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Top 10 Podcasting No No’s July 27, 2007
I am a huge podcast listener. I am subscribed to about 15 shows that I’ll listen to at work, in the car, or whenever I have some time to kill. Finding 15 podcasts that I actually enjoy is quite a feat considering all of the shit podcasts I had to listen to and filter out. I have heard some of the worst shows in the history of shows to find a few that I like and on this journey I have discovered a few running themes, jokes, and issues that these shit podcasts all had in common. Here is a list of the top ten podcast annoyances. If you can avoid these you are on your way to having an alright show.
10. Sound quality
The first thing that you hear when listening to a podcast is the actual quality of the sound. If all you hear is a static voice you will probably stop listening 5 seconds into the show. Also sound levels are important. You don’t want your ears drums bursting while trying to listen and you also don’t want people to have to crank the volume just to decipher what your saying.
I’m not saying you have to have a professional sound studio with $600 mics, all i’m saying is spend a little time tweaking your audio levels and getting your sound quality decent.
9. Intro with hacky rock music bed with clips of the show over it
So many podcasts out there follow this formula and it makes me want to rip my hair out. Number one, pick out some music that doesn’t sound like an 80’s metal band that have all overdosed on heroin and died… Number 2, no one cares about hearing a few clips of the show that sound “witty”. Your witty stuff should go into promos not the intro.
So many podcasts do this and it needs to stop.
8. Monotone Voices
PUT SOME PEP INTO YOUR VOICE. This can really determine the success or failure of your podcast. This is especially true for tech shows. No one wants to hear boring tech talk coming from a voice that puts you to sleep. Otherwise it sounds like a college lecture. Just by putting some effort into your speaking you can make your show entertaining (or at least bearable to listen to).
7. Skype co-hosts
If your co-host is not in the same room as you, STOP, put the mic down, and shut off your computer, you should not be making a podcast. I’d rather hear someone who is somewhat entertaining ramble into a microphone alone than hear a shitty co-host on a delay with a static voice. C’mon people, you can’t be total losers, get a friend in front of the computer with you and buy an extra mic. It can make all the difference in the world.
6. Excessive Giggling
If your a prepubescent podcaster and your whole show is just giggling with your buddy about stuff that only you think is funny, please find your fathers gun and shoot yourself. No one wants to hear it. Your annoying high-pitched laugh hurts my ears and gives me a headache. Believe it or not there are a lot of podcasts that do this. Zero content+all giggles= not entertaining.
5. Talking over each other
Calm down, take a breath, and listen to what your co-hosts have to say. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak. When podcasts have 2 or more voices all talking at once I immediately shut them off.
4. Over use of sound drops
Playing a sound byte from a movie 50 times in a row is not clever and just shows that you have nothing original to fill your show with. People will get really sick of it really fast and tune out. A few well placed sound drops can be quite funny, but DO NOT over use them.
3. Fake firing of co-hosts.
Why is it that people find it funny to joke about firing their co-hosts. I don’t know what it is but I have listened to shows that 5 episodes in a row they will do this. “You know what, your fired!” ::laughs:: This isn’t funny. It’s been done to death. And yes, I have been guilty of doing this too.
2. Premature ending.
Intro music, introduction of show and co-hosts, Good night everybody, ::laughs::. Again, this is not funny and happens all the time. Why would this be funny? Because your show had no content? I don’t get it. And so many shows do this… actually, come to think of it, I think all shows have done this at least once. You know what that means? ITS HACK! Skip the fluff and get into your damn show.
1. Joking about people sending you money and gadgets but actually meaning it.
I think on everyones first show they joke about people sending them money and expensive gifts. I think this is because they are hoping that some rich person somewhere will listen to their show and actually do this. Now tell me why on earth would anyone send anything to 2 kids on their headset microphones, providing and unentertaining piece of crap show. Now after you gain a listener base, this actually becomes a possibility, but thats only after a few years of podcasting.
STOP JOKING ABOUT IT! STOP ASKING FOR STUFF! EVOLVE!
Well this turned out to be more of a rant than anything. If you are thinking about starting a podcast or have one currently, STAY AWAY FROM DOING THE ABOVE. It’ll save you and your listeners a lot of grief and may help you gain popularity faster than if you had partaken in these Podcasting No No’s.
New Episode of Wreckless Media Radio is out now! July 13, 2007
http://WrecklessMediaRadio.com
THIS WEEK ON THE SHOW:
Brian has parasites
Bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movies
No one cares about your Dreams
Transformers Movie Review
People talking during movies
Shameful movies
Our Childhood stories from Evil Greg’s House
Female circumcision problems in Britain
More on the Mufti
17-year old causes 40% crime rise in small town
Man dressed as a “tree” robs bank
Speed Ticket Dispensing Cop Van gets punk’d
Zoobilee Zoo is creepy
German Porn Master has his own section on the forum
Listener E-mail
Vote for us on Podcast Alley: http://www.podcastalley.com/
RSS Feed Redirecting and Forwarding April 17, 2007
Recently I have changed my Internet Radio Show’s name from Not Another Tech Podcast to Wreckless Media Radio. Coincidently, I also had to change hosts. This is a huge hardship on a podcast/radio show. While I was going through this long, annoying transfer process I wish there had been some sort of guide or blog entry to help me along the way. But I struggled through it and now I have the info, and now I am going to pass the info along to you. If you have a podcast, blog, or anything with a feed and would like to transfer the name, domain, url, or the entire site, this may help you out.
