Other Articles in Make
Podcasting Blog
Voice Over Training
5/10/2008
One of the obvious aspects of podcasting is using your voice. And using it properly. If you’re looking for some more information about how to improve your voice technique in your podcast, I’d suggest checking out the Voice Over Experts Podcast from Voices.com.
Audacity Updated
5/09/2008
The very popular among podcasters audio recording application, Audacity has received an update. Podcasting News has a full rundown of the changes, including many bug fixes. It is nice to see some interface fixes, too, as I’ve felt Audacity has always suffered on the UI side.
Got a Podcaster Birthday Coming Up?
2/14/2008
Don’t forget that I’ve put together the finest collection of gifts for your favorite podcasting friend, family member, neighbor, or stranger! This isn’t just a list for holiday gifts, but great to find something to buy for a birthday gift or something for yourself, too. Filled with books, hardware and more, the store is broken out into … Continue reading »
Hardware Recommendations
- Kustom KM4 Mic with Cable
- Behringer XM8500 Microphone
- Shure SM58 Mic
- MXL MXL V63MBP Computer Desktop Recording Kit
Masthead
Contact
Ryan Irelan, Editor - listen@podcastfreeamerica.com
PFA Makeover: Odeo
I love me some Odeo. It’s a beautiful website with lots of bling and now that their podcast creation tools are open to the public, Odeo is ready for prime time. As part of their public release of the podcast creation tools (I’ve been a tester for several months, see my review for more information), Odeo also made significant updates to their design and user interface.
One of the main goals of the design was to meet their goal of Podcasting for Regular People. As you can imagine, this makes me very happy. That is exactly why I started Podcast Free America and represents the most frustrating issue in podcasting at this moment: Ease of access to podcasting for non-technical people.
However, being the tweaker that I am, I decided to alter the Odeo front page a bit to mold it more in my vision of Podcasting for Regular People. What’s that vision, you ask? Well, simply put, creating podcasts should be as simple as doing a Google search.
Steps to create a Google search
- Go to http://www.google.com.
- Type in your search term(s).
- Click the Google Search button.
Simple, right? Let’s see how close I can get to making the Odeo front page function the same way.
PFA’s steps to create a podcast on Odeo.com
- Go to http://www.odeo.com.
- Click the Record button.
- Talk.
What about an account? How can someone create a podcast without creating an account?
Of course users have to create an account in order to save and share their podcasts. But what I’m saying is that the account creation step should come AFTER the recording of the first podcast.
I think of it this way: Amazon.com doesn’t make me create an account before I can browse around and add things to a cart, does it? No. If they did they would probably have a lot fewer sales. There’s nothing I dislike more than having to fill out yet another form before I know if I really care enough about the website to offer up my personal information. So, why should podcasting tools (this goes for all tools, not just Odeo) be any different ?
I don’t think they should be. So, after some thinking and photoshoping, I’ve come up with this example of what I think is a way to make creating podcasts almost as simple as doing a Google search:
The flow would be something like this: Record Audio → Create Account → Publish Saved Audio. That’s it.
I’m interested to hear what you think about my makeover. As always, comments are welcome.
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