The Podcast Rebranded!

I have been podcasting now for two and a half years. For most of that time I have been producing The Global Geek Podcast. There have been a number of co-hosts and partners, it has been great fun and very rewarding. For most of this time the show resided as part of The Podcast Network, but there comes a time when you want to spread your wings and fly. The Global Geek Podcast is no more.

On the 19th of July the final Global Geek was posted. But this was not an end for myself and co-hosts. We decided to strike out on our own server and with it rebranding the show. So was born the Aussie Geek Podcast.

The reasons were many and we thought long and hard about making the move, it was a difficult decision. I really appreciated The Podcast Network and what C.E.O Cam Reilly is trying to achieve. The people and the community are awesome. We left T.P.N with no hard feelings that I know of and did not go out of our way to create any. Cam was aware however, that we were frustrated with not being able to tweak the blog in the way that we wanted to as well as having the fine level of control that we as geeks craved. Although it was very disappointing to have seen that comments on the last GGP referring to the new URL of the podcast were deleted by someone.

But we are off on a big adventure and we are loving it. We have built the site and are posting madly. It was awesome to see that we are already making great gains in Google results. Although I am sure that we have taken a big hit in numbers. That true figure is yet to be known as we have not posted a show as yet. The long and the short of that is that we are waiting on an update to the WordPress plugin called PodPress to be compatible with WordPress 2.6.

I am really enjoying the collaboration and multiple authors that we were not able to fully realize before. In addition Tim has been posting some awesome Quick Tips in video format and we have some great plugins that our readers and listeners can take advantage of.

It would be great to pull our community over to the new blog and podcast, so jump over and say hello. Don’t forget to upgrade your links and RSS feed while you are there! We will be posting the first full show as soon as we can.

I was bummed that we did not make it to the 100th show, at 90 it was so close. We have decided to start at 1 for the AGP.

PodPress has Vanished!

WordPress is the platform of choice for most podcasters running their own sites. One of the reasons for this is that it offers the most support and available plugins make it a powerful solution. In my opinion the most essential plugin for the podcaster is PodPress. However it appears that PodPress has vanished and is now a parked page at GoDaddy.

I just could not believe that such a successful plugin could be abandoned so I did some digging and it appears that the developer Dan Kuykendall went to Disneyland 18 days ago and forgot something rather important. It would appear that on the 26th of April their domain name expired. Do’h…

That is the conclusion that I have come to, anyone else know any different?

If however, the developer has jumped ship and abandoned development then I will be very surprised. If for nothing else than the fact that no one else has taken over the project.

One good thing until everything is sorted out is that it appears the download links are still operational from the WordPress extend site.

I certainly hope that PodPress is here to stay, I know I value the project as one of the best podcasting tools out there. Seriously though, GoDaddy start sending out emails at least 6 months before your domains expire, just don’t ignore them. Or change your renewal details to automatic renewal. But then it seems that it doesn’t matter how many reminders some people get.

Thanks Dan for your hard work and I trust that you have just forgotten to renew your domain.

UPDATE: I am not sure what the go is, but during the course of writing this post MightySeek is back up and “un-parked”. I also noticed that the whois has changed and the domain that expired in 2008 is now 2009. So perhaps suspicions were in fact true and we had a domain glitch eh? Yey, is all I can say.

Find Sounds Easily Web 2.0 Style

With my involvement with The Global Geek Podcast, I am always on the look out for great resources. I find that one of the most enjoyable parts of production is in mixing in all the sounds and effects to give the piece a unique feel and personality. I derive a great deal of satisfaction getting the right sound and timing perfect. One of the most frustrating things about production is just that though, getting the right sound for what you can hear in your head. Soundsnap is a sound effects repository with a Web 2.0 slant, it is brilliant and just made the task of finding that perfect sound a breeze.

