Podonomics

Penny Haynes, founder of the International Podcasting Expo, gave tips on how to add content from RSS feeds to your website. This is good for those who have multiple podcasts and blogs and want to show the content from those feeds on one website.

Some tips from Penny:

• Make sure you use PHP to display RSS feeds on your website. Using ASP or javascript will not be picked up by search engines.
• Download a zip file that contains what you need to upload to your server so you can add RSS content to your website.
• At that point, all you’ll need to do is insert a line of PHP code into your page and then the content will appear.

I’m first up this morning at the International Podcasting Expo. I’ll be talking about one of my favourite topics at 9am ET - How to Plan A Killer Podcast. I may will also get to do a “live” recording for Podonomics at 2:15pm ET looking at how podcasters are creating multiple streams of podcasting income.

If you’re interested in attending Day 3 events, just head over to the International Podcasting Expo website and click on Schedule in the left hand navigation bar. Some of the sessions are free to attend (the ones in yellow), including my live recording at 2:15pm.

If you’ve got the time and you’re making some income from your podcast, please join me. Again, go to Schedule, look for “Are You Making Multiple Streams of Podcasting Income?”, click on Studio LiveCast, then follow the steps to join us.
To access the other sessions in blue and purple, you’ll need to purchase a ticket at $25. Click here to do so.

Update: It was well attended for a 9am session. About half were attending from Europe, including Nicole Simon and Karin Hoegh, who I both met at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo in September. Bruce Murray was in attendance as well, one of my favourite East Coast podcasters and fellow Canuck.

Here’s one of the sessions I was looking forward to all day. It was so good, the session went for close to 90-minutes.

Rich Roszel is a studio designer, audio consultant and live studio engineer who spoke at the International Podcasting Expo on how to upgrade your podcasting equipment.

He suggested:

• One of the most obvious, yet overlooked instant improvements - turn off the A/C, turn off the fans, move your mic away from the noise source, such as a noisy computer, a ticking clock, a bubbling aquarium.
• Not to soundproof your room until you determine whether your room is “live”, meaning your voice echos. You can break up the reflection of your voice against the walls by adding bookcases to your room, clothing or pictures. If you want to pay, Rich mentioned Auralex, Sonex or Clearsonic.
• Rich talked about mics and why he prefers a condenser mic over a dynamic mic.
• And way too much information that I can’t write about only because I was totally engaged and focused on what Rich had to say.

Dave Nelsen spoke about how to use TalkShoe to make your podcasts interactive at the International Podcasting Expo. It’s an interesting service because you can schedule some time to record your podcast in front of a live audience and turn that recording into a podcast.

Listeners can participate by sending a chat message or talking to the host live through a web-based application. Very interesting idea.You can create your own free profile by visiting TalkShoe.

Matt Mullenweg, one of the people behind Wordpress.org, gave us some tips on how to use and extend Wordpress for podcasting. He mainly answered people’s questions which was great since most of the questions were focused on advanced tips.

• If any of you are planning on moving your blog from blogger to wordpress (which I strongly and highly recommend), Matt wrote a cool plug-in so that your images hosted on blogger will also port over.
• If you want to add something to your sidebar, Matt has another plug-in that helps you drap and drop things in your sidebar. Only certain themes support this plug-in, so you’ll have to double check that first before installing Matt’s widget.
• Of couse, Podpress, a Wordpress plug-in, is a podcasters dream.
• Someone asked what she should blog about if she has nothing to say. Matt responded saying to start blogging about yourself, then it will expand and grow into something else.

Nicole Simon, whom I met at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo, gave some tips on why podcasters should cater to an international audience at the International Podcasting Expo.

Nicole said that because people are very interested in things happening outside of their local area, this is the main reason why podcasters will discover people outside of their country will take an interest in their shows.

Some other tips from Nicole:

• Enter yourself into international directories. You may be #1 in Google US, but nobody in Google UK. Ask your listeners what directories they use and they’ll help you out.
• Get a Frappr map and encourage your listeners to pinpoint where they are. This helps build a community around your podcast.
• iTunes displays podcasts according to the the listener’s country. That means that your #1 listing in iTunes for the Canadian store won’t be #1 if the listener is based in the UK. So don’t be too quick to brag about it.
• In terms of payments or donations, PayPal is the best to use since it accepts worldwide payments.

Dr. Kathy King and Peter Yanke led a session at the International Podcasting Expo exploring the difference between internet radio and podcasts.

From their slide, here are the characteristics of Internet radio:

• Delivered to a computer via a web browser
• You click a button on the page and listen to the content
• It’s not portable

And from their slide, here’s the characteristics of podcasting:

• Posted on the web and pushed out by a feed
• Need a podcatching program to listen
• Posted on website for download or via a flash player
• Plus (this is my addition), it’s portable

With Internet radio, the listener shows up and listen. With podcasts, the listener downloads and listens on the go.

