Free Podcast Host: PodBean
This is the second, and long overdue, review of free podcast hosting solutions. The last time I reviewed MyPodcast.com. This time I’m taking a look at PodBean.com.
It’s been so long since I signed up at PodBean that I couldn’t remember my username or password. However, PodBean sent me an e-mail oh so long ago that had that information in there. Nice.
PodBean seems to be running an implementation of Wordpress MU, the MU stands for Multiple Users. When you sign up your username is your subdomain. The one that I chose was MyThoughts. That’s part of why I didn’t remember what my username was. You would probably choose the name of your podcast as your username, or some derivative thereof.
Design
PodBean has multiple themes to choose from, all of them fairly basic. There are many widgets that you can use for the sidebar including the uber flexible Text widget that will allow you to include things like Twitter streams, or a Facebook badge should you choose to add those.
Media Handling
Upload of all files, for the free service, is handled through the File Manager where you can upload files as large as 30MB. This is the location where you would upload your podcast audio or video file. This is also where you’d upload any images that you’d like to include in your posts. The podcast files were easy to include in the posts after they were uploaded through the File Manager.
Quotas
The free PodBean service is limited to 100MB of upload capacity and 5GB of transfer per month. This is adequate for a new podcast considering you’ll have zero listeners to begin with, except you. There is an upgrade available that brings the quotas up to 1GB of upload capacity and 100GB of transfer per month for $1.99 a month. Not a bad upgrade for the money and gives you a lot more headroom in the capacity so you don’t have to archive old shows to make room for new ones.
Posting Podcasts
So, how easy was it to post podcasts? Extremely easy, especially for anyone that is familiar with Wordpress, MU or otherwise. You can add categories, tags, images, podcast media, text and then publish your podcast. Very simple. Comparing PodBean to the last free service that I reviewed, MyPodcast, I’d consider PodBean a large step up in terms of customize-ability and ease of use when making posts. While I didn’t have a problem making posts with either, being familiar with Wordpress made the PodBean experience to my liking.
Podcast Questions
I added a new page to the web site recently. The page is called Ask A Question. 
At the end of many of the posts I put my e-mail address and you, the reader, can send me questions about podcasting. Some of you do, but compared to the number of readers, the vast majority either don’t have questions, or don’t bother emailing. To make the asking of questions a little easier the Ask A Question page gives you a quick and easy form to send your podcast related question.
The best questions will be made into blog posts so all the readers can benefit from the questions and answers.
Give it a try!
The Recording Booth: Building a Professional Recording Studio
I’ve had a few inquiries about building a podcast studio. First, a milk crate lined with egg crate will be a great first recording booth. It isolates the sound to just what is in front of the microphone, mainly you. If you don’t want to talk into a little box on your desk, run a microphone stand into your closet, clothes and all, close the door and record there. If neither of these suggestions are for you, and you are looking to build a real recording booth/podcast studio, check out the video series over at Expert Village. There’s some good advice in general about recording audio.
The Recording Booth : Building a Professional Recording Studio — powered by ExpertVillage.com
Search Meter: A WordPress plugin
While listening to the Boagworld podcast a couple weeks back, Paul Boag had a recommendation that he took out of his new book. It was about using metrics for identifying holes in your content. He recommended looking at the searches that are done on your site. Those searches that yield zero search results are lost readers/viewers/listeners. What at great idea! Wordpress has built-in search ability, but it doesn’t give you statistics. I have Google Analytics on the site as well, but that doesn’t help with the internal search on the site.
Enter Search Meter.
Search Meter is a Wordpress plugin that does keeps record of searches and how many results are returned. It does exactly what Paul advocated. For example, on my podcast, Fat 2 Fit Radio, there were 15 plus searches for “zero calorie food” or some derivative thereof. Searches returned for that string on my site, ZERO! Time to put together an article or episode of the podcast on zero calorie food.
Give Search Meter a try and plug the holes in your content.
Search Meter: a WordPress plugin » Semicolon
DIY Microphone Stand
Dozens of people each week using the search term “DIY microphone stand” land here on The Podcast Studio. I did make a post back in March of 2007 showing a wire coat hanger twisted with some duck tape into a microphone stand. I’d consider that a more “makeshift microphone stand” than a true do-it-yourself project.
