One step closer to the Podosphere…

I am quite excited that progress into launching a podcast is now a small step closer. During a brief (very brief) brainstomring session into potential names for what will become my second podcast, a colloboration with my good friend Wilson, think of it as The Corner, Mark II – For those uninitiated, The Corner was the radio show we had back on the student radio station. Anyways, there’s still a lot more thought and/or work to go into that one.
Back on topic and I am proud to announce that the rather obvious name of my personal podcast was struck upon during the above session. My podcast will indeed take the moniker of “Your New Favourite Podcast” – pretty hot.
The small step is the step up in research and preperation for putting together a podcast. I’ve been checking out podcasts about podcasting (how beautifully meta…), also reading into the hardware setup required to record, the other side of the coin being the software needed to put together a podcast. Now where the software is concerned, Audacity seems to be a well-regarded tool. It’s rather good in that it is indeed free, but also has the power to edit recordings, mix down multiple tracks, and output the final product to mp3. Another alternative is Garage Band, but I’ll need to get more upto speed with my Mac Mini, but at least there are options.
I have also ordered a headset which I can wear to enter podcasting mode. I was reluctant to spend a great deal on something which might not prove that fruitful so we’ll have to see what the results will end up like. From what I’ve read there is a clearly defined limit on what quality can be achieved with a mic with a 3.5mm jack, but I think it will have to do for now, and possibly further down the road I’ll look into more expensive purchases.

I’ve also been checking out possible hosting options, again I don’t really want to spend a lot (if any if I can get away with it). I’m not expected a huge listener count at first, but it would be rather cool for that to grow and grow, I can only hope. I took a quick look and what is required to submit the podcast to the itunes music store, there’s really not that much to it, so that should be fairly painless.

I’ve also been thinking of potential sources for music to use to bookend the podcast with the usual blurb, “You’re listening to ‘Your New Favourite Podcast’…”. There are a few candidates, although I need to decide on one, think there goes an afternoon while I tinker in Audacity. Of course, any music I do use, I will obviously give credit to, that’s the least I can do.

One of the sources I read recommended putting together the first 5 shows to hit a stride, get an idea for content, length, pacing, not to mention an idea of the time required to put together one show. Saying that, expect myself to go a little dark in terms of announcements for a while, I’ll get the first few shows knocked up and then I’ll announce to the internets. When it does come, please check out, listener interaction in the form of emails etc would be pretty cool, and I am open to a potential co-host, guest spots if they match up with the theme of the show.

Jimiminar takes to the airwaves!

It’s no secret that I’ve quickly developed a love for podcasts – who ever knew there would be such (mostly) great content out there, and free too. So much so, that for pretty much everything out there, if you like something so much, then it is a natural step to want to emulate that. I have been giving some serious thought to maybe knocking together my own podcast, and the reality of this could be closer than you think.
I have looked into what it takes to actually produce a podcast, and all that is required at it’s core is a microphone and a means of recording it. I also checked out methods to host the podcast themselves, and there are free services for low requirements – i.e producing a small(ish) podcast on a weekly, or fortnightly basis.

Now, I am planning to post about some of the cool (and not so cool) podcasts I have discovered on my travels over the Internet and the iTunes store (lol), and one thing that does hold true is that 2 is the magic number. That is, podcasts work (in my opinion) the best where there are two hosts. With just one host, it does seem to much of a monologue – with two hosts banter and the back and forth can be had. It also means that that the other host can pick up the slack, as with the desire to keep speaking throughout. With three hosts, it generally degrades into chaos – everyone talking over each other; only with great discipline can order be achieved.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned a while back, that I would happily entertain the idea of putting together a podcast if a co-host could be found. Now, fast-forward to last weekend, and in the attendance of my good buddy Wilson, we checked out an archive recording of Wilson’s Corner – a show we put on the student radio station, RaW. During that session, I showed Wilson some of the video podcasts and coupled with the infliction of nostalgia, the idea of resurrecting Wilson’s Corner was quickly suggested.
Now it would be pretty pr0 to do that, I definitely had a lot of fun putting on Wilson’s Corner, particularly the pre-show meetings we had, which were let’s face it, an excuse to grab some ales. Whilst it would be a good thing to start up again, I do have my concerns on the form the rebirth could take. Looking back on Wilson’s Corner, something that was kinda clear back then, but painfully obvious listening to it today was how disjointed the show was. There was no real cohesion, Wilson and myself coming at the show from two completely different angles. Never was that anymore obvious than the music which populated the show; and how often we argued for our own songs to receive the airplay.