I will tell you how to forward your rss feed to the new feed so people who were subscribed to your old feed will not have to even touch their feed. This way you will not lose any listeners/viewers.
I will also talk about how to run several sites off of one hosting account. My old host inMotion Hosting, who completely ripped me off and kicked me to the curb, charged me more than $200 to run more sites off of my one account. Little did I know that by modifying the .htaccess I could have done it myself and not spent a penny. BTW fuck inmotion hosting, those greedy dick.
My example for RSS feed forwarding is for wordpress, but this should work with any rss feed. Open up your php file that generates your rss feed, for wordpress it would be wp-rss2.php
Now delete EVERYTHING after:
<?php
if (empty($wp)) {
require_once(’wp-config.php’);
wp(’feed=rss2′);
}
header(’
Then after header (’ add “Location: http://yoursite.com/yourrssfeed’ ) ;?>”
So it should look like this:
header(’Location: http://yoursite.com/yourrssfeed’ ) ;
?>
THATS IT! Save it, Upload it. Test it by going to your old rss, it should redirect it to the new feed within a second. If it doesn’t work right away give it a few minutes, if it doesn’t work after that you did something wrong. This works with iTunes also! You won’t have to submit your new feed.
Now for running several sites off of one host account. It is very simple. Open your .htaccess document, if you don’t have one, just make one.
Now just copy and paste this code and put it in there and replace the specified parts with your own info.
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURDOMAINNAME\.?COM [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.YOURDOMAINNAME\.?COM [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/FOLDER/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ FOLDER/$1 [L]
Now replace “YOURDOMAINNAME” with YOUR domain name (Duh!) and if it is not .com change it to .net or .org or whatever the fuck it is. Then replace FOLDER with the name of the folder of your other site.
If you want to add more sites just add another:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURDOMAINNAME\.?COM [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.YOURDOMAINNAME\.?COM [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/FOLDER/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ FOLDER/$1 [L]
Save it, upload it. Now direct your domain from your registrar control panel, such as godaddy, to your hosts nameserver. Give it a few hours to a day for the changes to take effect.
And there ya go. I hope that helps someone out. If this was helpful to someone pleeeease do me the favor of voting for my podcast by clicking here http://www.podcastalley.com/one_vote2.php?pod_id=46315
About April 3, 2007
This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.
03.28.2007 March 28, 2007
Hello again. It’s been a couple of weeks however not much is going on in the tech world.
I have been thinking recently about politics and technology. So many of our troubles are caused directly by incompetent politicians who have quite simply been paid off by mafiosa organizations like the RIAA and Motion Picture Association. A quick Google search provided me with politicsandtechnology.com. Go ahead and check this out. And get out there and make your voice heard!
A story which directly influences me is this story about a Blogger not being considered a journalist. I mean, how can I be expected to produce a quality blog if I do not get press credentials? Instead of scouring Digg and various websites of questionable value (cough) I could be interviewing John McCain. Actually, I could not care less about these scoundrels. I would much rather go on and on about Apple products and how the battery on my Dell notebook sucks. Well I guess things could be worse. It could explode on me.
03.15.2007 March 15, 2007
I am really getting sick of political correctness. EVERY day I have to listen to a new group of whiners, even cave men! But hey, he’s got a cool crib. Check it out.
I love technology because it can make the worst stories almost magical. The Daily Record has reported that a woman Googled certain topics in researching the most effective way to murder her husband. Magical!
One thing that makes me angry to no end is institutional abuse. The US government is the biggest offender but I would also like to call for the overthrow of the diabolical RIAA. This sorry excuse for an organization recently sued a family for copyright violations. Problem is, the family didn’t own a computer! If you are anything like me you will be baffled how a family could not own a PC, but aside from that, doesn’t the RIAA have anything better to do than harass this poor family? I need not mention again that I WORK FOR a performing rights organization and I think this is dispicable.
Finally, I would like to plug my host, Brian Berris’ fresh radio show, Wreckless Media Radio. New name, same entertaining show. And now you know.
Wreckless Media Radio is coming…
As you know Not Another Tech Podcast has been around for a year, and in that year we have grown from a tech show to a comedy show. I’m not exactly sure how (possibly the alcohol), but this is the natural direction the show has taken. After Joe left and we received the addition of the very funny Evil Greg and Bryan Corpolongo to our cast of co-hosts, it only makes sense to change the show to strictly professional talk comedy.
Due to the mass number of fans that we pull in every week just to listen to our insanely funny commentary on strange news, pop culture, and life stories, we have decided to remove the tech from the show and remove ‘podcast’ from our title. We are now Wreckless Media Radio.
Wreckless Media will not only be a internet radio show but also a vidcast. We will release In-Studio vidcasts as well as sketch comedy vids. It will be the same show that you love but with MORE content.
