Daily Podcast News

The first major podcatcher for the MAC will soon be released under beta for Window users.

It’s been a deep dark secret for some time now, but we can finally announce that a Windows version of iPodderX is on its way! So not only will iPodderX run on Intel on the Mac OS, it will also run on Intel or AMD on your PC.

But the problem is by that time iTunes 4.9 should be available as the latest update. Most iPod users will automatically switch from their current podcatchers to iTunes. But it is great to finally she that iPodderX will be switching to Windows.

I finally got an invite from Odeo to beta test their podcatcher and podplayer. At the moment the ‘create and publish’ area is still under construction. My impressions on Odeo are that it’s really easy to use and very nice looking. More opinions coming soon…

Podifier is an excellent application that automates the creation of an RSS feed, the enclosing of one or more MP3 files, edting of ID3 tags and the ftp application to upload them to a server.

A very handy all-in-one podcast upload system available for download here.

WinPodcast is available for download at podcast.scon.de.

This is a great free application for people who have just heard about podcasting from various sources and want to start a show of their own. All you need to do is download the program, insert your microphone and talk about whatever topic you feel passionate about.

Once downloaded open it up and click on File > New Podcast and now you just have to enter the show name, author, keywords and pick a folder for where your saved podcasts go to. Once completed click the microphone icon and start talking. When you start you can type your show notes in the left hand column which will be saved as your showname.txt. This is a great add-on and will allow others to view what’s on your show before they decide to listen. (more…)

Get ready for a make-your-own-podcast program called Podcast Wizard which will be available in five days time. We’ll just have to wait and see if it can be any competition to MixCast Live. Hopefully some screenshots wll be up soon.

Interested in podcasting? Ever try to do it? Podcasting is not trivial - it’s actually quite hard. Or at least it was. Podcast Wizard, new from Paramagnus, takes the pain out of podcasting. Simply create, publish, and promote.

Using different technologies with Podcasting can we fun and can also save you time in many different manys. Today I was introduced to the Sony S700i by Bernie Goldbach. 10 Multimedia Developers gathered in the Sound Studio of the Tipperary Institute to discuss their project is a quick 20 second soundbyte.

Which focused on “What are you doing for your project”, we all had 2/3 minutes to jot down the main points of our project, inturn each Mutlimedia student sat down directly in front of me to speak about their projects. Each voice level was different from the last one so I needed to be on hand with the mobile moving it closer/futher from their mouth.

Once each item had be recorded as individual soundclips we exported them to a labtop. Unfortunately we discovered that the recording turn out to be .amr and not mp3 as we thought. This handed us a large problem which not even google could solve. We looked everywhere even purchased the latest Real Player to see if it could at least play it, this wasn’t the case, but luckily Michael Kiely (Video and Sound Expert) was on hand and solved the problem by sending a zip file of a program which allowed us to convert it to .wav. We placed each seperate clip in Soundforge and copied and pasted each one together. I edited down blank noise, gaps in sentances and other noises.

The Sony MZ-N10 was one of the first recorders I worked with. Before this I had never come into contact with a Mini Disc player. It’s a very easy device to pop out of the box and start Podcasting from.

Recording items is very quick and simple. Just gather a group around a table and shift the record bar to the right and begin your podcast. Once completed just hit the square stop button. If your holding the recording in your hand at this stage you should begin to hear it viabrate while it saves. To upload this .wav file connect your cable to your laptop and use any sound program e.g Soundforge.

Just after purchasing version 0.9 last night. I tried testing it out but it was around 2am when I got to play around with it. By this time a Podcast was beyond my reach. I recorded a few clips with music effects and sound but when they played back I was either getting just the music or just my voice. I need to change the settings tonight and get a 20 minute show of my own up for your consumption. In other news Podcast 0506 will be available tomorrow, featuring loads of interesting interviews.

After hearing about MixCast Live over two months ago I knew it would be massive. I was hooked from the start after watching a quick demo. This application is fantastic and will get more people into podcasting once they hear of this application.

