Product Description
Podcasting does for Internet audio listeners what TiVo does for television viewers--it puts you in charge of when you enjoy a program. Podcasting is a web-based broadcast medium that sends audio content (most commonly in the MP3 format) directly to an iPod or other digital audio player. You subscribe to audio feeds, receive new files automatically, and listen to them at your convenience.
As you can imagine, podcasting is taking the "blogsphere" by storm. A podcast is a professional-quality Internet radio broadcast, and like blogging and HTML before it, this revolutionary new way of publishing to the Internet has become the new outlet for personal expression.
If you've got Internet access and a copy of Podcasting Hacks, you can find out just how easy it is to listen to and create your own Internet audio programs. With Podcasting Hacks, Jack Herrington, a software engineer with 20 years of experience developing applications using a diverse set of languages and tools, delivers the ultimate how-to of podcasting for anyone looking to get the most out of this hot new medium.
Since August 2004 (the month that iPodder.com editor Adam Curry considers the start of podcasting), audio blogging has exploded. Podcasts cover every conceivable topic, including sex, relationships, technology, religion, home brewing, recreational drugs, rock 'n roll, food, entertainment, politics, and much more. There were podcasts from the Democratic National Convention in Fall 2004, and some programs on Air America and NPR are also podcasts.
Podcasting Hacks offers expert tips and tools for blogging out loud--for transmitting (and receiving) audio content worldwide with ease. This groundbreaking volume covers both entry-level and advanced topics perfect for aspiring and experienced podcasters. Herrington shows you how to get started, create quality sound, use the right software, develop a great show, distribute a podcast, and build an audience. More advanced topics include audio editing, podcasting on the go, and even videocasting.
From the Publisher
About the Author
Jack Herrington is an engineer, author and presenter who lives and works in the Bay Area. His mission is to expose his fellow engineers to new technologies. That covers a broad spectrum, from demonstrating programs that write other programs in the book Code Generation in Action. Providing techniques for building customer centered web sites in PHP Hacks. All the way writing a how-to on audio blogging called Podcasting Hacks. All of which make great holiday gifts and are available online here, and at your local bookstore. Jack also writes articles for O'Reilly, DevX and IBM Developerworks.
Jack lives with his wife, daughter and two adopted dogs. When he is not writing software, books or articles you can find him on his bike, running or in the pool training for triathlons. You can keep up with Jack's work and his writing at http://jackherrington.com.
Excerpted from Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud by Jack D. Herrington. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Use a PDA to listen to podcasts on the go.
Why restrict yourself to MP3 players or your PC when you want to listen to podcasts? Your PDA makes for a very capable podcatcher. Web-enabled PDAs can grab podcasts for you without having to sync to a computer.
This hack covers podcatching clients for both Pocket PC and Palm-powered PDAs.
Podcatching with Your Pocket PC PDA
With a Pocket PC device, you can use an application such as FeederReader to download podcasts from a wireless network and listen to or view them wherever you are. You can view any show notes included in the RSS feed, and with integrated file management, you can automatically delete podcasts after you’ve listened to them.
The integrated feel of the Pocket PC, with the optional ability to view notes from the podcast, makes for a great experience.
Sneakernet or direct connect. You can treat a Pocket PC as a simple MP3 player to listen to podcasts: either downloading songs over ActiveSync or using a card reader. However, to really take advantage of podcasts, you’ll want to consider installing an aggregator on the device.
To listen to podcasts you will need a decent amount of memory. I recommend at least 256 MB for a small number (5 –10)of stored shows, with up to 2 GB to hold a large number of podcasts to listen to over a long weekend.
A walk-through using FeederReader.Installing it on a memory card will leave you more RAM for running programs.Figure 1-19 shows the process of installing FeederReader with CabInstl. After installing and running FeederReader, you can add a new feed by selecting that menu item and entering a URL, as seen in Figure 1-20.
After adding all the feeds and arranging them into categories, select Update Enclosures (shown in Figure 1-21).This will download all enclosures in your podcast feeds. FeederReader downloads several podcasts at once. If any podcasts get stuck or time out, the remaining podcasts continue to download.
Then start the download by selecting the Enclosures option from the Update menu. You can see this in Figure 1-22.
At any time, you can bring up the Enclosure toolbar and tap the Play icon to play your downloaded podcasts. FeederReader will launch the appropriate player for the enclosure and let you continue reading other RSS feeds. You can listen to podcasts while you read news from RSS feeds. It works out great!
If the enclosure is a videocast instead, FeederReader will bring up the appropriate player for a videocast as well. It works with anything that the Pocket PC can display or play! To go to the next podcast or videocast, tap the Delete-Play Next icon (the right-facing triangle with the X superimposed on it) to automatically delete the previous podcast. This way, FeederReader is deleting the enclosure files right after you’ve finished with them.
Play is the Green arrow, and Delete-Play Next is the arrow with the X over it.
Figure 1-23 gives some more detail on the IT Conversations show that FeederReader downloaded.
The Pocket PC as an MP3 player. Some MP3 players can be mounted as hard drives without additional drivers on your desktop. With a Pocket PC, this is not directly possible. However, you can mount the Pocket PC as a drive on the desktop by using ActiveSync, the free program from Microsoft (it comes with every Windows Mobile Pocket PC and smartphone).When you do this, you can treat it as a mounted MP3 player and transfer files with the same techniques as you would an MP3 player, whether using Windows Explorer to copy and paste or drag and drop. You can also set it up to transfer automatically from other programs (such as iPodder).
Installing podcatcher software on a Pocket PC or smartphone allows you to download podcasts directly to your device without a desktop.In Figure 1-24 you can see iPodderSP zooming in on the Dawn and Drew show.
It ’s all about the Net. To use these programs, your Windows Mobile device must have a connection to the Internet. Usually this is through WiFi, a cell phone (connecting with Bluetooth, IR, or a cable, and the cell phone data connection using, for example, EDGE),or ActiveSync with Internet Passthrough turned on (shown in Figure 1-25).Although a desktop is not required, it is sometimes helpful to connect with ActiveSync and take advantage of a broadband connection.
Many modern Pocket PCs come with integrated WiFi (usually 802.11b). WiFi combined with a broadband connection is one of the best ways to connect to the Internet for downloading podcasts. Remember that podcasts can be as short as 1 MB (one minute of audio of reasonable quality),but they can easily top 50 MB (one hour of stereo-music quality).
