoft had been beaten up and knocked out in the prime time boxing match known as commercials. To this day, when we are browsing past commercials and see a Mac v/s PC commercial come on, we always back it up to the beginning to watch.

The question in my mind was… “What does Microsoft have to say about what Apple says about them in the attack ads?” Finally, Microsoft answers this very question and I must say… I think they knocked one out of the park with this latest Microsoft ad.

Take a look for yourself:

Brilliant! I love it! I think I may go and watch this one again! Tell me what you think in the comments!

Me? I’m a Mac when it comes to doing anything with video or just on the go with my MacBook laptop. I’m a PC the other 70% of the time, especially when I’m producing audio podcasts!

This week the company faces a full-scale revolt. The issue: Apple’s summary rejection of a program on the grounds that it duplicated a function on one of its own programs.

The point of this entry is not to go into the full details of this story. I’ve already done that in previous posts. (The iPhone App I Had Developed, App Store Rejects My Application, & Podcasters Blacklisted From App Store)

I’m really hope that the entire new media & overall geek community will rise up and join together so that our voice can be heard in Cupertino! As I am notified of stories and blog posts about this issue, I’ll do my best to come and update this blog entry. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section of this blog.

Please note, If your link does not show up by default, I’ll manually go in and add the html for the link.

Here’s what I have so far as of 09/15/2008
iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store
Chuqui 3.0 – Reaction to Developer Leaving the iPhone Platform
Mobility Today Application
Why iPhone is an ureliable platform
App Store I’m Out
Of Course You’ll Keep Developing For The iPhone
Podcaster Developer Uses Little-Known “Ad Hoc” Mode To Distribute Banned iPhone App

As it turns out, this may not be just a simple misunderstanding and with this story I just read on gizmodo.com, it seems that iTunes is actually taking the stance of BLACKLISTING podcasters from developing applications intended to allow streaming of their content via wifi, 3G, or Edge Networks. The application referred to in this story is called “Podcaster and was designed to allow you to subscribe, manage, stream and download podcasts directly to your iPhone and iPod Touch. Who doesn’t want this? Right?

The developers of this application were delivered a similar rejection letter to the one that Apple, Inc. had sent to me saying…. “Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”

I must say that over the past few years, I’ve really warmed up to Apple. I purchased my first iPod just about two and a half years ago. Since then, I’ve purchased a total of five iPods for our family and three iPhones (I sold my original to get the new 3G).

In June of 2007, I purchased my first ever Mac Computer (A Macbook Laptop). I even started a Podcast (HelpIGotAMac.com) devoted to helping people who have spent a lifetime of computing on a PC warm up to their very first Mac Computer.

However, I must say that as a Podcaster, I feel slightly snubbed by the rejection of applications where money and time were poured into by podcasters when there were absolutely no clear guidelines or indications that such useful applications would be against any company policy.

Apple is turning out to be a very different company from what all my friends had been telling me about. I’m not sure I like this way of doing business.

UDPATE: Finally, this is starting to get some widespread attention. Here is a story posted on MacRumors.com.

Stephanie and I started podcasting back in December of 2005. Since then we have launched nearly thirty unique podcasts. As of today, we still have more than 18 shows that remain in production at gspn.tv. The numbers I’m about to share with you do not include any episodes that I produce for any of my consulting clients or for Watermark Community Church. I have also excluded blog and video blog entries where either an audio or video media file was not delivered via a syndication feed.

As we are quickly approaching our third anniversary of podcasting, I was searching through our podcast archives today, to see if I could coordinate our 1,000th podcast episode to coincide with our 3rd Podcast Anniversary on December 16th. Imagine my shock when I browsed through all the archives only to recognize that the very next gspn.tv podcast episode that we will produce will be our 1,000th gspn.tv podcast episode that we have officially released.

I’m not kidding when I say this rocked my world. I’ve intentionally put off my morning recording of My Crazy Life and the Almost Daily Devotional as I’m considering waiting for Stephanie to join me for this milestone in our podcasting efforts. Since I was looking at some of the archived data, I looked at some other interesting facts. In just under three years, we have served more than THREE MILLION file downloads. Given that the over all average length of our episodes is approximately 45 minutes per episode, that works out to be approximately 750 hours worth of content produced.

I can’t decide if this constitutes as me “tooting our own horn” or not. I simply found this information to be quite astonishing and I simply had to share it with someone. Look for a special episode of My Crazy Life to be recorded some time today or this evening for release tomorrow.

Seriously, I had no idea that it was this much.

UPDATE: Click Here To Listen To Our 1,000th Show!

A few weeks back, I was browsing the Apple App Store to see what Apps were available for download on my iPhone. I was surprised to see a Diggnation Application that had been made available.

Diggnation is a video podcast that I used to enjoy watching to catch some of the more popular tech news stories of the week. Unfortunately, Diggnation is a video podcast that exceeds thirty minutes for each episode. As I was not always able to devote this much time to watching a video podcast each week, I often found myself getting several episodes behind in my podcast subscription feed.