So in that DIY spirit, and in conjunction with NaPodPoMo, I give you my DIY microphone stand. The whole thing cost me $6.50 in parts from the local Lowe’s home center. Listen to the podcast below to find out all the parts to assemble your own stand.
The DIY Microphone stand is really only good for the handheld, SM58 style microphone. I couldn’t attach the Heil pictured above to this stand. I guess if you really wanted to you could attach a 3/4″ PVC cap to the top of the stand and then drill and insert a bolt with the exact thread count and size as the microphone attachment clip. This DIY mic stand, with a coat of black paint, would be almost passable especially if you mounted it to a round piece of wood instead of the two chunks that I have pictured.
Did you make a piece of your podcast studio yourself? Send me a picture and I’ll post it here on the blog.
Top 5 Free Podcaster Tools
I talked with a woman recently that is planning to start a podcast in the coming year. We setup a blog and went through how posts are made. She already had a web site so adding the podcast would cost next to or exactly nothing.
How is that you ask? With the Top 5 Free Podcaster Tools below.
#5 - Wordpress w/Podpress
Wordpress is the software that powers many a blog. It is free software that’s distributed by Wordpress.org. Any $3 web host with PHP and MySQL can host a Wordpress blog. With the addition of the Podpress plugin, which adds podcasting and, more importantly, iTunes support, you have a very powerful and capable podcast server. One caveat though, the latest version of Wordpress introduced a feature that keeps multiple revisions of posts. This broke the Podpress plugin. So far the creator of Podpress has not issued a patch for this problem. However there are two work arounds. One is to add another plug-in called No Revisions and the other is to add a couple lines of PHP code to the Podpress code. Even though this incompatibility exists, I have not found a better combination of software to create a podcast site.
#4 - Feedburner
Feedburner is a free service from Google that will keep track of subscribers to your podcast, downloads and provide some other great services. If you don’t have another way to get iTunes compatible tags in your feed, Feedburner will also take care of that for youl. One of my new favorite services is the subscribe to podcast/blog by e-mail. Readers/listeners can enter an e-mail address at your web site and they’ll get an e-mail every time you post an episode of your show. Very slick. It also integrates with Worpress with the use of the Feedsmith plugin.
#3 - Audacity
Audacity is the defacto standard for podcast recording. You can purchase more powerful programs, but for the price, FREE, you can’t beat it. Audacity has filters/effects for normalization, compression, noise removal, amplification and oh so much more. Being free has it’s ups and downs. While I have found the program very reliable, there are multiple stories of shows being lost because of program stability. Overall thought, Audacity is a solid piece of software.
#2 - Google Analytics
When you’re trying to find out where your listeners are coming from, nothing beats Google Analytics. This is also a free service from Google. By inserting a small chunk of supplied code into your web pages, you’ll gather a plethora of information about the people that visit your site. And another bonus, Google Analytics will integrate with Wordpress by using any number of great plug-ins. My current favorite plug-in to integrate the two is called Ultimate Google Analytics. The plug-in puts that Google created code on each and every page. That creates a complete picture of how each person visiting your site is using it.
#1 - Google Docs
Probably not an application that you’d expect to see on a podcast tool list, but Google Docs do one thing better than any other service out there. That thing is share documents. Each my co-host and I collaborate on show notes on Google Docs. Links, comments, e-mails, literally the complete show layout is input in a Google Doc. It is a marvellous tool.
That’s it. Get recording!
1UP Podcast Studio Disaster
Check out what happened to the 1UP podcast studio during a taping of the show. It looks like some sort of pipe burst or the sprinklers went off. Either way, water and podcast studio equipment, in either the video or audio variety, do not mix.
Adsense Fail
While sifting through my RSS feed reader I found this great tidbit. Not the article, but Blogging Tips is using Adsense to monetize their RSS feed. However Adsense is doing it’s job too well. While Blogging Tips wants you to monetize through affiliate marketing, Adsense not so much. Do yourself a favor and sell your own products. Don’t have a product? Get one.
