I recently had a chance to ask Jake Fisher a few questions about the world of podcast hosting and his own podcast hosting solution, Switchpod. This new service, launched two weeks ago, is promising to be one of the leaders in the podcast hosting solution territory. Jake has a lot of good ideas and seems to have the right mindset going into this adventure.

There are a lot of podcast hosting solutions out there already, but I have a feeling that Jake is going to do a good job at separating himself from the rest of the pack.

Mitch: How did you get started as far as wanting to go into the whole podcast hosting side of the Web hosting business?

Jake: I have always thought podcasting was a great idea, and a great way to deliver free content to people. The general web hosting industry is so cluttered right now, there is so many companies to compete with that its hard to stand out. Thats why I thought hosting podcasts would be a great thing to get into.

Another reason is I tried getting into the podcasting scene a few times, I got a few shows going and had some success, but decided that producing the shows wasn’t for me. I noticed from my experience that their was a high learning cure to starting a podcast. The thing I had most trouble with was the podcast feed. I decided I needed to start a service that not only provided free hosting for podcasters, but helped them create the RSS feed.

Mitch: What do you think you can offer that some of the other podcast hosting companies have not been able to?

Jake: Well the biggest thing that I am working on is help for the new guy, the person that wants to get into podcasting but doesn’t know how. I also know that not everyone can afford the hosting costs when they are starting out. There is a growing trend of college age and younger that are trying to get into podcasting.

Well the fact is most people that are younger don’t have the funds to start up a podcast. Thats what we are trying to help people out with.

Mitch: Do you see yourself staying free or adding more paid services down the road?

Jake: Right now our free service is driven by ads, thats not the type of service for everyone. There are people who want a quality podcast host but don’t want the ads. So yes we are planing on adding a paid service in the near future.

Mitch: With an account, do you get an RSS feed built in or is that left up to the client?

Jake: That is the beauty of our service, you don’t have to know anything about the RSS feed to star a podcast. All you have to do is create your mp3 file and upload it, through our easy to use web interface. We then generate the feed for you, and we host it for you.

All you have to do is give your listeners the location of the feed.

Mitch: From head to toe, What exactly do you offer for a new podcast Web hosting client?

Jake: We offer free podcast hosting, and an easy to use RSS feed generator. We are trying to make it as easy as we can for you to create your podcast.

Mitch: Right now you are invites only, when do you think you might expand that?

Jake: We are hoping to have a full release in the next few weeks here. With that release we will be adding our paid ad-free service. If you are interested in helping beta test you can email us for an invite at support@switchpod.com.

Mitch Do you listen to any podcasts right now, and if so which ones?

Jake: I love to listen to podcasts. I have many favorites. Some include TWIT the new podcast from the all the old people from the good ol days of TechTV, I like The Wizards of Technology, and of course the Web Hosting Show.

Mitch: If you could sell yourself to the podcasting community, what would you want to say right now?

Jake: Every one has a talent in podcasting, you just have to find a topic you love to talk about. We will help you with the rest.

After talking with Jake for a while, and trying to get his feelings on where he’d like his podcasting journey to go, I have no problems at all recommending folks to go check out Switchpod. I have a feeling that in a few months that this service won’t just be “yet another” podcast hosting solution. It will be something more.

To this day I am still proud of my purchase of my Dell Pocket DJ. I’ve never had a problem with it and it works great. So far the only thing I have had to replace on the thing is the headphones. The Dell ones that come with it really suck. I mean, the audio quality is alright but after wearing them for more than an hour they really start to hurt your ears. So what is a geek to do? Go shopping!

After looking for a while at good alternatives, I found Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia Headphones. You see I didn’t want to pay over $100 for a pair of headphones. That is just kind of silly to me. Then again, I wanted some that wouldn’t hurt me after wearing them, so I didn’t want to go with some $10 alternative either. So far the Sony headphones have been awesome. They fit right into my ear, and with the padded sides they don’t hurt at all. Once I get those bad boys shoved into my head, I can hardly hear a thing from the outside world.

Looking for some new headphones? Check those out.

I’ve been on a classic horror kick here recently. I was just thumbing through some lists on Amazon the other day and ran across this little beauty. The Dead Walk, 10 “old school” horror classics for under twenty bucks. So far I have only watched two of the movies. Revolt of the Zombies wasn’t that great. Starting out I thought it would be “real” zombies, but instead it was some mind control deal. Talk about disappointed. The other one I watched as far from a disappointment though.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a movie that just screams out classic horror flick:

Dr. Bill Cortner, world-renowned surgeon, has a good head on his shoulders and another one in the tank in his lab. When Bill’s fiancee Jan is messily decapitated in a car accident, Bill keeps her head alive in his laboratory and searches local strip clubs to find her a new body. Surprisingly gory for its time, this absurdly perverse quest to build the perfect woman is a true camp classic and must be seen to be believed.

The best line of the entire movie is, “Aren’t you going to look in the closet?”. The reason for that is that is just comes out of nowhere in the first 15 minutes or so of the movie. Thanks to the oddity of it, “Aren’t you going to look in the closet?” will now become my new official catch prase.

