Web-Site Packagers

If creating your own Web site and managing RSS files are things you would rather not do, several online options can ease the pain of learning RSS. Web-site packagers (as I call them) offer up complete packages for hosting an RSS feed so that your podcasts can be available to the masses with little effort on your part. The rub, of course, is that most of these Web sites charge a fee for this service.

This section looks at four Web-site packagers that offer services enabling you to get your podcast and site up and running in a very short period with relatively little blood, sweat, and tears. This field is changing so rapidly that a search on Google is likely to yield a large number of companies willing to host your podcasts.

Liberated Syndication

Liberated Syndication (www.libsyn.com; Figure 5.34) is a Web hosting company designed specifically for podcasting. Libsyn.com goes beyond simple Web-site hosting; it offers a podcast-specific product that includes storage for media (podcasts) and an easy-to-use interface for publishing your podcast.

Figure 5.34. Liberated Syndication is an excellent Web-hosting service that's dedicated to podcasters.

Although Liberated Syndication doesn't offer a front-end Web page per se, it does offer an easy solution for publishing your podcast to an RSS feed for a relatively low cost. The costs of the company's services range from $5 per month (100 MB of storage space) to $30 per month (800 MB). Liberated Syndication takes the attitude that it doesn't want users to be penalized if their programs become popular. Therefore, it does not charge for bandwidth useonly for the space that users' podcasts take up on its servers.

Liberated Syndication is my No. 1 choice for this sort of service. The prices are very reasonable, and you would be hard pressed to find another service that offers so much for so little.

The list of features, as noted on the Libsyn.com Web site, are as follows:

• Unmetered bandwidth

• Easy-to-use interface

• No lock-in (users are not tied to Libsyn.com for their podcasting needs)

• Quickcast feature that immediately creates a podcast feed for an uploaded media file

MyPodcasts.Net

MyPodcasts.net (www.mypodcasts.net; Figure 5.35) is a podcast management, hosting, and distribution solution that gets your podcast out to the world for $9.99 per month. MyPodcasts.net also includes a set of controls and statistics that tell you exactly how many times your podcast has been downloaded and how many times your RSS feed has been subscribed to. This is a very handy Web site that includes all the tools and tutorials you need to get your podcast distributed around the 'net (including in the iTunes directory).

Figure 5.35. MyPodcasts.net is a podcast Web page/distribution solution.

Podblaze

Podblaze (www.podblaze.com; Figure 5.36) is a podcast distribution Web site that takes you through the steps of getting your podcast out onto the Internet in a few short minutes. Podblaze charges various amounts of money, depending on the amount of storage you want for your podcast, but the basic subscription (which includes 200 MB of storage space and 2 GB of bandwidth) is $14.95 per month or $160 per year. Podblaze offers several extra features, including a guarantee that your podcasts will be available in Google searches within 72 hours.

Figure 5.36. Podblaze is a podcast distribution tool that will store your podcasts and distribute them (including getting them on Google) for a fee.

Podbus.Com

Podbus.com (www.podbus.com; Figure 5.37) is another outstanding commercial Web-hosting service for podcasters. For only $5 a month, Podbus offers 300 MB of storage space and 10 GB of bandwidth. Additionally, if you happen to exceed the 10 GB bandwidth limit, additional bandwidth costs just 66 cents per gigabyte.

Figure 5.37. Podbus.com is an outstanding service for hosting podcast feeds.

Podbus also includes automatic RSS feed creation. In other words, when a podcast is added to its server, a podcast feed is generated automatically (saving you the pain and suffering of creating your own). The one thing Podbus.com offers that Libsyn.com does not is Web hosting. For a measly $2 per month, Podbus.com allows you to use your 300 MB of space to host your own Web page.

The Podcasting Community at Work

I can imagine a world in which everyone thinks of podcasters as nerds with poor social skills, but this story from Swoopy, co-host of "Skepticality," shows us that the podcasting community really is a community that cares.

On September 8, 2005, Derek Colanduno (Figure 5.38) had a stroke. Oddly enough, that was the very day that we had received word that Steve Jobs had included us among the nine most popular podcastsalongside CNN and ABC News and Adam Curryon iTunes and had shown our logo on a huge screen during his most recent Apple keynote address.

Figure 5.38. Derek Colanduno, who suffered a stroke at age 31.

Over the past nearly seven months, Derek has worked tirelessly to regain his physical stamina and abilities, as well as learning again how to speak and write, and regain most of his cognitive skills.

Podcasting has been an excellent tool, not only for his therapists to have an idea of the way Derek was like before the stroke, but especially in hearing the way he used to speak. Also, for Derek to be able to record himself speaking and hear the differences in his speech has been extremely helpful in his ongoing recovery.

Although Derek's stroke has changed our lives in many ways, some of the biggest surprises came from the outreach of the podcasting community.The night that Derek had his stroke, I knew that I had to let a lot of people know (because most of our friends are pod-casters who listen to our show, and vice versa) what had happened, and an e-mail just seemed beyond me at the time. So I sat down and recorded a short podcast that I called "The Message."

Practically overnight, I was flooded with thousands of e-mails of condolence, well wishes, prayers (even tongue-in-cheek ones), and offers of support of just about every kind, from medical to monetary. Adam Curry replayed my message a couple of days later on "Daily Source Code," and more and more messages continued to pour in, along with flowers, gift baskets, and lots and lots of get-well cards from people we'd never met or never heard from before.

The podcasting community last September was probably a quarter of the size that it is now, and to get that kind of heartfelt outpouring really demonstrated what a special breed of people it was that had created this new kind of media format.