The Podcast Asylum

Happy 2007 from the Wiggly Team! It’s a compilation of Heather’s favourite moments in podcasting (like the Hedgerow Row), and very funny it is, too. At 55 minutes, it’s nearly twice as long as a typical episode, but still fits easily on an audio CD.

Wiggly Podcast Archive

 

 Wiggly Podcast 0064: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mitch Joel asked all the Communications and Advertising Podcasters of the World—not to mention all the hosts of the shows he’d been a guest on—to send in audio files talking about the most important things they learned in 2006. The idea was to create an auditory Yule log that would just keep on burning.

The result is a sample from several different podcasts, including Across the Sound, Inside PR, Return on Intention, and Managing the Gray. It’s a crash course in communications and marketing podcasts.

See the Show Notes for the complete list.

 

 SPOS 32: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

To celebrate producing their 200^th show on December 21, 2006, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson created a retrospective starting with FIR #1 in January, 2005. The only down side to this tour-de-force from PR’s most prolific podcasters is that it’s too long to fit onto a single audio CD. Of course, that was true of all their episodes until 2007.

FIR 200 Show Notes (FIR blog)

FIR 200 Detailed Show Notes with Time Codes (New PR Wiki)

 

 FIR 200: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

John Watkis interviewed Donna Papacosta for his Entrepreneur Exclusive podcast on March 26th, 2007. ‘Professor’ Papacosta described the interview as follows:

We talked about the difference between an audio file and a podcast; shared tips on publishing your podcast through a blog, including costs; and discussed the steps you need to take before starting a podcast, plus a whole lot more. If you’re a small business, or if you work with small businesses, you might find this interview useful.

Podcast Asylum consulting physicians Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson of the For Immediate Release Podcast invited ‘Professor’ Sallie Goetsch to replace ‘Professor’ Lee Hopkins as a Monday correspondent on the Hobson & Holtz Report. ‘Professor’ Hopkins is taking a sabbatical from podcasting while he completes his degree in Second Life Studies.

‘Professor’ Goetsch’s qualifications as a correspondent for this long-running PR podcast include:

• Not being a podcaster
• Not being a communications or PR professional
• Not having a background in audio production
• Not being anywhere near as funny as Lee Hopkins

We therefore expect the segment to be a smashing success and wish Lee a speedy conclusion to his doctorate and return to his post.

Skylook 2.0
Netralia Pty
USD $99.95
www.skylook.biz

Skylook is the brainchild of Australian Jeremy Hague, designed to integrate Skype into Outlook. I liked Skylook 1.5 and love Skylook 2.0. (You can read my review of Skylook 1.0.3 at Kickstartnews.com.) The SMS message features (you can send text messages to your cell phone through Skype) aren’t as interesting to me, or likely other podcasters, as the call recording.

One thing I always liked about Skylook’s recording feature is that it starts immediately. No forgetting to press the “record” button and having to re-do the interview. But recordings used to be MP3 only, one channel. Now Skylook records both sides of the conversation on separate channels, and offers a variety of audio formats and bit rates.

Audio geeks will tell you not to record directly into your computer, but Skylook is easy, reliable, and produces sound quality as good as most of the podcasts I listen to. Plus it gives you a Skype answering machine with an Aussie accent, and it saves your text chats, too. (All these things get sent to your Outlook inbox, so you don’t have to remember to check for them.)

SRG

Podcasting for Dummies
Tee Morris and Evo Terra
Wiley Publishing, 2006
Paperback, 340 pages
ISBN 0-471-74898-6
MSRP: US$21.99

Disclosure/Disclaimer: I was a Tee Morris fan before I read this book. I still am. So obviously I was predisposed to like it.

Wiley Publishing’s ‘For Dummies’ series is wildly popular in spite of the fact that most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as Dummies. Fortunately, this book works just fine for smart people who don’t happen to know much about podcasting, and there’s a great companion podcast by Tee Morris. (Season 1 contains 20 episodes; Season 2 will accompany the sequel, which has the unlikely title of Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies.)

The book is both readable and comprehensive, and includes plenty of humor (and not just in the cartoons before each section). I could do without the font used for the subheadings, but at least it’s legible, and I presume they chose it to convey friendliness. Podcasting for Dummies walks you through the basics of choosing your equipment (microphones and mixers), using audio editing software, podcast blogs, RSS, bandwidth and hosting—and that’s just chapter 2!