I ordered another horror movie collection that should be coming sometime next week. 50 Horror Movie Classics should be another DVD for me to enjoy. I just wished I would have ordered it first, because I didn’t find out till after the fact that it has some of the same movies as The Dead Walk does. Ohh well, guess you can not have enough horror goodness!

What is your favorite horror movie?

Does this mean the death of media as we know it today? Well, just keep your pants on for a minute! Seems like there is more to this than meets the eye. I really think it is exciting to see what Google plans to do with these videos. Some folks were scared off by the legal stuff Google had posted when this idea first surfaced for them a few months ago. How have things changed?

John Battelle over at the Search Blog has done a good write up about what to expect today:

I’ve confirmed that Monday Google will launch an in-browser video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player. This is the logical next step for Google’s video search and upload function, which began taking uploads from anyone who cared to submit back in April.

Google will not disclose the raw numbers of videos that have been uploaded to date, but the company will make all those which were tagged as “free” available for real time streaming through the VLC player, which Google has modified and will make available for download Monday morning. The company also intends to make its VLC code available to the open source community as part of their Google code project.

The video will be searchable via the meta data provided by the submission process (no, there’s no PageRank for video, yet).

Now, before we start discussing how this represents the Death of Comcast/The Networks/Windows Media Player et al, this is not quite that, but it is the start of something big. For one, it’s clear this will be integrated with the Google payment program which was revealed to be in process last week. Plenty of folks uploaded video to Google with a payment option, and that has yet to roll out, but you can expect that it will.

[Read the Rest of the Article!]

No page rank yet? Damn, that means nothing for SEO folks to wet themselves over worrying about right now. Maybe in a few weeks though, right guys? People know how much legalities scare the crap out of me, so I just won’t worry about those aspects just yet. Looks like yet another good innovation from the folks at Google to look forward to!

Go! Google Go!

This week on the Web Hosting Show we covered two important situations in the world of Web hosting. The first being the battle between domain name registers. The second topic covered was getting more disk space for your Web hosting account. Why are these two so important? The reason is they are both backbones to your Web hosting experience.

The domain name wars are heating up! On Tuesday of last week, Yahoo was advertising domain name prices of $4.98. However if you went to Yahoo’s small business Web page, it seems like there they were still listed at the $9.95 price rate. Now it is no secret that domain name registers, just like any other business out there want to get attention for having low price specials. The confusion comes in when the prices between the ad and the actual services don’t add up. Right now the domain name wars are one of the most fun things to keep track of Online right now. The reason being is a handful of companies are playing the “I can do better than that” game with the domain name services and prices.

The WHIR has posted a very good article covering this mix up, how it was explained. The moral of the lesson? Pay attention to the small print when your buying anything out there.

The second thing I wanted to discuss with you this week is what to look for in disk space when purchasing a new Web hosting account.

You might have your Web site saved to your local computer and you might know exactly the size of an account you need to get it hosted. What many people don’t keep in mind though his growth. You have to give your Web site room for growth in the future. You might not consider it now, but later on down the road you could find yourself wanting to expand some.

If you are locked in on how much disk space you have, then you won’t be able to grow too far. Yes, you could just upgrade your Web hosting account – but would you have the time to wait for the Web host to get it done? Sometimes growth needs to be fast and easy, and adding just a little more disk space could save you a lot of time down the road.

Need more? Download Podcast 19 of the Web Hosting Show!

I’ve read all about the new features in Internet Explorer 7 as far as RSS integration goes. What do I think after reading it all? Well, I am happy they are doing it, but I don’t think by any means that they are taking leaps and bounds over what is already out there. Right now it just feels like to me it is one big game of playing “catch up” with the competition. Things are looking good in my eyes, but far from changing my browsing world as I know it. Honestly I don’t know if I want a browser that can do more than one thing.

It is kind of like the old VCR/TV argument. Would you by a TV that had a VCR built in? What if the VCR broke? Then you’d have to get a new TV. I like to have an e-mail client for my e-mail, a feed reader for my RSS and a browser for my browsing. Maybe I just can’t get past the fact that the “File, Edit, View” bar in IE7 is at the bottom. That still bugs me, and I’m sure it will bug me more once I get to using it.

The six hundred pound elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about though is security. Netcraft’s Rich Miller did an excellent job typing up some security concerns that are out there today. Cool new features are great, but I’m still wondering about some of the “behind the scenes” stuff here. I still have yet to hear how IE7′s HTML and CSS encoding is going to go towards using standards instead of using Microsoft’s version of doing things either.

Want to learn more? Robert Scoble wrote up a good entry with many different views and opinions on the subject. Good place to do your homework and see what other folks have had to say so far.

In all I’d say that I am impressed, but not impressed as I’d like to be.

