WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com... [2]

If you’ve followed parts 1-4 of the podcasting guide on this website you should, by now, have created a podcast. This last part is for those who want to publicize their podcast, find out more about the technology or integrate podcasting into their (and their students’) daily life more easily.

Put a image-based link to your podcast on your website

Make your podcast stand out from the rest of the content on your website. Find an icon and colour that suits you on [3] this website and then use it to link to your podcast! My 3 favourites are below:

If you want an icon that looks professional and web-standardsish, then this one is the one you want…

Get your podcast heard by others

There are many places to which you can submit your podcast. The most obvious one is iTunes, providing your podcast is compatible (if you use [4] Feedburner, it will be!) A comprehensive list of places to submit your podcast is available [5] here. Alternatively, you might want to simply go to [6] FeedPing.com and add your RSS feed to have it automatically sent to all the major directories (you only need to do this once!)

PS If you’re desperate to get your podcast on iTunes, have a look at the way [7] Apple say you can do it (warning: technical and long-winded!)

Use iTunes to synchronize with MP3 players other than iPods

The whole point of podcasts is for content to which you subscribe to be downloaded automatically and made available for listening on portable devices. For those poor souls who haven’t yet saved up enough/been enlightened and don’t have an iPod, there is a way to make other MP3 players sync with iTunes. The [8] Bad Apple plugin fools iTunes into thinking it’s connecting to an iPod. I have got an iPod so haven’t been able to test it - comments on its effectiveness would therefore be welcome…

Mac users have it easy!

If you have a Mac and feel a bit left out by this guide, don’t worry - it’s actually easier for you to create a podcast. Simply follow [9] this brief and simple guide from Apple.

Sound knowledgeable about podcasting

[10] Wikipedia has an excellent entry on [11] podcasting. It discusses the history of podcasting, how and why it grew in popularity, and provides links to resources and further reading.

Include videos and other files in your podcast!

An RSS file is no more than an enclosure for information. Consequently you can put pretty include pretty much any type of file in a podcast. You could, for example, zip up an MP3 or video file with a handout and have users receive the zip file when they subscribe to your podcast! Such methods of delivery are still in their infancy, but as an administrator replied to a curious user on the [12] podcastingnews.com forum:

There is no “podcasting specification”. Podcasting is built upon RSS 2.0, and the defacto standard is to use RSS 2.0 with MP3 files.

Podcasts are indicated by an enclosure element, within an RSS feed, pointing to an MP3 file’s URL.

Because RSS doesn’t limit what can be referenced in an enclosure, it should be possible to podcast any type of file that you like, in theory.

In practice, this is only useful if the person that subscribes to your podcast knows what’s going to be in your feed. It wouldn’t make sense for somebody to download a Windows video file or an excel spreadsheet to their iPod, but you stil could use a podcast for that purpose if you wanted to.

There’s no limit on the file size you can podcast, other than what’s technically feasible. We’ve had reports of people having problems with podcasts larger than 20-30mb, especially over dial-up connections.

Make a video podcast

The new version of iTunes (6.0.2 at the time of writing) allows you to convert videos to be played back on video-enabled iPods. These videos can also be played back on a normal computer.

Add images and links for users to access whilst your podcast is playing

[13] MAKE magazine has an excellent tutorial on how to turn your podcast into an enhanced podcast here. It even allows for small images to accompany your feeds once an iPod has been synced with iTunes! (Mac only, I’m afraid…)

That concludes the Podcasting Guide. I hope you’ve found it useful and I expect to see a lot of educational podcasts appearing in the near future!

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