It was Podcasting for Dummies I turned to when I needed to know how to put a music ‘bed’ under a voice recording. (I later used that knowledge to record a comment for Tee Morris’ podcast, The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy.) The explanation of bit rates, sample rates, and ID3 tags should be required reading, and the chapter on XML and RSS is a useful reference for moments when feeds won’t validate. Indeed, the traditional ‘For Dummies’ design makes it easy to use the book as a reference on any of the topics covered.

The final section of the book is a series of Top Tens (types of podcast, most influential people in podcasting, reasons why podcasting won’t kill radio—and reasons it will). Some of these lists, like specific links and details about software, may become obsolete quickly, but the principles remain sound and neither audio editing nor ID3 tags are going away any time soon.

Many of the example podcasts used in the book relate to science fiction, reflecting the interests of the authors, and there’s a wee bit of Macintosh bias in the screenshots. (Why are so many podcasters Mac users?) Those are just observations, though, not criticisms, and the inclusion of podiobooks.com is a boon to would-be podcasters who are either published or unpublished authors.

One thing that is missing, at least from the first edition (I think I have the first edition, though they were up to the third printing by the time I got my copy at the PME last year), is any discussion of PodPress, the popular WordPress plugin for podcasting (used on this site for the Reports from the Asylum). Of course, PodPress was much less sophisticated at the time the book was written, and WordPress hadn’t yet opened up the WordPress.com hosted service.

It will be a great relief when the sequel to this book appears and Tee Morris can get back to podcasting.

SRG

Free 45-minute Webinar: Podcasting 101 for Communicators and Marketers, March 20, 2007, 2 p.m. EST

Donna Papacosta explains what podcasting is all about; how to find podcasts relevant to your interests; how organizations are using audio for internal and external communications; how to sell the idea to management. You need just a computer and an Internet connection to attend, but you must register in advance. Send an email to book your spot.

I’m fast becoming addicted to Carmen Van Kerckhove (rhymes with ‘her stove’)’s podcast about America’s obsession with race. It takes me back to my university days as an honorary member of the black community, getting my eyes opened about things I’d never had to consider as a privileged middle-class white girl. The show suffers some technical difficulties (mostly a need for the Levelator), and I’m not much on the music, but the content is important, thought-provoking, and not to be found elsewhere in the podosphere. www.addictedtorace.com

This marketing podcast is the brainchild of Reid Givens, a dedicated fan of podcasting and new marketing based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Episodes have entertaining titles like ‘Wii the People,’ ‘Murky Water,’ and ‘The Backlash Episode.’ I like the multicultural marketing discussions.

www.reidgivens.com/roi_blog

This new Australian PR podcast from Jon Hoel could easily go from good to great, but at three episodes, it’s just a bit too soon to tell. I’m looking forward to more of the Australian/Pacific Rim perspective.

www.prjunctionpodcast.com

This first of the QDNow podcasts has achieved astonishing success in a short period of time. It’s no surprise that so many people need help with their grammar, but it’s heartening to discover that they want it, too. The shows are short, charming, and very clear. Host Mignon Fogarty has expanded the QDNow franchise with other shows like ‘Mr Manners’ and ‘Money Girl.’

www.qdnow.com

Science fiction and fantasy author Michael A. Stackpole does a great job of teaching writers the craft of creating good fiction. Since he’s a prolific writer himself, the podcasts appear somewhat erratically, but I always listen to them right away when they appear. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got a wonderful deep voice. Unfortunately, discussions with listeners are limited to a forum—no listener feedback makes its way onto the show. www.stormwolf.com.

As of March 2007, there hasn’t been an episode for several months. I don’t know whether this is a temporary hiatus or a permanent conclusion. But this is definitely a podcast whose material is timeless, so it’s worth downloading the archives.

This was one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, and even though Alan Stewart and Andrew Winter have only averaged one show every six months for the past year, it’s worth downloading the previous episodess for discussions about timeless marketing topics like how the effectiveness of marketing techniques depends on higher-order brain functions. Plus they invented the word ‘epipod.’ And they’re Australian.