Yeah, so a new show would be pretty cool, but we will have to decide what to base it on. It makes sense to have the banter on things which interest us, which for myself would probably turn into a bit of geek show, much like the podcasts Extralife Radio and The Totally Rad Show. Now I can’t Wilson wanting to indulge in that, his thoughts on watching the live Amsterdam episode of Diggnation (with more mainstream and accessable stories it has to be said) being:

“Well it’s geeky, but there were some laugh-out-loud moments…”

If the podcast show does get it off the ground, ideally I would probably knock up a solo show of my own, so I can get my geek on. That show would be more of an audioblog as such, rather than a podcast. I keep going on how I should be more of a proactive blogger, so jumping on the mic would be so much easier to keep the blog uptodate.

To go on a slight tangent, WoW introduced voice chat natively into the game as of patch 2.3 and that got me thinking it was time to buy a headset. Especially if I want hit my aim of being part of an active raiding guild, they usually have a ventrillo server set up. So getting a headset could have double the usage. One as used in WoW, and the other to produce podcasts with.
I plan a two-pronged attack with the personal podcast as well. Not only would it keep the blog uptodate, but it could help boost the confidence. I always “enjoy” leaving answerphone messages and literally talking into a mic would be an extension of that. I can imagine that I would probably be “erring” and “umming” a lot at first, but eventually it would probably get smoother. Also, the production would hopefully increase as I get more familiar with producing podcasts and have a go at editing and all that fun. As Randy Deluxe of The Instance Podcast fame says: Once you’re able to talk comfortably with four listeners, it’s the same with more and more listeners, to paraphrase.

It looks like the purchase of a headset will have to wait till after next payday, but it’s definitely sooething I want to try so watch out.

An Apple a day keeps Microsoft away…

Hey hey hey! Just doing a mini-post from work, a habit which I could possibly develop if workload is low, but anyways, here was me saying I would blog more, and oh crap! we’re already a month down of 2008. My friend Adam has decided to go on a solo
holiday to Amsterdam, and he’s documenting his travel adventures here, so go check that out, it’s got lots of lovely pictures (which can be enlargened oh yes!) and it’s well written, but I’ve got a slight bias there.

Anyways, Adam was going through selling a lot of his stuff, and naturally being one of his good friends, I got first dibs on some of the stuff. I got a few games, Halo 3 legendary edition (yes, the one with the helmet! :D) and the ultimate amongst the list is the Mac Mini. Slightly embarassingly I have not properly set it up, but what began with mere curiousity to the Apple approach, is slowing becoming fanboy status of the sliding scale. I’m not there yet, but I would only keep Windows for games and really the only games I stick on my PC have been WoW and the football manager series, and it is possible to get Mac versions for those, and if that’s not enough, thanks to the Macs being Intel-based, it’s much much easier to get Windows apps or indeed Windows to run natively without any hacky emulators and the like.

I am slowly going to make the transistion. Although not really an Apple product as such, but around the same time, I’ve been checking out some podcasts. It kinda started out with ExtraLife Radio (please check out this guy he is super talented, so much so a part of me resents him) and having that play whilst I’ve been working through the tiresome later stages of the career in Forza 2. Oh yes, please check out the rest of the site, the web comic he makes is absolutely pr0, I stumbled on it thanks to the heavy WoW content much earlier on, but basically it’s a geeky comic, so win!
This led me to check out iTunes, again with the Mac influence (I’ve tried it before and found it rather clunky compared to Winamp). Anyways, I will eventually get an iPod classic (I know, too many Apple products), so it’s good for me to get familiar, make sure all my music is added etc. Anyways, I have to say that using the iTunes store to find podcasts is awesome, so I’ve added all my old subscriptions and a couple new ones, like the Jonathan Ross one which I still need to check out.

I also took this opportunity to check out the diggnation podcast which is really really good. I’ve got the HD one so I can enjoy it in all it’s lovelyness through the 360. Anyways, it’s basically two guys (which actually work for digg I later discovered) that have a chat on a couch over some popualr digg stories drinking beer. It doesn’t sound much as a concept, but it’s pretty godamn entertaining, and the two boucne off each other really well. It’s so good in fact, I’ve downloaded some of the back catalogue as I really don’t mind the chat about old stories such as the Halo 3 4 player online coop announcement etc etc. Yeah so check it out, I did it and think it’s awesome.

All this podcasting stuff got me thinking that maybe I could knock one together, just have it be a light-hearted topical chat/rant show. From my limited past experience it is best to have 2 contributors, just 1 and it’s just a monologue, not that great, any more, and there’s just words everywhere. So, I’m appealing to the intermawebs to see if someone would like to be a co-presenter of some kind. Scott Johnson of Extralife seems to simply record his skype conversations, so it wouldn’t be too hard to get up and running, and plus it would mean that I would be posting to here more often, so it’s all good. Comment me up and that would be cool.

Anyways, posting in my lunch hour when I really should be lunching.
Take it easy