Dick Schiferli introduced a product called Pamela for Skype. Although it was launched close to 2-years ago on February 16, 2005, I never heard of it until now. Pamela is localized in 30 languages and there has been 260,000+ downloads to date.

Pamela is your Skype virtual assistant, in other words, an answering machine for Skype. If someone rings you through Skype and you’re not around, Pamela will pick up and ask the person to leave a message.

From a podcasting standpoint, you could use Pamela as a comment line. People call your Skype id, Pamela records it, then Pamela will save it to your computer or automatically publish the recording directly to your blog.

Some drawbacks?

• It’s a Windows only tool. There’s isn’t a Pamela version for Mac users.
• No multiple feed support. So, if you’re using one blog to host multiple podcast feeds, Pamela won’t know how to publish recordings to your blog using multiple feeds. Pamela is a 1:1 tool.

Despite these 2 drawbacks, I’m going to give Pamela a try. Everyone who attended the International Podcasting Expo gets a complimentary Professional license of Pamela (valued at $24.95), so I have no excuse not to discover all that Pamela has to offer.

Leila Thigpen, a professional voice coach, gave podcasters tips on how to use their voice for impact at the International Podcasting Expo. She gave us tips on breathing, speaking and how to use our voice for impact on our podcasts.

Here are some tips from Leila:

• You don’t need to stand to make your voice carry. Just sit in a good position and tuck in your butt.
• To have impact, speak slowly, speak broadly and speak distinctly. In particular, emphasize the last letter on each word. She took people through an orator exercise to practice speaking broader.
• Someone asked about accents. Leila said that because podcasting isn’t national radio where everyone has to have the same sound, you can be unique and keep your accent.
• Leila took us through a pitch exercise and said that varying pitches helps to add variety to your podcast, especially if there’s only 1 host.
• I asked Leila for tips on how to avoid the intake of breath right before talking. Leila said that this is because the throat feels closed. She recommended that you think that you’re going to yawn right before you speak and that will open up your mouth. Telling your conscious that you’re going to yawn helps you avoid the intake of breath.

As I sit here at my computer attending a few sessions at the International Podcasting Expo, I stumbled upon some interesting news bits in the podcasting world.

Here are just a few of my musings:

• Self-Proclaimed Podcasting Thought Leader? While I don’t want to remove the bulbs from anyone’s scoreboard on game day, I’m curious to know what makes Bruce Stasch, President of Apex Marketing Group, a podcasting thought leader? Again, I’m just curious as I’ve never heard of him and I’ve been engrossed in this field for close to 2-years now.

• iTunes Only Loves the Big Boys, Sorry. More and more I believe that unless you have a big corporate name in the title of your podcast, you will find yourself swimming in the sea of nothingness in iTunes. Check out who’s listed in the Top 25 in each category in iTunes. What is ratio between podcasts produced by those with recognizable corporate names vs. the small fries?

• Podcasts Are Made By Geeks, For Geeks Says Writer. Two years after I discovered podcasts, I’m still amazed at how many people still think podcasting are only for geeks. Rachel Cooke comes to this realization after listening to 1 podcast that had what she called “a Dallas theme song.” Actually, after reading her article a second time, I’m still not clear what she’s rambling about. However, I’m shocked that based on the production values of a few podcasts, Rachel makes this sweeping generalization that podcasts are only for geeks. Comments like this only help to keep mainstream audiences from embracing podcasting. Thanks Rachel.

• Podcasts Piss Prof. I feel like I’ve just written a headline for the Toronto Sun (check out Friday’s front cover to the left talking about the number of pedestrians killed by distracted drivers in Toronto - Fatal Distraction (**groan**). Looks like not all professors embrace podcasting. Robert Schneider, Associate Professor of Theater and Dance at Northern Illinois University, laments at length that podcasts are ruining the classroom learning experience. While podcasting may not be an appropriate alternative, it is an appropriate compliment, Rob.

• Great Podcasting Idea: Pre-Conference Podcasting Roadshow. There’s a conference coming up called IT@Cork and they plan on interviewing each speaker and releasing them as a podcast each week until the week of the conference. While this isn’t a new idea, it’s certainly something you can look at to promote your own event.

• Mr. Penguin Girl Signs Off. By way of Paul Colligan, I found out that Jon Watson said farewell to his BizPodcasting blog this week. I knew something was amiss when I didn’t see any new blog posts on his blog for about 2-days (Jon usually updates his blog 4-5 times per day). Jon’s voice was unique and independent. Because of his autonomy, he was able to freely talk about what he liked and didn’t like about podcasting. I’m sad to see Jon go as that means one less Canuck voicing their podcasting opinions, however, I’ve made an awesome friend because of his blog. Cheers dude.