In this case, I suspect the show was a victim of its own success: once Alan and Andrew started getting major corporate clients as a result of their podcast, they had less time to produce the show. www.themarketerspodcast.com

The Kickstartnews Revue was a tech podcast aimed at small and home office users. It wasn’t not too geeky, and the banter between Howard Carson and Liane Reiter was entertaining. After listening to a few shows I became a reviewer for the main site, which got me free books and software. To my great disappointment, KSN stopped producing the show in mid-2006:

Some of you may be wondering what happened to the KSN Revue Podcast. After stabilizing at a biweekly download rate of about 11,000 subscribers (Feb through May 2006), subscriber interest began to wane due to heavy competition from literally thousands of other podcasts. We responded by changing our format, tightening the show, introducing harder hitting interviews, producing regular new guest segments and so on. We had a blast and even won a couple of minor awards. But good quality podcasting remains a costly and time consuming sideline with no associated revenue. The last KSN Revue is show #58.

Child prodigy (okay, okay, he’s 25) Greg Galant interviews venture capitalists and entrepreneurs about the challenges of starting, running, and selling a business. It’s fascinating even though I’m not planning to create a start-up and pursue VC funding. Where else can you hear both sides of the Digg/Netscape competition?

www.venturevoice.com

Penny Haynes is a one-woman non-stop idea factory, inspired by everything she reads. Once in a while I just get overwhelmed by the possibilities. Penny also organizes the International Podcasting Expo, which is a virtual trade show/conference.

www.brainstorm-podcast.com

I first heard about this show from Heidi Miller when she was interviewed back around episode 16. I’ve become an active fan of Anna Farmery and her quest to find the best way to keep employees engaged, even though I plan never to have employees. Listening to her early interviews was giving me a bad case of Podcast Stereosis, but once I explained how to mix tracks, she took care of the problem.

theengagingbrand.typepad.com

Spinfluencer Eric Schwartzman interviews mainstream media moguls about the effect New Media has on their business. Usually interesting, but often the clips he plays on FIR cover all the highlights. Whether I listen tends to depend on who he’s interviewing.

www.ontherecordpodcast.com

Insatiably curious interviewer and former online bookstore owner Paula B talks with writers, publishers, agents, publicists, and anyone who has anything interesting to say about the craft of writing and the publishing industry. I’ve learned something from every episode I’ve heard, but the show hasn’t had much of a “listener-driven” element.

www.writingshow.com

Where For Immediate Release focuses on the intersection of communication and new media, Terry Fallis and David Jones discuss traditional and timeless themes in public relations “from an agency perspective” (and also a Canadian perspective). I don’t come from a PR background, so it’s really helpful to hear about things like pitching, press conferences, publicity stunts, and client appreciation. There’s also a segment called “Inside Proper English” that corrects common mistakes in usage and warms my pedant’s heart.

www.insidepr.ca

Mitch Joel started out as a ubiquitous guest host and interviewee on other podcasts, then started his own marketing podcast, which has gone from good to great. The “Six Points of Separation” segment tells listeners how to make the most of tools like Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us, and his “coming to you from beautiful Montreal, Canada” has inspired other podcasters and commenters to find appropriate adjectives for their own locations. (Two examples are “the glorious Adelaide hills” and “the spectacular San Francisco Bay Area.”)

www.twistimage.com

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I like this show, because I’m not really comfortable with the Alex Mandossian / Paul Colligan style, but despite their relentless (and apparently successful) focus on money, and their use of aggressive online marketing techniques for their various products, they bring up some of the most interesting ideas about business podcasting that I’ve ever heard. Their show has inspired at least one person to start a podcast-related business.

www.marketingonlinelive.com

Wiggly Wigglers is a podcast about country life, gardening, and farming in England, produced by ‘a small mail order company based on Lower Blakemere Farm, providing products and ideas to encourage gardening for wildlife.’ Since I don’t even have houseplants, I would never have expected it to be a favorite show, but it’s just so much fun! The Wiggly Team (Heather, Farmer Phil, ‘Ricardo’, Monty, Allison, Rachel, and the rest) argues, laughs, and educates all at the same time.

www.wigglywigglers.co.uk

C.C. Chapman’s energy, insight, and modest show length make this marketing and management podcast a can’t-miss show. And I love the design of the show blog.

