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This article is my opinion and review of Blogtalk Radio, and how it makes podcasting a lot easier. Podcasts are usually MP3 files, usually take up less space than music files, because they get encoded at a smaller sampling rate than musical files; as reproducing a person's speech doesn't need as much bandwidth as a quality music file. I am a judgment broker (a judgment referral expert) that writes and podcasts a lot. A podcast is a digital binary-related sound file which is nearly the same as a music file. Similar to music files, podcasts are binary files having encodings which control sounds. Podcasts are moved, stored, and are about the same size as music files. However with podcasts, certain bits get twiddled inside the files, to insure that podcasts and music files behave differently in most audio/music players and programs, including iTunes. Of course, when you start your podcast, you'll want listeners to be able to easily find and hear it. While you could attempt to have people pay for your podcasts, with really few fields, this is very hard to do. Besides choosing to, the most popular reasons to start or maintain a podcast is to help get a small amount of publicity, or to provide advertising for some other entity or business you wish to advertise. For example, a religious podcast might help advertise the podcaster's DVDs, books, or classes. Most podcasts don't begin with, or ever will have, paying advertisers. Most people will do best to begin and perhaps keep, distributing their podcasts freely. When your podcasts are free, you'll want to host your podcasts on at least one internet server to help it be distributed. Apple's iTunes store is a first and best way to make your podcasts easy to find. BlogTalk Radio is the second best way. Getting your podcasts in the Apple iTunes store is not as simple as you would expect. Will Apple import your MP3 podcasts into the iTunes server at Apple? No, your podcasts must be hosted on an outside server. Yet, when you host your podcasts on most servers or your own web site, and then follow the instructions in iTunes to put your free podcasts in the iTunes store; you will probably see a "the server doesn't have byte-range iTunes support" error. Those who host their websites on shared server machines, are usually not permitted to launch or run long-running server processes on shared hosting environments, such as additional server software or daemons. To get byte-range support, Mod_deflate is usually supported in Apache, and that might work. Requiring byte-range access is a big headache, and Apple is large enough to put small MP3 podcasts on their server or cloud; or maybe Apple IOS and OSX hardware/software could support non-streaming servers someday. Rather than waiting and hoping for Apple to make a change, I found an easy solution using BlogTalk Radio (BTR). Blogtalk Radio has a free account level that allows you to host live internet radio shows, or pre-record and upload your podcasts as startup files. BTR either sends your podcast to the Apple iTunes store, or they make very easy for you to. If you use BTR often, their $400 per year premium level has many additional features, which allows you to edit any previous shows also. How do you make your own podcast? One method is to use BTR to automatically make your podcast when you do your live show. You can upload music or speaking selections, to play during your live show. After your show concludes, your podcast will be on Blogtalk Radio's server, and there's an option to send the podcast to iTunes, and then you will be a podcaster. BTR's site and iTunes sync to the BTR servers, have been randomly slow. Despite this, I very strongly recommend Blogtalk Radio. With podcasts, until you get famous, it is best to stay with solid info and being helpful, and a pleasant attitude are always nice. A 20-minute interesting podcast is better than a half hour boring podcast. It's a good idea to break up long monologs with some music songs or fun commercials for you or your friends. Be careful not to include copyright music in your podcasts. Although copyright issues are not within the scope of my article, one suggestion is to ask your friends to let you include their music, in exchange for plugging their site or band on your podcast. One other potential choice might be to choose very old (and not so popular) music that is more likely a public domain song, around the 1920s to early 1940s. Try a www search for "public domain music". Besides Blogtalk Radio, another method of making a podcast is with a computer. I found out that my flat-screen iMac to include such high quality built-in audio, I simply speak into my iMac, and the audio quality rocks. You can record sound files with Apple's QuickTime Player Pro or the equivalent on your computer. You also need a sound editor, on the Macintosh I use Amadeus. The best way to include callers and guests is with Skype and an audio recording package such as Call Recorder. Interviews and monologs benefit from editing to remove clicks, coughs, breathing sounds, etc. You can make a MP3 file of the whole podcast, and upload it to Blogtalk Radio; and set it to automatically start, and then your entire "live" show may be pre-recorded. This works well when your podcast/show is just starting and does not have any live callers. I have found Blogtalk Radio to be the best and easiest way to make podcasts. BTR has room for growth with live telephone and Skype callers, and includes simple integration into iTunes. Please visit the constantly improving site - http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Judgment Recovery. Your easy, free, best and fastest chance to recover your judgment cash nationwide for 33% or less, international for 50%. Mark Shapiro - Why assign the judgment?
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