A few months back, I had actually unsubscribed from this video podcast due to the fact that, at the time, I only had a 4gig iPhone and I was getting errors saying that I didn’t have enough space available on my iPhone to sync everything I needed to sync. I know that I had an option to change my settings to only sync certain podcasts or only the most recent few episodes. However, I didn’t want to impose such limits on my other podcasts. I simply unsubscribed.

The Diggnation Application was genius! One feature I’ve always wanted on my iPod was to be able to wireless get the most recent episodes of my favorite podcasts without having to first download them to iTunes and then sync my iPod. This application doesn’t actually download the podcast episodes on the iPhone for keeps and then sync it back when I connect to iTunes again. However, what it does is simply goes out and pulls up the rss feed for Diggnation and then allows me to click on any of the episodes and then the built in media player on the iPhone or iPod Touch will then stream the file over wifi, edge, or 3G.

As I continued to browse the App Store, I found the Mobility Today Application. Mobility Today is simply an audio podcast and the application does the same thing the Diggnation Application does accept it simply streams .mp3 files instead of video files.

Now since I produce eighteen of my own podcasts at gspn.tv, I figured this would be an excellent application for our listeners. Often times, our listeners sync their iPods and iPhones before they leave the house for the day, hoping to have the most recent gspn.tv podcasts. However, I often release anywhere between two to eight podcasts in a single day and our community members would listen to many of them on their way home from work or while at the gym if only they had them available.

I contacted the creator of the Diggnation and Mobility Today application and hired him to build me a similar application for gspn.tv. However, I went the extra step of having him code and create the functionality of having the ability for our gspn.tv Plus Members to sign in with their user name and password so that they would have access to all the premium content only available to Plus Members.

After weeks of waiting for approval from the iTunes App Store, checking the App Store each day to see if my App has been made available, I finally got an email from Apple. Here is what they had to say….

From: de———s@apple.com
To: Cliff@Ravenscraft.org
Subject: gspn.tv: Application Submission Feedback

---

Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.

Follow-up: 54817423

Hello,

gspn.tv cannot be posted to the App Store, as the App Store is not the appropriate channel for distributing podcasts.

The iTunes Store has separate categories dedicated to each type of media. Music, podcasts, and movies are delivered through that channel. Information on publishing podcast on iTunes can be found at: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302199

Regards,

Victor W*******
Worldwide Developer Relations
Apple, Inc.

Needless to say, this news did not make me happy. Here my email response back to Apple.

From: Cliff@Ravenscraft.org
To: de———s@apple.com
Subject: RE: gspn.tv: Application Submission Feedback

---

I’m writing regarding the FOLLOW UP: 54817423

See below referenced email:

Regarding your decision… There are two applications that are already approved, in wide use, and have great feedback ratings that are EXACTLY like my application…

Here is one for Mobility Today

Here is one for Diggnation

Please note: both applications listed above are for a single podcast. My application includes all 18 of my podcasts as well as functionality of being able to sign in with your user name and password so that my Plus Members can gain access to their Premium Member Only Content that is available to them.

I’ve paid a great deal of money to have this application developed and my listening community is desperately waiting for the App to be released as many times they are out and about during the day when I release as many as five new episodes during a day but they don’t want to wait till they get home and sync their iPhone or Touch to listen to the shows.

Please reconsider!!!!

Cliff


Cliff J. Ravenscraft
Generally Speaking Production Network
Email: Cliff@Ravenscraft.org
My Podcasts: http://gspn.tv
Follow Me On Twitter: http://twitter.com/gspn
Podcast Consulting: http://PodcastAnswerMan.com

I can’t help but wonder who is in control of approving these applications and what guidelines they are going with. I personally find the Diggnation and Mobility Today applications quite useful. I had never heard of the Mobility Today Podcast before getting the application and I find myself checking out from time to time.

I also find myself occasionally watching Diggnation and prefer to do so through the application rather than re-subscribing in iTunes.

I know that the gspn.tv Community is very much looking forward to the release of this application and I hope and pray they reconsider their denial of this application when both of the above mentioned apps are pretty much exactly the same as mine with LESS FUNCTIONALITY!!!!!

Update:
Earlier this evening, I received a Twitter Message from someone asking “But why would you want podcasts cluttering up the app store. Podcasts already have a place in iTunes.” Of course I don’t think that the iTunes App Store should simply be another directory. However, if any podcaster has the inspiration to create an application that has a use beyond the functionality of simply being listed in a directory and pays the money to have an application built, and such an application does not violate any regulations of creating such an application, then I certainly feel like it should be approved.

I honestly don’t feel that the App Store will become cluttered with podcast rss reader applications. If it does, then SIMPLY CREATE A CATEGORY IN THE APP STORE FOR IT! Heck, it just means that there is a legitimate demand for such an application.

As for cluttering up the App Store. How many 99cent piece of crud applications do we need where you simply push a button and your iPhone plays a 3 second audio clip? I mean seriously, there is an application called Jerk In A Box. The description of the app…. “Hurl insults and talk smack like a pro without saying a word with this fun app. Each button plays a unique insult clilp that’s sure to give you and your friends a laugh. Chain them together and mix and mach to create new insults. It’s trash talk on the go!”

I mean seriously! The App Store will take this and deny my application? REALLY?