My very first podcast!

In episode one I give an introduction to myself, my history, my challenge/s and goals. I mention the format of this blog and the frustrations that I’ve had with developing free reports. To listen to the podcast, press the play button below:

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What I’ve used: I’ve launched Sony Sound Forge and configured my Microsoft Lifechat USB headset. No doubt there are plenty of better applications out there – but I already had this installed and ready to go. However I keep reading EVERYWHERE about Audacity being one of the best recorders for pod-casting, so I might be trailing that for the next podcast. Have you got any experience with it?

Thankfully not too many hick-ups so far….

Hosting: I’m really unsure about hosting. Would anyone care to share their opinion? For the moment, I have ample storage and bandwidth with my current host – ixwebhosting, but I’m concerned that perhaps down the track I’ll need to move all my media files to an exclusive media server.  There appear to be quite a few sites purely for podcast hosting – some free and some paid. I was thinking of trialing podbean.com, but I have since decided against it – as it was setting up an entire new wordpress based blog for me, which I really didn’t want to bother with.

Publishing: I had a look at Mashable’s podcasting toolbox – there are just one too many publishing resources and pod-casting communities! I’m currently getting my head around Bluberry – as it appears to have the most popular wordpress plug-in for pod-casting.

What I thought would initially be a simple step to setup, pod-casting for beginners can be quite daunting. I’ve felt like there are too many options to choose from! The question is, is there becoming an industry leading / standard platform for hosting and publishing a podcast that maximises the potential audience?  (Please comment below!)