Billy Fire LLC

A client of mine has started a series of podcasts. Thus far I have recorded the podcasts using the Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Microphone discussed in a previous blog posting. We had always planned that my client would ultimately be able to create his own podcasts and he asked me to get him a suitable microphone. Having read a few reviews I decided that the Blue Snowball microphone would be the best option.

At first I was surprised by the size of the microphone. It has a diameter of about 4 inches. The Blue Snowball was extremely easy to set up. I simply plugged it in and it was available for recording. It comes with a sturdy little desktop stand. The instructions suggest using a pop filter, which I have used in the recordings included below.

There are 3 settings on the back of the Snowball:

1. Activates cardoid capsule
2. Activates cardoid capsule with 10dB reduction
3. Activates omni capsule

Option 1 is best for making recording directly in front of the microphone. Option 2 reduces the input signal and option 3 is useful for recording sound more generally. The instruction manual that comes with the microphone also suggest different orientations of the microphone depending on the sort of sound you want to achieve, e.g. tilt the microphone slightly upwards for “more projection and head tone,” straight at the mouth for “maximum brightness and intelligibility” and towards the chest for “robust full lows and smoother highs.”

I thought it would be interesting to record something with each of the microphones I have tested to give an idea of the quality of each microphone as far as podcasting is concerned.

In each case I recorded a poem by Thomas Hardy using Audacity to capture the sound. Capture settings were 44,100Hz at 16bit. Having made a recording I exported the MP3 at a bit rate setting of 64.

Recording made using the Blue Snowball

Recording of Blue Snowball microphone

Recording made using Samson CO1U

Recording made using Logitech USB headset

Recording made using Beyer M58 microphone (the microphone was connected to Presonus TubePre. The Beyer M58 is a professional microphone used by newscasters. It is characterized by its length which is useful for adding TV station logos)

Recording made using Beyer M58 connected to Canon HG10 HD camcorder

The poem is:

In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half-asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by;
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

I have recently written an introductory article describing some of the options available for authenticating e-mail, including Sender Policy Framework (SPF), SenderID and DomainKeys. I also include instructions on setting up DomainKeys on a cPanel based system where SSH access is available.

We recently introduced a virtual PBX into our business. The system from 800PBX.com provides us with a toll free number, together with a local fax number. I have initially opted for their lowest cost option ($14.99) per month, this means that since a fax number is included, it is almost cheaper than what I used to pay eFax just for their fax service. $14.99 doesn’t get you that many minutes, but it is a good place to start and you can always upgrade later.

In choosing 800PBX I looked at several competitors. They were all more expensive and some did not allow me to have a number in my area code (858) so they were not an option for us.

There are many really cool things that I like about this service including:

• You can set up several extensions (for people or departments, e.g. sales). Each virtual extension can be associated with several phone numbers (e.g. your cell number, office number, home number, a partners cell phone number). these numbers can be chnaged, if required, and the updates kick-in immediately Once someone calls your 800PBX number the system is set up with two options. Either it will hunt for you, trying each of the numbers you set up in turn, or it will call all the numbers at once.
• You can have the system get the caller to announce themselves. The system then plays back the name to you so that you can decide whether to take the call or send it to voicemail.
• When you get a voicemail you get an e-mail notification. You can then listen to the voicemail by dialing into the virtual PBX or you can log into your 800PBX account on the Web an hear the message on your computer.
• You get several professionally recorded messages as standard as well as on-hold music. You also get one free message recorded by a voiceover artiste (although in our case he mispronounced Sian, which was predictable, I suppose). You can also record your own message and upload them to the system (I use Audacity and I had to try a few settings before this worked correctly).
• The message callers hear depends on whether it is business hours or not (you set your business hours within your control panel).
• Received faxes are delivered by email.
• The system means that you can always be available to potential customers, wherever you are.

There are too many great benefits and features to describe in detail. If you are interested in trying the system you get a 15 day free trial by clicking here.

Podcast feeds use RSS (’Real Simple Syndication’). The beauty of RSS is that once you have subscribed using a ‘feed reader’, you automatically get future episodes of a podcast.