Well it is pretty much here, Gnomedex 5.0 and I wish I could have made it. Unfortunately though, I am stuck here at the Web Hosting Show studios aka my desk aka the place where I spend eighty percent of my day. Looks like things will be bigger and better than ever though this year. Don’t belive me? Just check out some of the history of the event:

Gnomedex was born in 2001, carefully crafted by the hands of Lori Lockwood and Jake Ludington. It was supposed to take place on September 14th & 15th, 2001 in Des Moines, Iowa. These were ill-fated days, as nobody could have predicted the catastrophic event that would befall us mere days before. Still, in the eleventh hour, our coordinators were able to reschedule the proceedings a month later – and it was a complete success. The original plans changed a bit, but 350 tech enthusiasts had a great time. Speakers included Steve Gibson, Robert Scoble, and David Lawrence.

The second year was definitely a lot more relaxed; a true culture started to form around it. Even Worldcom gave us a thumbs up. Wi-Fi flew through the air, but not with the greatest of ease. Even so, tech enthusiasts had a great time. Speakers included Leo Laporte, Evan Williams, Pud Kaplan, Beth Goza, and Doc Searls.

Just wish I had the time to send an 8 x 10 glossy photo of myself for Chris Pirillo to put on a stick and carry around with him. Hell, I’d be happy with being it being tapped onto a mop in the corner really. Hope everybody has fun this year! I’ll be listening to all that I can from the outside world till then.

Everybody should know by now about me writing Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting. It might have not been the blockbuster of the year, but I think it has done very well for two facts.

1. As far as writing goes I am still a pretty small potato, at least outside of the Web hosting world.

2. Trying to tell somebody they need to buy something, when you could probably find it somewhere else by somebody else for free is hard.

Not all is lost though. It seems like here lately, more and more, I’ve been getting that itch. You know the kind. The kind that just won’t go away. The kind that sits on your back and thumbs you in the back of the head. I’m getting the itch to write another e-book. What should it cover though? Go ahead and pick a title, who knows… you might be right?

Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting 2: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

System Administrators Go Wild!

The Good, the Bad and the Web Hosters

Got anymore fun titles to suggest?

I am sick and tired of seeing a new list of the “A-List Bloggers” every time I get Online. It seems like everybody and their grandmother has done this to death now. The question I have is, who really cares? Some might say the people on the list care, but they are the same folks that get the highlight each and every time it is turned on. If somebody has already made a list of the “most read” folks out there, why not do something different? Because that is hard work. Instead we see Web site after Web site re-branding the whole “blogebrity” idea and it just makes me even more angry.

Why? Some might say, “Well Mitch, you are a bitter little man, aren’t you?”.

No I am not. I could care less what list I make it onto or don’t make it onto. The fact of the matter is I would just like to see something different come out there. Why not highlight the newest blogs? The blogs with the funniest content? The blogs that make you think? Why? That would be actual work there. You’d have to get a person or a team of people going through and reading blog after blog. Why not try to highlight who might be the “Next big thing?”. Why? That would be too hard. Instead lets just give the same old pat on the back to the same old folks over and over again.

I have nothing against these so-called “trendsetters“. I’ll even admit to having a few in my RSS reader. Folks like Eric Rice and Chris Pirillo are entertaining, informative and fun.

You can only milk that cow so long before it runs dry. How many more lists can we go through before people want to be entertained by something new? different? Exciting? Outside of the box?

Here is my list of blogs that will probably never make it onto a “high class” list but are damn worthy of being mentioned. Maybe this list will inspire a few folks to think outside the box for a change instead of falling into the same old patterns over and over again.

Matt Hartley’s Ctrl-Alt-Del

Swisher’s Untitled Blog Project

Brandon Watts

The Host Blog

Mitchelaneous

Now how hard was that? Know somebody else that isn’t getting the “blogging respect” that they deserve? Let me know!

If you want to talk to me about something I know, then talk to me about article writing. I’ve been in the “business” I guess you could say for well over a year now. Since my last Web hosting position didn’t pan out the way I wanted it to, I turned to the written word to earn an honest living. Writing articles for a living though, isn’t that easy. Sometimes you just can not find the topics you want to write about. Some days you just wake up and have no idea what kind of content you want to create.

Nobody can disagree that content creation is an important part of developing a successful Web site.

This article (via the folks at DevShed.com) does a great job of explaining what to do if you find yourself between a creative rock and a hard place. If you are a writer or just looking for something to write, listen to what the wise Charles Essmeier has to say.

Some six weeks ago, I began writing and submitting articles to free content sites in order to promote the six commercial Websites I own.The results have been both swift and dramatic, and the number of links from external Websites to my own Websites has increased from nearly nothing to more than 10,000 in a little more than a month. These results have inspired me to write more articles, and as I own six different Websites, I have six different topics to choose from. Still, my ideas occasionally run dry and that certainly happens to others who write articles for their own Websites. Writing and submitting articles on a regular basis does a lot for promoting your Websites, but where can you find more ideas for articles when you run out?

I have several sources that work for me. I subscribe to several newspapers as well as several news magazines. Most of my Websites are devoted to “topical” subjects, so the sorts of things I write about tend to be in the news. Sometimes, when reading an article about one of my topics, I find some angle or aspect of the topic I hadn’t previously considered.

You can check out the rest of the article if you need some more help. Inspiration is a hard thing to find sometimes, but once you do find it is worth the wait. Nothing gets me more fired up than a really good idea. Guess that means I picked the right career choice this time around.