Creating and Using Podcasts Stanford University Continuing Studies CS 43

1. Creating and Using PodcastsStanford University Continuing Studies CS 43 Mark Branom markb@stanford.edu http://www.stanford.edu/people/markb/650.725.1717 Course Web Site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/csp/cs43/

2. Week 4 Agenda • Publishing Your Podcast • Using a web server, like Tripod • Using a Podcasting Service, like PodBean.com, MyPodcast.com, or PodcastPeople.com • Advertising Your Podcast Using RSS • What is RSS? • RSS example • Submitting RSS Feeds • Creating a Transcript of Your Podcast

3. Publishing Your Podcast • Once you have finished creating and editing the audio or video files that will become your podcast, you need to publish them to the Internet. • There are several ways you can accomplish this: • Publish to a web server (Tripod, Geocities, a computer you have set up to act as a web server, your personal or company web site’s web server, etc.) • Publish to one of the Podcasting Services (such as PodBean.com, MyPodcast.com, or PodcastPeople.com) • Publish to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) • Publish to a blog (http://www.blogger.com, http://www.typepad.com, http://www.wordpress.com, etc.)

4. Advertising Your Podcast Using RSS • What is RSS (Really Simple Syndication)? “RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.” (wikipedia.org) • An excellent 2-minute video explaining RSS in plain English is at: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

5. RSS Feeds, continued • RSS feeds are XML files. For a detailed explanation of what iTunes requires for the RSS feed, go to http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html • The Apple/iTunes FAQ on Podcasting: http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcastingfaq.html • Here is a sample RSS feed: <?xml version="1.0"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Title of Feed Goes Here</title> <description>Description of Feed Goes Here</description> <link>Link to the Feed Goes Here</link> <item> <title>Title of Podcast Goes Here</title> <description>Description of Podcast</description> <link>Link to Podcast</link> <guid>Link to Podcast</guid> <enclosure url="Link to Podcast" type="audio/mpeg" length="file size in bytes" /> </item> </channel> </rss>

6. Submitting RSS Feeds • Doing it yourself:

7. Submitting RSS Feeds, continued • Using a service • http://itunes.apple.com/ • http://www.submitrssfeed.com/ • http://www.feedsubmitter.com/ • http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html • http://allrss.com/rsssubmission.html

8. Creating a Transcript • Be sure to create a transcript of your podcast. • Having a transcript is important for accessibility reasons, but also since some people might not have the time to listen to the entire podcast, they might prefer to skim through the transcript to see what your podcast contains. • Further, if you add a transcript to your podcast, you can make searching through your podcast much easier by search engines as well as human beings (i.e., at timestamp 3 minutes, 22 seconds the speaker begins talking about the influence of computers on society). • While it is time-consuming to do it yourself, here are some places you can go to have transcripts created for you: • http://castingwords.com/ • http://www.docsoft.com/ • http://www.automaticsync.com/