I've been listening to podcasts now for about 4 days. A podcast is simply an MP3. What's different about podcasts is that if you set up another file called an XML file that has code in it that points to where you uploaded your MP3, and give that XML file link to a piece of software called iPodder that runs on your PC in the background, then iPodder will poll that XML file every hour or so and detect whenever you have put out a new MP3 and download it in the background. iPodder is like a TIVO running and looking for new content, but only for the shows you subscribe to. If you want to listen to my podcast, go grab a copy of iPodder. When you get it installed, right click on the podcast icon above, and copy the link. Then go to iPodder, click the Status tab, and paste the link into the text box labeled "Add feed manually:". After you click the ADD button, you then have to click CHECK FOR NEW PODCASTS at the bottom. If it works and you are running windows, you should be able to listen to my podcast with Windows Media Player.
The reason I'm blogging about this is because when I was researching it, I couldn't find any info on how to do it with Typepad. So I'm going to now detail how I did it. It's basically 4 steps:
- Create an MP3 (Audacity) and an XML file (Download my audio.xml here)
- Edit the XML file with a text editor. It should be fairly evident what you are going to have to change in there. You'll need the mp3 size in bytes and the creation date and time of the file.
- Upload the MP3 and the XML file to typepad.
- Put a link to the XML file on your weblog. (the XML file is the thing people need, not the MP3.)
Step 1 was pretty easy. Plug a microphone into your PC, click the record button at the top of Audacity and start talking. Export the audio file as an MP3. Click File Preferences in Audacity, and make sure you use a bit rate of somewhere between 24 to 64K. Otherwise your file will be huge. I used 24, and as a result my mp3 is small but the quality did suffer.
Step 2 I'm sure this step will be automated at some point in the future, but for now just edit out my stuff and put in your stuff. You'll need to know the absolute URL address for the MP3.
Step 3 is the part I didn't know how to do on Typepad. Basically, you click the CONTROL PANEL tab, and then the FILES tab. Upload both files there. It knows which is binary and which is ascii without being told. You can also create directories there and I created a podcasts directory and put my mp3 in that directory.
Step 4. The link. You can use the podcast icon at the top of this blog entry if you like.
Good luck It was fun figuring it all out and I'm sure in another couple of months there will be a software product that will make it so that you can do a podcast without knowing any of this stuff.
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