The front page presents all the categories of sounds that are available to browse. Clicking on any of these categories opens up a view that presents these sounds as pages. Here you can sample any sound with a simple flash player and get other information on each sound such as length and a wave form. Although I am not sure of the purpose of the waveform as it is too small to be useful. Clicking on it however gives you the sounds technical info. Sort by popularity or other criteria. See comments made on sounds, who uploaded it and click to see their profile and what else they have uploaded. You can expect the usual set of ranking and sorting features that are ever present in Web 2.0 style sites.

One feature that I really like is the ability to drill down the data within each category without searching. Under each category you can click on sub categories to refine your manual search. Makes it easier to find a specific type of sound. This is also a nice way to search for a specific sound as you might find something better than what you were thinking of.

Once you have found a sound that you want they are free to download and use. Sounds are available in .wav, .mp3 and .aiff. You don’t have to have an account to download files. Great to have the access without another login to worry about. The quality varies slightly but on the whole they are very good.

The presentation of the site is excellent. It looks slick and well done. There is plenty of Ajax goodness and the navigation is easy and intuitive. Full credit to the developers on this front. There are a number of sound repositories out there but there are none that are this well done. For a new (to me at any rate) site there are many, many FX to download and even some obscure ones that are hard to find. I noticed that the is a bucket load of loops available for music buffs; around 3,700 and this will only grow as time goes on. Hopefully one day it will make those very expensive sound effects disks that are available commercially obsolete. As a podcaster this is a fantastic resource and I would encourage those that are actively involved in the community to keep producing sounds and samples that will save our bacon.

 

Thanks etc.

I Was Not Looking… My Bad

Well I am still as busy as, well as busy as you can be without spontaneous human combustion. No I have not updated the blog for a few weeks.  My family and I are still in the midst of some major stuff that we have to deal with. Until that is settled then I will be putting my energies into what I can afford. I am spending most time keeping The Global Geek Podcast churning along. I am afraid the personal blog has taken a hit. It does not please me at all.

The podcast has been doing exceptionally well and we have taken on another host. But we suffered a bit of a hit yesterday and we will be telling all in the next show. Tim and I did the show this week as Knightwise could not make it. I think we did okay but Knightwise was missed. Tim is helping me out a lot on the podcast and he has become a great on-line mate. I hope I can actually meet him one day. I was planning to get to Melbourne this year. That might still be on the cards but nothing definite as yet. I am hoping to go and meet Cameron Reilly (CEO of The Podcast Network). But we will see.

Now something that I will say is that I have been unable to get around here and check in on a few things. But what did give me the absolute shits was the fact that WordPress did some coding mumbo-jumbo and stuffed the blog. It looked horrible when I arrived. None of the formatting that I had done was viewable and it was set to default! So I had to go back in and redo all of it. Yes, I have fixed it now and all is good in the would of The Rooster. But I thought it a bit rich when you turn your back for a minute and the blog is rooted. Sorry it looked like a disaster. Damn, even Nick Bradbury was here! That’s like being caught in your dressing gown with guest arriving. Arrrgh!

So I thought I would stick my head around the corner and check in. But expect on again off again blogging for the next month or so while I get things sorted out. Keep listening to the show and reading the the podcast blog as that is where I am trying to focus while my time is limited. I will let everyone know what the heck is going on when I can, at the moment it is a bit hush hush…

Plans are to blog about a few tech things over this week. I have found a great application for recording Skype and a few other cool tools that I am using with the new PC. But I am not saying when because I don’t want to jynx myself.

G’day World Podcast Reaches 200 Shows!

Rooster’s Rail extends sincere congratulations and a slap on the back to Cameron Reilly on reaching 200 episodes of G’day World on The Podcast Network.

Incidentally The Podcast Network turned 2 this week as well. Have a look at The Podcast Network two years ago using the Wayback Machine courtesy of Internet Archive. Great effort Cam and a huge achievement. Looking forward to the next 100.

Cam has put a show out nearly every day for the last two years, is CEO of The Podcast Network and has a firm conviction for the success and love of the medium that is podcasting.

Cam’s 200th show features the best of G’day World Guests since it has started.