There are many options as far as feed readers are concerned. Some of these are on-line services such as those available from Google and Yahoo. Others are software programs such as iTunes.

An excellent free program is called ‘Juice.’ Juice may be downloaded at http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/. You can use Juice to subscribe to a podcast feed and then adjust the settings so that every time you open the program it checks to see whether any more episodes have been added to the feed to which you subscribed. The program is easy to use, attractive and free!

If you would like to install the software, follow the instructions and then ’subscribe’ to our podcast as follows:

Once you have installed Juice you will see the following screen.

Click on the green ‘cross’ symbol. When prompted enter our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/<name of feed>, as follows:

Press save and press the refresh symbol

Click on the ‘downloads’ tag and you should see our ‘First time buyer issues’ podcast. Right click on the podcast and select ‘play episode in media player.’

I have been investigating several microphone and recorder options (some probably a little unorthodox) in order to help my clients as they enter the world of podcasting as well as actually recording podcast for some of them. My basic criteria are as high a sound quality as possible, without spending a lot of money. I would also ideally like something that is portable and self contained, more about this later.

So far I have investigated:

• A Beyer M58 microphone (which is the sort of microphone that TV interviews use on outside broadcasts) connected via a Presonus TubePre preamplifier, which provides in input to the line-in of my VAMP MP3 player/recorder. I will describe this set up in a future blog.
• A Logitech USB headset and microphone connected via a USB connection to a laptop.
• A Radio Shack Lavaliere type microphone connected to a Camcorder
• A Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Microphone connected to my laptop via USB

This post looks at the Samson C01U. I will talk about the other options in future posts and I will also create some audio samples.

The major advantage of the USB microphone is that it plugs directly into a USB port of a PC. No need for an additional preamp or recording device. The image shows the microphone in an optional spider mount which in turn is screwed on to my Radi Shack microphone stand. The spider mount isolates the microphone from vibrations. I also added an optional pop-filter. This is fine netting stretched across a frame. Its purpose is to stop the familiar popping noise that you sometimes hear when people say words beginning in ‘p.’

The microphone I tested came with an USB cable, SONAR LE and Cakewalk software. I loaded the software which is rather complex - and so until I have the time to get to understand it a little better, I have been using the Open Source Audacity.

Audacity, which is very easy to use, enables me to record and edit sound. It also provides a few special effects.

The microphone can be used with a software based pre-amp.

Unfortunately, Samson warn that this cannot be used when you have other USB based microphones installed, and this appears to be the case. I was able to record by modifying the levels in the normal Windows audio settings and was able to record some very acceptable results.

A client asked for tips on what makes a good podcast. I created the following list to include some of the factors that I think makes for good podcasting - and particularly those first few podcasts:

1. Keep it short. I suggest going for about 5 minutes. A shorter podcast may encourage people to give it a try. If they have to listed to 30 minutes, they might not be so keen to invest the time. You can always increase the length of the podcast as your audience grows.
2. Focus. Focus on a particular area of interest and talk in depth on that subject.
3. Project your personality through the podcast. It’s not just the information that the listening audience will be interested in - it is your style of presentation and YOU.
4. Include anecdotes. Just like in any form of public speaking, from Jesus to the present day, story telling really livens up any aural presentation and captures the listener’s attention.
5. Don’t read a script. Unless you have a gift for enlivening things written down as a script, it is far better to create a framework and speak from the framework using your own words. Generally I would prefer to hear a few ‘umms,’ ‘likes’ and ‘arghs’ and have a presentation made spontaneously, than a perfectly read but stultifying presentation from a script.
6. Use a good microphone. I am always amazed at how audibly illiterate some people are when they use an inadequate microphone (or worse a microphone ‘built in’ to their computer or MP3 player) to record a podcast. In the worse cases you have to actually strain your ears to hear the words, in the best, background noise and ambient sound can be clearly heard.
7. Get to the subject at hand as quickly as possible. There seems to be a trend towards adding all sorts of unnecessary clutter (such as a theme tune) at the beginning of a podcast. This may be okay for podcasts that you are listening to passively (e.g. on a car journey), but for those listening purposefully at their desks, unnecessary content can be an annoyance.
8. Listen to other people’s podcasts in your subject area. This can be a great eye opener (or ‘ear’ opener!) as to what works and what doesn’t.
9. Consider asking a colleague or subject mater expert to join you and take part in the podcast. The interchange between two people can make more interesting listening than just one presenter.
10. Solicit questions and suggestions from the audience. By incorporating information that listeners have shown an interest in will automatically ensure that the podcasts are relevant to the audience.
11. Publicize the podcast. If no-one downloads the podcast then, however good it is, it will be a waste of time. Make sure that you include a link on your web site. Send existing clients a link and consider issuing a press release. Also, bear in mind that many of your customers may not know what a podcast is. Make sure that you educate them and provide clear instructions as to how they could ’subscribe’ to the podcast so that they will be assured of getting the next episode.

