Playing with Podcasts

After a couple of days, I have found software, recorded an oral presentation, edited the presentation, saved it in multiple digital formats, and created .rss and .xml files to turn it into a podcast. As a result, I have now created my first official podcast. I'm pretty proud of it. I had wanted to do one with my voice, but I wanted a more professional sounding voice, so I asked our college president to speak. It turns out that she has a lovely, recordable voice. It was only a matter of removing dead airspace and some "ummmms" and "ahhhhhs" before saving the file as .mp3 and .wav files. I used Audacity freeware to do the recording and edits. I used a KOSS CS-100 headset with microphone ($10-$15). I tried to use Podifier freeware to create the .rss file that I needed to turn the audio into an actual podcast that would be received in podcast aggregators/receivers, but I had some trouble with the script that it created. In the end it was easier to look at someone else's script and just put my links and info into the script to create the file. I also looked at podcast aggregators/receivers and tried a few before I found the one that I liked best, ZiePod. You can find my webpage about podcasting with links to the software that I used at http://www.wvup.edu/dl/Podcasts/index.htm.