Aso, unrelated, look for the conclusion of the Podcast Seminar and the reviews of all those free podcast services real soon.
Peace,
Russ
Podcast Seminar: Spreading the Word Through Social Networks
This post continues the Podcast Seminar series. This week we cover the topic of Spreading the word through Social Networks.
First off, what is a social network? Here’s a good definition from Wikipedia, “communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.” (You might get this term confused with social media; I know that I do. The great part is that the two are connected. According to Wikipedia as well, “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” So, because you have a podcast AND you are thinking about using a social network, the buzz term social media is now yours to throw around how you see fit. Now back to social networks.)
Secondly, what are some social networks that you can use to share interests and activities? There are a lot of them to choose from and depending on your location in the world, some might be more popular than others. Here’s a short linked list of ones that might fit you:
- Facebook - originally for college students, it’s now open to all
- MySpace - The grand daddy of social networks, great for musicians
- Twitter - The original Web 2.0 social network
- Pownce - Share files and music with your followers
- Plurk - Very recent entry into the social network race
- Jaiku - Purchased by Google, what are they planning?
New social networks pop up every day, and thanks to Ning, you can even own your own social network that is just for you and your listeners/viewers.
Now the third, and most important topic on Social Networks, how do I use them? Too many times I see posts on the social networks that I frequent that are just promoting their blog posts or latest episodes of their podcasts. Social networks are about more than just sending out a note that you have a new blog post. It’s about engaging an audience and sharing, as the definition above implies. If you do a podcast about a certain subject, like marketing, ask questions about marketing. Share what ways you’re using the topics in your podcast in your business. Give examples of how those in your network could use your latest podcast to make them money. Again, the word is engage.
So let’s look at an example someone who engages his audience, and in my opinion does social networks correctly. That person is Jason Calacanis. Jason uses Twitter to blast out information about his latest venture, Mahalo. But he also talks about his dogs, interesting articles, holds giveaways and he engages the community in a conversation. He’s there to market his company for sure, but he’s also there to comment and respond to those he is following and are following him. He’s even termed a name for the group, Jason Nation.
And finally, for Heaven’s sake, do not employ a bot to constantly make post on your behalf. There are tools that can help you more productive when interacting on social networks, but a bot is not engaging anyone in conversation.
So are social networks important for your podcast? Sure, but make sure the social networks that you choose are not just used as a cheap press release medium. If you’re excited about using social networks to promote your podcast and build a community, there are others out there that can help you in the best ways to leverage social networks. One person you definitely have to check out is Chris Brogran and definitely sign up for his newsletter.
And while you’re looking into these social networks, be sure to follow me on Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Plurk and Jaiku.
That’s it for the topics that I had planned for the Podcast Seminar series. Next time I’ll wrap it up and give a sweeping over view of everything covered.
Alesis Introduces iPod Based Recorder
Apparently there’s a lot of interest in turning iPods into portable digital recorders. I mentioned the Belkin unit recently and then just today I saw this puppy from Alesis. I guess the utility of having your recorder and your player as one unit is an advantage over having a separate unit. The more I see these items though I’m reminded of the old adage, “Jack of all trades, master of none.”
Here are some of the features of the ProTrack that you might be interested in:
• Integrated iPod design
• Records to iPod (Classic or 5th Generation), or iPod nano (2nd or 3rd Generation)
• Professional connectors: two combination XLR - 1/4-inch inputs, 1/8-inch stereo output
• Supplies 48V phantom power to inputs when wall-powered
• Records 16-Bit, 44.1kHz or 22kHz stereo
• Two built-in condenser microphones for detailed recording
• Built-in microphones in XY configuration for optimum stereo image
• Switchable limiter ensures overload-free recordings even in unpredictable aural situations
• AC power adapter included
• Four AAA batteries provide up to five hours of operation
• Tripod stand mount for placing into ideal recording conditions
If the ProTrack fits the bill for you, check out the link below for more information. It’s set to be released in the third quarter of 2008.
ALESIS INTRODUCES PROTRACK STEREO HANDHELD DIGITAL RECORDER FOR iPOD