Podcasting

So who would have ever thought that a MTV VJ would be the main force behind an Internet based media? That's right Adam Curry was one of the people that helped bring Podcasting to the forefront with his creation iPodder.

So what is podcasting

Podcasting as a word is the combination of iPod and Broadcasting. Podcasting in its simplest form is a mp3 file that is distributed over the Internet. The goal of a Podcast is similar to that of a blog, share something that interests you with others who have similar interests. Podcasting also uses RSS technology the sameway the blogs do. The main difference is that a blog is simple text and images. Podcasts are audio files. Think of talk radio on the web. Yep now you too can talk politics just like Rush Limbaugh!

Creating a Podcast

To create a podcast you need a few things. The first is a way to capture audio files. Since you will be using your computer later on if you want to follow the K.I.S.S. principle a decent microphone attached to your PC will work for capturing the files. Now the other thing that you need is a way to record what you are saying into the microphone. There are a variety of different voice recording programs out there the easiest to use which is free is called Audacity. This simple program allows you to do multiple track editing and save the recording in a variety of formats. Note: You will also want to download the LAME MP3 encoder when you download Audacity, this will allow you to create the MP3 files that your podcast will end up being.

So once you have downloaded and installed these two little programs, connected your microphone, and have thought of something to say you are well on your way to creating a podcast.

Recording and Editing with Audacity

The first thing that you will want to do is connect your microphone and give it at test. To connect the microphone you will want to look for a connection that looks similar to this on your computer. Once you have the mic connected the next thing you want to do is open up Audacity. To do this go to the Start Menu and choose Audacity from the programs menu. Once Audacity has started you will see a screen that looks like this . From here you can simply start to record. It is as easy as hitting the record button and speaking into your mic. As you speak you will see the playhead moving across the screen and the sounds of your recording being populated in the screen. So your screen will begin to look like this .

Uploading your Files

Creating Your RSS feeds

One of the key pieces to Podcasting is the ability of people being able to subscribe to your feed. The way this is done is by using RSS. There are a lot of different ways of making this work for your Podcast. The easiest way to do it is to create a Blog using either Blogger or another service and linking your podcast to it. This way everytime you link

If you are

List Garden RSS Creator

http://softwaregarden.com/products/listgarden/windowsexe.html

Need to enter the following in the web browser for it to work http://127.0.0.1:6555/ and it works with the Feed Validator http://feedvalidator.org.

Hosting your Media

Opsound

http://opsound.org/

Place to find fee music.

Our Media

http://ourmedia.org/

Free storage place for media

BOCES Podcasting

So far this is what we have been doing for work, check it out.