www.managingthegray.com

I was initially hesitant about the military theme of this book marketing podcast, but I’ve come to love Tee Morris’ sense of humor and to value the experience he shares about everything from cold-calling bookstores to moderating panels at conferences. It helps that he’s got an acting background, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s co-author of Podcasting for Dummies.

www.teemorris.com/blog

Okay, I’m biased in favor of this show because Heidi Miller gave my two-second statement such a good review that people I’d never heard of started calling me about work after she aired the show. Her personality (she podcasts in a tiara) is part of what makes me a fan, but I also love the great tips and interviews and the insight into the trade show industry.

www.heidimillerpresents.com/weblog

Twice a week Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz provide 60 minutes (trimmed down from 75) of discussion about the intersection of PR, communications, and technology. This is definitely a listener-driven show, and that’s one of the reasons I’m a fan: Shel and Neville listen to their listeners. Plus they’re just really fun guys with great voices.

www.forimmediaterelease.biz

Sufferers of Podcrastination engage in one of two behaviors. In the first instance, they seize on any excuse whatsoever to avoid recording the next episode of their podcast. Everything—Second Life, e-mail, the day job, flossing the cat—is more interesting to these patients than podcasting. Extreme cases must be confined to the podcasting studio and supervised closely by a member of the Asylum staff.

The second form of Podcrastination is the production of podcasts to the exclusion of all other activity. These podcrastinators can be identified by such claims as ‘I can’t come to the office today because I have to record my podcast,’ and should only be allowed access to microphones and recording devices when they have no work or family commitments. As the consequences of this form of Podcrastination can be especially severe, it is important to catch it early. If necessary, Sven and the Dusky Handmaidens can provide a reminder of the pleasures of life beyond podcasting.

Podcast Anxiety can affect 7 in 10 men, but help is available. See your family doctor or ask your wife for help.

As already researched by my highly esteemed colleague Professor Leverington , and replicated by my erstwhile colleague Dr Hobson , this condition is caused by having too many podcasts backed up in one’s media player and a lack of time to listen to them. Treatment can include enforced break at the asylum, and depending on one’s gender and preferences, repeated sessions of massage therapy by either our dusky handmaidens Agnes, Denish, Delores and Monique, or our toned and burly Swedish masseuse named Sven.

This pernicious condition occurs causes podcasters to produce one show after the other in which they talk only about themselves, without providing any content or information of interest to listeners. Most sufferers of Egocastitis remain oblivious to their dwindling listenership, and continue to produce their self-aggrandizing shows long after everyone has unsubscribed.

There are podcasters out there so cruel and heartless that they infect their own podcasts with this condition, condemning them to anonymity and oblivion by failing to add ID3 tags to their MP3 files. Any podcast without Artist, Title, and Album fields is guaranteed to languish un-listened-to at the bottom of the iPod. Tragically, the disease is easily prevented, as audio-editing software like Audacity enables easy creation of these and other useful identifiers, and the free Windows utility AudioShell lets you edit ID3 tags from within Windows Explorer. If you discover a podcast file suffering from this condition, notify the podcaster immediately. Together we can end the silence!

This condition sets in when podcasters find themselves recording so much material that they can’t fit it into their regular shows. Seduced by the opportunity to publish something outside their usual scope, they record more special editions, until the regular podcast gets entirely squeezed out of existence, as with Michael A. Stackpole’s The Secrets podcast for writers. (Excuse me: for serious writers.) Perhaps science fiction podcasters are particularly vulnerable to this illness, as Tee Morris of The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy also appears to be in the throes of this obsession.

It has come to our attention that there are some people who are so obsessed with podcasting that they ask everyone they met, no matter what the circumstances, whether they listen to podcasts. This compulsive poll-taking extends itself even to interrogations of detainees on their way back to the police station from the crime scene. A special UN think tank is now considering whether podcastus curiossimus violates the Geneva Convention. The verdict could mean big trouble for Tim Bourquin.

Sufferers of PHMS become so oblivious to their surroundings, and so determined to listen to podcasts under all conditions, that the welfare of defenseless headsets is no longer a concern to them, and they callously permit their cables to catch in and snag on every passing protuberance, tearing the delicate audio connections to shreds. In some cases, this disease can be treated with expensive Bluetooth wireless headphones; in others, by placing the patient in a padded cell where the headset leads will be safe from marauding handles and knobs.

