What the @#%$! Does THAT Mean? #003


What the @#%$! Does THAT Mean? Plain English About New Media #003: “7 Steps to Your First Podcast, Part 2” copyright 2006 -all rights reserved- by Roberto Mighty, Founder and Creative Director, Celestial Media Thanks again for the positive feedback on my most recent column. Let's review the last column: I pointed out that there are seven steps to making a podcast, and I wrote a paragraph on each the first three steps, including: (1) Determining your content; (2) Producing your recording; and (3) Compressing your recording to Mp3 format. This time, we're going to talk about the next three steps: 4. Encoding your metadata; 5. Uploading to a web server 6. Testing it yourself . Subscribe to this column here. Read our Current newsletter here. Audio Mp3 (8 minutes, fun to listen to) version of the first column. As I've pointed out, a Podcast can include various types of media, including video, still images, graphics, animations and audio. However, most podcasts are primarily an audio experience. SEVEN STEPS TO YOUR FIRST PODCAST, Part 2 1. Determine your content (see last column) 2. Produce your recording (see last column) 3. Compress your recording to MP3 (see last column) 4. Encode your metadata "Metadata" is an intuitive computerese term that has sprung up without an exact definition. Broadly speaking, however, one can safely say that "Metadata" is information about data." Geez, does that sound like Philosophy 101 or what? As far as podcasts are concerned, "metadata" is text-based summary information which is encoded in a downloadable computer file to describe the multimedia stuff in the file. Metadata is important. Nowadays there are thousands of podcasts available on the Web. Most podcast listing services (such as iTunes and iPodder) initially list podcasts by title and perhaps one other identifier. So, make that title and identifier compelling. Here's an example. Let's take a look at the "Grey's Anatomy Official Podcast," produced by ABC, Inc. The iTunes music store lists the following metadata to describe this downloadable digital sound file: Title: "Grey's Anatomy Official Podcast" Category: TV & Film Language: English Total: 3 Episodes Podcast Description: "Each week, various "Grey's Anatomy" cast members join producers for one-on-one conversations that will tease the week's upcoming episode, as well as give insight into the actors and their characters." When you make your podcasts, you will need to encode your own metadata into the file. In this respect, you and the gigantic multimedia conglomerate ABC have something in common. Yeah, RIGHT. Anyway, here's how to do it: In Garage Band (Mac only,) follow the directions for "Editing Episode Information" In Liberated Syndication (platform independent) follow the directions for "Publish" 5. Upload to a web server Until it's uploaded to a web server and thus made available for downloading, your "audio recording" is not yet a "podcast." Luckily, this part is fairly easy, because your podcast creation software is mostly going to do this for you. For examples of this, see Garage Band or Liberated Syndication. 6. Test it yourself Once your podcast is uploaded to a web server via your podcast creation software, and before you announce it to the world test it yourself (uh, duh.) Try accessing your podcast from your computer, and from the computers of at least two friends who have different computer operating systems (Mac/PC/Linux.) 7. Announce that it is available (We'll save this for our next column) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We're almost done with explaining how to get going with your first podcast. Here are some web resources to get more information: To hear podcasts: itunes or ipodder To Subscribe to Podcasts: Juice To Make Podcasts: Engadget --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming columns will explain the final step.... 7. Announce that it is available Subscribe to this column here. Read our Current newsletter here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have any questions, feel free to email me anytime. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, until the next column, live long and prosper - Roberto LAST COLUMN'S BONUS TRIVIA QUESTION "Al Gore notwithstanding, what government agency is commonly credited with "inventing" the internet? Perspicacious Reader Mike Harrison, a voice actor (check out his site at http://www.spokensuccess.com,) came up with the correct answer: The U.S. Department of Defense's "DARPA," or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. THIS COLUMN'S BONUS TRIVIA QUESTION Who is the acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web? A randomly-chosen person who emails me with the correct answer gets his/her name mentioned in my next column. Whoopee! - RM ### ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roberto Mighty is Founder and Head Geek/Creative Director of Celestial Media, a multimedia production company. Email. Celestial Media’s multimedia studio creates, develops and produces original television, video, audio and new media for diverse organizations and institutions. Our webcast, consulting and multimedia projects include MIT, Zone Laboratories, HarperCollins Publishers, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and The Argosy Foundation. Copyright 2006, Celestial Media. All rights reserved. This article is protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten, distributed, re-disseminated, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, directly or indirectly, in any medium without the prior written permission of Celestial Media.