Does your organization have a podcast, or are you considering starting one?
Tell us how podcasting has affected your organization. What have been the benefits? What tools and resources helped you get started? What would you like to learn more about?
For more information on podcasting, see TechSoup's article
How to Record, Edit, and Promote Your Nonprofit's Podcast. Share your questions and podcasting wisdom here.
Joined on 01-01-2000
TechSoup Member
I would like to explore this option. It is a great medium for exchange and give a personal touch to your website.
After you set up your first podcast, please do report back to us, here in this thread, about how it worked out for you and link to it so we can hear it!
Joined on 10-12-2006
TechSoup Member
Thanks for the article. It helped, and I've got 13 shows up already! Post my first podcast? Certainly.
The website is
IntoYourHead.comand the podcast feed address is
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IntoYourHead
Joined on 08-08-2006
TechSoup Member
I have some basic questions that are still not answered after reading that article.
Aren't podcasts just .mp3 files? If not, what's the difference?
If I ftp an .mp3 file to my web server, and then create an html document with hyperlinks to those sites, can people just click on those hyperlinks, and hear them or right-click on them and download them?
Is there something I need to ask my webhost before I do that? Is there some kind of server platform my webhost needs to have in order for people to listen to or download .mp3 files I put on the web server?
Joined on 08-08-2006
TechSoup Member
No more questions, I just forgot to subscribe to the topic, and the only way I could do it after posting is to post again, so here it is. Sorry for the interruption.
Joined on 01-01-2000
TechSoup Member
Yes, podcasts are usually just .mp3 files.
Yes, if you FTP'd an .mp3 file to your server and created hyperlinks, listeners could either listen directly to listen or right-click and download them, and no your webhost doesn't need to setup anything for you.
However, the best way to offer your podcasts would be to create a RSS feed so that listeners can "subscribe" to your podcast using a podcatching appplication like iTunes, Juice, iPodder, etc., that way new podcasts are just downloaded automatically.
One other thing to consider that I don't think the article addressed is bandwidth. Many ISPs also have a bandwidth limit and if your podcast is downloaded by lot's of listeners this could be a problem.
HTH, Mike
Joined on 01-22-2007
TechSoup Member
You can record and post your podcast directly from your bowser, see
http://boomp3.com/file/record
Joined on 12-31-1999
TechSoup Member
Podcasts are usually mp3 files, sometimes, though, especially if fully set up for iPods, can be in the following formats:
.mp4 .m4v .AAC
I believe the .AAC format is one of the audio book sites' formats.
I have a variety of tools that I've tested for the past several months, as we've been doing podcasts for almost a year on a closed-channel, if you will. They are podcasts, but they aren't public. They are for a specific community, basically a "members only" thing.
We are ready to launch a public podcast, though, and that will be launched within the next month or so. We have the following tools for podcasts and editing:
[*]Camtasia Studio[/*]
[*]Podcast Station[/*]
[*]Audacity (for editing the files)[/*]
[*]FeedForAll (with the optional HTML access)[/*]
We did try other tools, including Podifier, but didn't like those as much.
FeedForAll, especially if you are just getting started with podcasting, is a great tool, as is PodcastStation and PodProducer (Beta v0.26 -- but very, very stable and as good as some of the non-beta products we saw).
PodProducer is at http://www.podproducer.net/en/index.html
FeedForAll is at http://www.FeedForAll.com/
Camtasia Studio is at http://www.TechSmith.com