Podcast pioneer and former MTV VJ Adam Curry shared this image of his podcasting setup on Flickr.
This is his rig for recording Daily Source Code. It shows how you can get a professional podcast from a relatively modest setup. (It helps to have Curry’s 20+ years of media experience, obviously!)
I spy what looks to be a Faderfox LC2, a Mac laptop running Ableton Live and a pair of Harmon Kardon Soundstick speakers. No sign of a mic.
Edison Research’s Tom Webster, who has been researching and reporting on podcasting for years now, has some interesting thoughts on promoting your podcast through social networking sites like MySpace and Twitter:
Change occurs at the margin, and it would be unwise to ignore the increasing popularity and utility of the various social networking sites.
However, as a researcher of that big ole’ middle of the bell curve, I am compelled to add here that this means that the vast majority of podcast users–and of Americans, period–do not maintain social networking profiles. This means that if you confine your marketing and promotional efforts to getting the word out on social networking sites, you are depriving your podcast of a potentially much greater audience.
If you produce a podcast on restoring and customizing automobiles, for instance, the number of auto aficionados on Twitter is a rounding error compared to the vast size of this potential affinity group.
If you are creating well-written, well-produced quality content on a topic or subject, you have as much right to the big fat middle of the tail as you do the long part, so think big–and market your content accordingly.
What do you think? Are social networking sites over-rated tools for promoting your podcast?
The Association for Downloadable Media, an industry group focusing on podcasting and new media, today unveiled proposed advertising standards for use with downloadable media. The proposed ad units are offered with an eye toward making negotiations smoother between content creators and advertisers.
The proposed standards were presented Wednesday morning in an ADM forum at the ad:tech convention in San Francisco, by a panel of people who helped develop the standards.
Presenters included:
David Hamilton, the President and CEO of Backbeat Media, and member of the ADM Advertising Standards Committee;
David Herscott, President of MEA Digital and the appointed Chair of the ADM Ad Council; and
Sean Cheyney, CMO of AccuQuote.
The talk was moderated by Bryan Moffett (pictured), Director of Ad Operations, Natl Public Media, and ADM Membership Committee Chairman.
The draft ad units cover a range of standard advertisement sizes and types and formats, and also include a “collaterals” category, for other podcast advertising “real estate” not necessarily covered in the other unit definitions.
Why Do We Need Standards For Downloadable Media?
Dave Hamilton tackled the question, “Why come up with standards?”
He explained that he has bought ads in podcasts, sold ads in podcasts, and so on, but across the many podcasts, among many different sponsors, there were lots of different advertising options – and the potential for lots of confusion.
The Ad Standards Committee and the Ad Council sought to come up with some podcast ad-unit guidelines like those of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) for its display ad units. Their “rules” in developing these standards were to keep options alive, exclude nothing, knowing that different people will use different methods and so forth.
The group strove to make any standards they developed simple (easy to understand), and inclusive (exclude nothing).
Kids just got a great justification for getting bigger iPods - PBS & Apple have added a large variety of educational programming to iTunes U:
From The War: A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick to The Jewish Americans: A Series by David Grubin to Meet the Author, featuring more than 40 interviews with top children’s book authors and illustrators, WETA — Washington D.C.’s Public Broadcasting Station — delivers a rich assortment of educational programming for students, teachers, and parents alike.
And they’re not alone. Educational programming from four other PBS stations, including KQED, WGBH, thirteen, and ideastream can also be seen and heard on iTunes U.
Of special note for Internet media hackers is KQED’s New Media Studies, a collection of short video podcasts which look at topics like digital storytelling, voice-overs, soundtracks and iMovie.
PodCamp, the free podcasting unconference, is coming to Ohio, on Saturday, June 28, 2008 at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard.
PodCamp Ohio offers an opportunity for attendees to learn, share or grow their new media skills. They can attend informal sessions, created and driven by participants, about podcasts, blogs, digital music, web video and related aspects of new, Internet-based media. The format allows both beginner and expert media producers, as well as listeners, watchers and readers, to participate, discuss and network.
“It’s all about learning, getting hands on with new media and spending time with folks that make up your online community,” said Angelo Mandato, coordinator of PodCamp Ohio. “By attending PodCamp Ohio, members of the blogging, podcasting, marketing, academic, and business communities will lead the charge toward embracing and effectively utilizing new and social media in our area.”
The event is free and open to everyone; registration is required.
Podcasting with Movable Type just got easier with Byrne Reese’s release of the latest version of the Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type.
iTunes support has been improved, making it easier to get your podcast listed properly within the iTunes Music Store.
In addition, this release adds the following features:
a complete RSS feed that includes all of the proper iTunes meta data;
an enhanced submission form that collects addition information about your podcast including its duration, whether it contains explicit material, a subtitle, summary and keywords;
additional plugin options to capture important information about your blog so that its listing within iTunes can be finely tuned;
support for basic authentication to access podcasts located behind a username and password; and
enhanced error messaging when linking to feeds.
Reese credits podcasters Bud Gibson, Todd Cochrane and others for the feedback that led to the updates.
Podcasters Across Borders, a Canadian podcasting unconference, has announced its schedule for the 2008 event, being held June 20-22 in Kingston, Ontario:
TalkShoe has introduced an iPhone application that lets you participate or conduct community calls from your phone and even lets you use the service to create podcasts.
Features:
iPhone users can join live calls and view upcoming calls they may want to participate in.
The iPhone application provides a one click link to auto dial-in and participate in a call. Up to 250 people can join and talk all together at once.
Hosts can create public or unlisted community call episodes and manage them through their iPhone.
TalkShoe members can follow specific calls, which can then be viewed from their iPhone or be notified via email or SMS when they start.
The iPhone application makes it easy to record a podcast right from your phone.
Calls can be recorded for later listening or turned into a podcast.
In addition to participating through iPhone, anyone can also participate via phone, mobile phone, Skype, or VoIP via the talkshoe.com website.
Kids just got a great justification for getting bigger iPods - PBS & Apple have 
