Podcast.com News

Podcasting: it’s for cops AND robbers! (OK, an inmate, not a robber — nothing wrong with being a little dramatic, eh?)  In our fictional journal called “You Won’t Believe Who’s Podcasting Now!”, we have another entry: it’s from the Dagupan City Jail in the Philippines, where a technically inclined inmate has started a blog and now a podcast about what he and his fellow inmates are doing to better themselves and their community.  The blog and podcast cover topics such as “rehabilitation of their facilities like the visitor’s waiting shed, cooperative store, guard house, basketball court, revival of their saloon, repair of their infirmary …” and other tidbits about how these inmates bide their time. Some of the podcast is in computer-generated English, but some is in Filipino — so you’ll just have to guess what it’s about (unless you have Filipino skills).  Regardless, kudos to inmate Bill who made this podcast happen for using his jailtime wisely (with podcasting)!

If you haven’t browsed them yet, a ‘channel‘ on Podcast.com is a collection of podcasts about a particular subject or from a particular producer.  We currently have three ways to browse our channels (shown, right):

1. On our Channels page, which you can get to from the main navigation bar on the Podcast.com home page
2. Under our Featured Channels section on the lower left of the Podcast.com home page
3. In our Popular Channels folder, which you’ll see at the top of our podcast collection on the Podcast.com home page

Incidentally, we are updating the collection of podcasts you see on the Podcast.com home page.  In each folder within our collection, such as Games and Hobbies and Kids and Family, you will find ten podcasts instead of the five you could find before, and you can still link to each corresponding channel page (Games.podcast.com for the Games and Hobbies folder, Kids.podcast.com for the Kids and Family folder, and so on).

So here’s what we need you to answer — you can send feedback to info at podcast.com — we’d really appreciate any comments you may have:

• What do you like about our channel pages? What do you not like about them?
• What do you think about the collection of podcasts on our home page?  Is it too big?  Too small?

The Guardian, the popular UK newspaper and website, is reporting how members of the 2008 Olympic games in China might be victims of Internet censorship by the Olympic committee. This is a story for us because it involves podcasting: athletes (or “persons accredited at the games”, which includes media and Olympic staff) won’t be able to take video or audio of their experiences while at Olympic competitions, and therefore can’t make audio or video podcasts.

Internet censorship in China has long been a sticky subject, with debate as to how the government regulates Internet usage of its citizens, but this decision has been made independently by the International Olympic Committee — therefore it only seems ironic that this issue is / will be based in China. We’re anticipating a lot of podcasts about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and we were definitely hoping for any podcasts about action in the trenches, on the fields and by the racing tracks at the Games.

We now hope this issue brings light to Internet censorship, and to how audio and video taken by anyone is just as important (or moreso) as the ‘journalism’ a newspaper, radio station, or magazine would provide. The dictionary says journalism is “material of current interest or wide popular appeal”. Sounds like a podcast by someone at the Olympics would have wide popular appeal, wouldn’t it?

We’re trying something new here: a ‘feature’, which is a playlist of episodes from different podcasts about a certain subject. This feature for the month of February is about Black History Month, so we’ve collected different podcasts that celebrate the month, discuss the importance of black history, and talk about what it means today.  You can find this and other features at my.podcast.com/features. (Make sure you click on the ‘View All Episodes’ icon in the middle of the screen to see every episode we collected.) It’s easy: we collect the episodes, you subscribe to our playlist.

Hope you enjoy this feature, and send an email to info at podcast.com if you have an episodes you’d like to add to this or any future features. ‘Future feature’ - almost like a ‘creature feature’, but not as scary (yeah, I know that’s not funny).

An online marketing company named eMarketer just estimated that 18.5 million people listened to or watched podcasts last year, up from 6.5 million in 2006.  That’s quite a jump if you ask us.  Combine a growing podcast audience with the fact that more and more podcasts are being made and you have a global trend that expects an audience of 65 million people in 2012.  In early 2006 eMarketer predicted the worldwide podcast market would hit 25 million people in 2008, and it looks like we’re on our way.  You can do your part to help that trend by telling your friends and family about Podcast.com and how they too can enjoy podcasts for work and play.  Everybody’s doing it!

It’s called “PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education”, and it’s a free online guide (downloadable PDF costs less than $20) for schools interested in podcasting their classes for their students.  Here’s what you can learn in the 190-page illustrated guide:

• What is a podcast?
• Selecting appropriate podcasting equipment and software
• Recording, editing and polishing a podcast
• Creating an “enhanced” podcast containing links and graphics
• Uploading a podcast to the Internet
• Creating a podcast blog
• Sharing podcasts with students

Find it at the PoducateMe website.

Last week we reached a big milestone — we now have over 50,000 podcast feeds in our directory (read more about it on our Treedia site). We’ve added many many podcasts to our site in the past few months, more than doubling our total in that time. But if we’re missing one of your favorite podcasts, or *gasp* YOUR podcast, go straight to our home page and submit the RSS feed for that podcast. If you need any help with this, just send us an email.

And if you’ve added one of these 50,000 podcasts, thanks to you!

It’s a brand new day, and we have some brand new changes to our home page, including to:

• the navigation bar on the left side of the page
• the welcome box, front and center
• the search box to search for podcasts, above the welcome, and
• the cleaner logo at the top of the page

Now, none of these elements of our home page are new, but they represent our work to make our site look cleaner and clearer to people who haven’t visited our site before. We will continue to make these changes for the better throughout our site.

One element that is new is in our ‘latest podcast episodes’ section in the middle of the page; you can now play those audio or video podcasts right on the home page by clicking the ‘Play’ buttons below each of the four latest podcast episodes.

We would appreciate your comments on these changes and are excited to continue to make our site easier for you to use. If you have comments on these changes or suggestions on how we could continue to improve our site, send an email to info [at] podcast.com.

Congrats to William from Dallas, TX, USA, for winning our drawing for a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  In case you missed it we offered a $100 prize to one lucky person who took a survey on the Podcast.com website.  In future days we’ll be offering more prizes and giveaways from Podcast.com, so keep your eyes peeled and your nose to the ground (or just keep visiting Podcast.com on a regular basis).  Winnah!