Rogue Syndicate Show #005 - 2005 - 07 - 11

Sorry the audio is a little over processed but you are going to have to listen with headphones or in a very good environment to notice (hopefully). I was trying to eliminate a small amount of background noise and I think it made the voice sound a titch robotic. I'll avoid that next time and live with a small amount of noise if I have any.

I talk about:

00:00:06 Email
00:02:34 iTunes 4.9 shipped and everybody popular had to deal with the fallout of all the new listeners. If you have a hard drive based iPod you should also upgrade to the new firmware for it.
00:10:25 Castblaster open beta
00:13:46 My Microsoft attitude :)
00:18:51 I go over the Microsoft announcements, concentrating on their RSS library and trying to cover a couple of things I forgot to cover on the last show
00:20:21 Announcement that I will be interviewing the Rome RSS/Atom library team for a future show
00:22:29 Feedburner adds support for iTunes RSS extensions
00:23:13 iPodverts.com offers ad auctioning for podcasts
00:25:22 Television via the Internet
Note: There were a lot of links mentioned in this part of the show: Systm.org, From The Shadows, ParticipatoryCulture.org, Holmes Wilson interview on Steve Garfield's Video Blog

Advance links for the next show

Apple has released iTunes 4.9 with support for podcasting (and a directory of podcats that sadly does not yet include Rogue Syndicate):
You can download the new version of iTunes 4.9 from here

I had been unaware that they were also planning a firmware upgrade for the iPod itself but they added some additional functionality just for podcasts:
Here's the software upgrade for the iPod and iPod Mini

I should mention that if you want to add Rogue Syndicate to iTunes before they add it to their directory (I've already submitted it for addition) then just run iTunes and pick "Subscribe to Podcast..." from the "Advanced" menu. Then paste http://feeds.feedburner.com/RogueSyndicate into the dialog and click the "OK" button.

Why no new show yet?

I was sick Monday (when I normally record the show) and Tuesday I went to work but actually felt even worse than Monday most of the day. I'm all better now but I've got lots of family coming in for the Fourth of July. I'm planning to sneak away some time before Saturday for just an hour to record a new show though. As usual I've got way too much material to fit in a half hour show so most of it will just have to wait until later shows.

By the way, here's that weblog entry that castigates stealth software startups (I mentioned it in the context of Odeo in my last show): Stealth Start-Ups Suck

Rogue Syndicate Show #004 - 2005 - 06 - 24

I talk about:

00:01:24 iPodderX for Windows - The Wizards of Technology got the exclusive on this one. They are saying that a public beta may occur in just a couple of weeks. They kept pretty mum on that one when they did the recent This Week In Tech podcast :)
00:03:48 Starting discussions on shownotes ipodder-dev mailing list
00:07:17 Microsoft's RSS announcement - Video from Channel 9
The actual specifications and more details
00:31:09 Audible and podcasting
00:31:54 Odeo launches - Try signing up yourself. I'll be doing a little more to look at it later myself.

A couple of other random websites I mentioned in the show that I think are interesting:
del.icio.us, Java Outline Editor

Show #003 - 2005 - 06 - 21

I talk about:

00:01:58 Listener email from John Hattan
00:13:07 New iTunes 4.9 due early: Story from AppleInsider.com
00:17:40 Single click support in FeedBurner, iPodder Lemon, WebJay.org
00:19:42 New iPodder Lemon release (version 2.1)/Lots of announcements expected at Gnomedex
00:22:52 Podcasting Is Not the Next Mass Medium

For some reason, after reading the last article the following quote came to mind:

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

The equation for a podcast

If you ever decide you'd like to do your own podcast (and I can certainly imagine listening to mine might inspire many to believe they could do better :) it is really not hard at all to do so.

Here's the pieces I put together to get mine going:

• I took a Shure Pro Microphone System 100WD (don't let the name fool you, it's a nice microphone, a short mic stand, lengthy cable with 1/8" and 1/4" adapter, and zippered mic case that cost me $50 (U.S.) at Fry's). Amazon sells the same kit for $33 (U.S.). Wow!
• I record, edit, and generate my MP3 file using the free software Audacity. It is available for several operating systems.
• I set the id3 tags on the resulting MP3 file using iTunes because it will let me set the genre to "podcast" and Audacity won't.
• I used Blogger (free) to quickly create a weblog to go with the show. I bought a domain (which I mapped to part of my already existing website) using GoDaddy (less than $10 (U.S.)). The RSS channel for my show is generated automatically from the one Blogger creates using FeedBurner (free for most features).

After I had recorded my first show and edited it, the process of creating the weblog, show notes, getting the domain, and generating the RSS channel was under two hours!! Successive shows have been a fraction of that because I'm not creating new weblogs, getting accounts, etc. Mainly I just type in the show notes after I've edited the show, upload the show's MP3 file, and post my weblog entry.

Show #002 - 2005 - 06 - 13

I talk about:
00:01:01 Apple's planned podcasting support in iTunes
00:03:06 I play an except from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC): Watch the WWDC streaming keynote (6:45 seconds in)
00:08:40 I comment on Steve Job's presentation and on what it might mean for various podcast directories: PodcastAlley, PodcastPickle, PodNova
00:17:15 Standards and the Podcasting Specification Working Group: One-click Subscription
00:22:21 Ugliness on the ipodder-dev mailing list
00:24:45 Adam Curry ponders Google Sitemaps: Google Sitemaps
00:28:29 And I try to answer some of Adam's questions

On the next show I'll handle some of the first listener email and really start talking tech (I promise).