Archive for June, 2005
· June 30, 2005 at 4:01 pm · Odds & Ends
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.
· June 28, 2005 at 1:24 pm · Odds & Ends
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.
· June 28, 2005 at 12:46 pm · Odds & Ends
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?
· June 27, 2005 at 11:50 am · Odds & Ends
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!
· June 27, 2005 at 11:36 am · Odds & Ends
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!
· June 27, 2005 at 11:30 am · Odds & Ends
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.
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