Boston – My introduction to podcasting – the convergence of iPods, broadcasting and the time-shifting that TiVo popularized – came when Apple’s iTunes recently began making podcasts available for download.
I realized that nearly anybody can make and distribute a podcast. Got the moxie to upstage Howard Stern? Outrap Eminem? Scoop Nina Totenberg? All you really need to record and offer the public your own podcast is a computer, a microphone and the Internet. Digital voice recorders are optional. After all, it’s just an audio file.
You also should probably have something to say.
I’m 22, just out of college, and don’t expect to be the next Garrison Keillor. But I was intrigued by the idea and sampled the menu of podcasts out there. Some sounded as if they’d been recorded on a walkie-talkie, others like they came out of professional studios.
Podcast topics range from discussions on the latest in gadgets to reviews of fine wines.
There’s some incredibly polished scripted entertainment and storytelling, and traditional media are jumping in on the genre.
I started simple. I’d do a two-minute podcast about making a podcast.
OK, but how? Theoretically, the process is simple: Record a sound file and upload it to the Web. After that, anyone can download your podcast for listening on a computer or portable music player.
First, you have to capture the audio. I used my 2-year-old Dell laptop, though the recording equipment used by podcasters varies widely. Some spend hundreds on high-end microphones and sound-editing software.
I spent $13 for a basic microphone.
Ten minutes after I got home, the mic was plugged into my computer’s audio-input jack and I was ready to start talking.
But with no sound-editing program on my personal computer, I had no way of saving the words.
So I turned to Audacity, the best free program I could find, which worked seamlessly with my mic and offered lots of features.
But I also needed a way to distribute my podcast to the world – at no cost to me – once I was done recording.
Several free hosting options exist, but some I tried either didn’t load reliably or looked unprofessional. I settled for podblaze.com. It has a simple design and quick registration, and the uploading was a breeze.
Now all I had to do was record my podcast.
After a few minutes, I had my sound file.
Audacity had automatically formatted the sound in a file type unique to the program. It took some maneuvering to convert the file to MP3, the industry standard. I had to download a small file so that Audacity could handle the task.
After that, I was set and transferred to file to the Web.
Three minutes later, my podcast was online. I coerced a friend in New York to listen, just to make sure everything was working. It was. I even earned a compliment for my “on-air voice.” I had started small.
Thinking over my podcast debut, I’m not sure I have enough to say to become a serial podcaster.
Shall I return the $13 mike?