Also known as ‘tennis-ball brain,’ this condition manifests in dizziness, disorientation, and a rapid flicking back and forth of the victim’s eyes. The most common cause of Podcast Stereosis is listening to podcast interviews where the host’s voice comes into one ear and the guest’s voice into the other.

The only treatment (short of unsubscribing from the offending podcasts) is to explain to the podcaster how to mix tracks before exporting and uploading the MP3 file.

This disease sends podcasters back to FeedBurner and Podcast Alley every five minutes to see how many people have downloaded, streamed, subscribed to, or voted for their podcasts. Named by Heidi Miller of the Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter podcast after she contracted it upon finding herself mentioned in The Podcasting Pocket Guide.

As personally discovered by our Canadian research fellow Dr. Papacosta , the victim suffers from the inability to fall asleep because they are re-recording their own podcast (or a client’s podcast) in their mind. Very often they also awaken at 3:00 a.m. with ideas for new podcasts. Currently there is no treatment for this debilitating disease.

A form of early senility, this disease causes victims to laugh out loud at inappropriate moments or locations, for example when on a crowded bus or in the reading room at the library.

Sufferers of this mental health challenge can be identified by their lack of focus to tasks, caused by listening to podcasts instead of concentrating on, for example, driving, writing a report, or washing up. Predominantly associated with men rather than women, it appears that sufferers find difficulty in completing more than one task at once when listening to podcasts.

As identified by our consulting Professor of Technical Podcasting, Professor Derek Leverington , CPBD results when a podcast listener compulsively creates far-too-frequent bookmarks on their mp3 player whilst listening to a podcast. This condition results from a podcast listener experiencing a profound sense of anxiety, even abject terror, over the possibility that they may lose their place in their podcast due to an inadvertent pressing of a button on their mp3 player. A positive diagnosis CPBD is arrived upon by observing a patient bookmark a podcast more frequently than once every 5 minutes.

Sufferers are paralysed by the psychological terror associated with the loss of function of their MP3 players. Clinical staff can rapidly treat the mild version by being armed with rechargeable AAA batteries.

Victims suffer intense and prolonged shock when they realise that podcasters are allowed to swear in front of and to their audience and can get away with it; this is a condition most often associated with parents realising that their children subscribe to the Dawn & Drew Show.

A horribly debilitating disease that ravages the body and mind of the victim. Sufferers lose cognitive coherency and start to believe that podcasts are either not relevant to their lives, or else pretend they don’t even know what they are.

Encountered when podcast junkies find their regular podcasts have downloaded incorrectly into their podcatcher. An example would be when episode #69 of the popular soap opera for business communicators, the Hobson & Holtz Report , failed to download correctly. MedNews reported that sales of valium and other psychotherapeutic drugs tripled as a result.

Sufferers of this ravaging disease can often be found with earbuds in place during shopping trips, errand running and even Parent Teacher exchanges. This condition affects the higher cognitive processes, so that, for example, listeners to podcasts may actually believe that the people they listen to on podcasts, such as Dawn and Drew, Adam Curry and Hobson and Holtz are real people, not the superb actors reading the carefully crafted scripts that they really are.

Penny Haynes finally talked me into presenting at one of her Virtual Podcasting Expos. I find the interface a little awkward, mostly because I can’t see the audience. One advantage a virtual expo has over a teleseminar, however, is that I’ll be able to see who’s in the ‘room&#rsquo; with me. Since my presentation is at 8 AM Pacific, I’m guessing it won’t be a lot of my fellow Californians, but that’s well into the afternoon in Europe, so I’m hoping that Anna Farmery of ‘The Engaging Brand’ and Heather Gorringe from ‘Wiggly Wigglers’ will drop in to show some solidarity. (They’re both presenting, too, and I’m looking forward to hearing them.)

So what am I talking about? Finding and Developing Content, Show After Show. If you’re pretty sure you can handle the technology and time commitment of podcasting, but don’t know what to talk about, this presentation is for you.

There’s a huge collection of freebies for conference attendees, including recordings of all the sessions, so I’d say it’s probably worth the $49.95 for two-day admission.

Disclosure: if you click on the logo up there and register, I get an affiliate credit. You pay the same amount whether you register through me or not, though.