“MixCast Live’s going to allow a lot of people to get into this, produce high quality recordings, without having a whole lot of knowledge of how to do it.”

MixCast Live is now available on Pre-Release with a discount of $20 to make it just $39 (€30.34). MixCast Live really is podcasting for the People. All going to plan I will be getting my copy tomorrow and evaluating and testing it with a podcast.

Are you using iPodder? You may have noticed that it has been acting strangely. Once I search for new podcasts I’m never sure how many podcasts I’m going to get from the one feed and if I leave it to download automatically while I’m away I often come back to find that its downloaded around three shows that I have already listened to from the one feed. If you subscribe to over five feeds this is a major problem. So why not check out other Podcatchers and give them a trial run.

The Sony Condenser Microphone was later used for a podcast dealing with Christmas in Ireland. There was 8 of us contributing our views on what sound we think of at Christmas and what gadget a girl would like for Christmas.

This item was ideal for this recording. Each of us were sitting and standing around a table so sound needed to be heard from a long distace. We placed the Microphone in the center of the table, connected it to the Mini Disc Recorder and began talking. It picked up the sound very well and has a useful connection wire of 60cm which can allow alot of people to Podcast in one room.

Andrew Davey has recently launched a Podcasting Client for MS SmartPhone 2003. You can use this application to subscribe to and download podcasts, right on your phone. Give your feedpack or ideas to ipoddersp@equin.co.uk and maybe donate some money.

History of Project

10th January 2005 iPodderXP v0.3 released Improved podcast download window and error handling. Settings window to alter iPodderSP behaviour iPodderSP v0.2 released - fixed update window not closing bug 9th January 2005 iPodderSP v0.1 released 8th January 2005 iPodderSP development started

I got the chance to test out the Nokia 9500 in the sound studio with 7 other Multimedia Students. We had an open discussion lead by Bernie Goldbach relating to Smart Mobs written by Howard Reingold. The opening sentences of each chapter were read out and we inserted our own opinions/views on what they actually meant and how they related to us.

I opened the Nokia Communicator on the desk which was the central feature of the room. I just had to hit the ‘my own’ button while I was on the main menu followed by record. Once the 30 minute session had ended I just had to click stop > menu and scroll down to save as and enter the file name. To take out the 512MB memory card I had to open the mobile from the back and pop it out. I later used the Memorex card reader to upload to my college PC, the computer recognised it but it had no data. After thinking everything was deleted it was pointed out to me that the card was upside down, not very clear from the device as to what way to insert it.

The sound clips were in amr format meaning I needed to use a simple converter program and change the four files to wav so I could listen to the sound quality. I tried uploading them to the xdrive but the college computers had problems uploaded such large files. When I got home Tuesday I tried from home, I selected the file to upload, it was uploading but gave no feedback as to if it was successful, unfortunately it never got there, so today at 7pm tonight I uploaded each one again. I know one of them appears on xdrive so at the moment I have just logged in to xdrive and I’m still waiting over 5 minutes to view my uploads to see if the rest made it.

Only recently used for our Podcasts. It’s a great piece of technology from Sony. It’s a touch screen devive with Flash, Movie Recorder and also a useful voice recorder.

This makes Podcasting so easy to record. To turn on the device slide the switch on the left hand side upwards. The main menu will appear with all available programs. In the bottom left hand corner touch the Voice Rec icon. The voice recorder application will now appear. Now when you’re ready to record touch the rec button and away you go. Once finished press stop and wait for it to save. You can now take out the Memory Stick and insert into our computer.

This Sony Professional stereo microphone worked very well and projected a good sound across on Skype. We are yet to try it during recording times in the T.I but as it is Uni-Directional we would need to be passing it around for people to grab ahold of once they have something to say, which is a problem once it comes to editing as its very easy on this Microphone to pick up background noise.

Electret microphones are a variant of condenser microphones that mostly utilise a permanently charged diaphragm over a conductive metal back-plate. This model is Uni-Directional (stereo)