Along with more content, the new site will feature a Message Board and also a newsletter.
Wreckless Media Radio is on its way and is ready to take the world by storm. We plan on taking online entertainment to the next level. Be sure to stay tuned for the launch of WMR coming in 2 weeks.
03.08.2007 March 8, 2007
I love MySpace. The sheer joy I get from its effect on society is amazing. Tom, I don’t know if you ever expected this, but Connecticut has legislation in the works to verify ages, so that parental permission is needed for those under 18. Shit - I could get around that when I was what, 14? These bureaucrats are a disgrace. I propose a law which would prevent those who know nothing of a subject to NOT vote on legislation regards that said subject. Maybe we should get some construction workers to vote on laws concerning international free trade.
I have recently discovered Nerdcore Hip-Hop and I absolutely love it. It exemplifies the free nature of generation XY. Goodbye CDs and radio. We are living in an iTunes and YouTube world. Check out a great video by MC Lars. This looks like Bowling For Soup but it is a Nerdcore pioneer. As an employee of a large Performing Rights Organization, I should be concerned but I am not. We will be adapting with the times. Record companies better wake the hell up, or a lot of people will be pissed.
02.28.1007 February 28, 2007
I hate clutter. I absolutely hate it.
I wanted to avoid the clutter of a desktop computer so I got a notebook computer. It is in excellent condition - Disk Cleanup, Defrag, Spyware Sweepers. The works. That being said, why in the world do I have to put up with so many cables and wires behind my TV?!
Today I looked behind my television and there are DVD cables, an HDMI cable, power cords, power adapters. I mean really, can we figure something out here? I’ll bet you its the power surge-protector mafia preventing innovation here. I ask a simple question - if I have devices connected to my TV, why can’t they derive their power from the TV? Why must I plug in my cable box, Playstation, DVD player, etc. See no evil, speak no evil I guess.
Finally, I have been looking into CFLs. Those in the know understand I’m talking about compact fluorescent light bulbs. You can check out wikipedia for more here. These babies use one-fifth the power of a standard incandescent bulb. Unfortunately they contain mercury which could potentially harm the environment. Australia has banned incandescents in favor of the CFL. I oppose governments taking away rights but maybe Australia has got this one right. I mean, we need to conserve energy if I’m going to be able to watch my 40″ plasma television, play my XBox 360 and run my air conditioner on ‘Max’ all day from June to September. On the plus side, CFLs look like ice-cream cones!
02.21.2007 February 21, 2007
Hello world!
I am back from my hiatus to restart writing this blog. Why you ask? Didn’t I quit this gig? Well, the answer is ‘I rebooted’. I shut down, went into a boot sequence which included an attempt to write a novel. This process timed out however, leaving a cache of over 5,000 words. I have now loaded Blog 2.0. In this version, the blog takes on a new attitude. This is where I now rant and rave, ala Craigslist. I take on everyday tech issues and give my two cents. What’s my opinion worth? Only your time. YOU, the reader will determine if this blog becomes a forum for tech culture or the ranting of a Gen-Xer with waaay too much time on his hands.
Without further ado, a give you a list of things that piss me off:
- Cell phone coverage - You would think with 15 to 20 different taxes on your bill, we would get flawless coverage. However, unlike radio transmissions, phone coverage has a tendency to drop for no good apparent reason. Coverage will sometimes not exist inside some buildings. Must be that damned asbestos!
- Spam - If the power of the internet was ever doubted, this nuisance is proof that people will even put up with a teeth-grinding chore, deleting spam, to use it. WHY OH WHY do spammers send me 20 messages a day, most total incoherent garbage?! I could understand if it was a Pottery Barn ad, or link to a merchant website but what is it with these jumble puzzles I get every day? As for the credit card offers and Viagra ads, have these two things not already saturated America?
- Immature gamers - I will put all of these losers into one group. You know who you are out there. You quit mid-game, you rack up kills by staking out a re-gen spot, and you use hacks to max out all your weapons/power/health/etc. I hope you all get cancer!
- People who mis-name files - OK I admit it. I tried to download Borat thru a file-sharing program. (Bring it on RIAA.) However, it ending up being something else. The same thing has happened to me before with other movies. Maybe I should stop here before I really do get sued.
- The lack of technology in crucial areas of our lives – This I cannot understand. Police using antiquated equipment, schools running on Windows 95 Plus!, doctors offices using DOS and of course any merchant does not accept online bill pay (or charges a fee). What is wrong with these people? Perhaps it is the lack of technology professionals who can also relate to business types. Whatever the case may be, perhaps we need to focus a little less on cutting edge technology like “Smart Dust” (Microelectromechanical Systems) and try getting schools technology from this decade!
Finally, let me just a bit about this blog. I want to hear from you! Let’s see some comments about how you hate Macs or Nokia phones or the fact that daylight savings time is coming up and will totally screw up a ton of electronic devices which will change automatically in April, even if you change it (this year, rightfully) in March. And if this doesn’t happen, well, I’ll just rant about it next week!
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