Before attempting to register a domain name at Network Solutions, read this article.

Apparently, Network Solutions takes the domain name that you enter and puts it on hold. This means that once you have seen that the domain you want is available at Network Solutions, if you want the domain you have to pay their relatively high fees ($34.99 for one year for a dot com) as compared to $9.95 for one year for a dot com here.

You can check this phenomena out for yourself by making up a name (that you are NOT interested in), trying it at another registrar. If it is available try it at NetworkSolutions.com, then go back to the original registrar and see if it is still available.

Some posts on this subject say that the hold is only temporary, so to be charitable to NetworkSolutions.com you could argue that they are doing you a small favor by restricting its registration from other registrars. However, if you happened to be in a race to register a domain name there would be nothing to stop someone else registering it at NetworkSolutions.com

You can view my Technorati profile here:

Technorati Profile

I have been thinking that it might be fun to create some video tutorials of various aspects of this business. This practice seems to have become even more popular with the advent of YouTube.

I was aware of some software packages available, such as Camtasia, but Camtasia is expensive and probably has an overkill of features compared to what I was looking for. I noticed that Adobe has an offering (Adobe® Captivate® 3). It looks really nice and feature filled, but at a fiendishly high price. So I looked for an inexpensive alternative solution.

Overall I downloaded about 5 packages, all of which had free tryouts available, but also were very reasonably priced. The first 3 that I downloaded did not record sound through my microphone (I have a USB microphone and headset which may cause issues for some packages) . Finally I found Screen Recorder Gold.

The software installed easily and worked first time - video and audio. Audio and video quality seem excellent. You can choose the capture area and you have the option to add mouse and keyboard sound effects. I am not sure about sound synchronization, but I don’t think this is too critical as there will not be any lip-sync in my videos. Also the ability to add captions seems to be somewhat limited, but my intention is to create basic video with an audio commentary. If I get more sophisticated I will have to save up for Camtasia.

You don’t need to read too many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) advisories before you see recommendations to register your site on DMOZ. DMOZ is the ‘Open Directory Project’ and is now owned by Netscape. The way it works is, various people (about 74,000 according to the DMOZ Web site) work as volunteer editors. Anyone can submit a site to a specific category. An editor for that particular category will then determine whether the site is deemed suitable for the category. Definitely a ‘directory’ but it doesn’t sound very ‘open’ to me and you could argue that ownership by Netscape means that it is no longer a ‘project’, at least in the original sense of the word.

You might ask whether anyone actually uses DMOZ to search for anything? I imagine a few poor souls do, but as other (non directory) based search engines (such as Google) do a tolerably reasonable job - I suspect not many people search using DMOZ. So why the importance that SEO experts place upon registering with DMOZ? The answer is that, supposedly, Google and other search engines place serious store on what is included in DMOZ - hence a DMOZ listing could improve your search ranking in other search Web sites. That is why SEOs are so interested in DMOZ.

My own experience has been that some of my sites and client sites get listed on DMOZ - others do not. And what’s more, I will never find out why or why not. One of my sites provides free, quality information and is consistently on the first page in Google - it does not appear in DMOZ, despite being submitted. I don’t know for sure, but what is to stop a competitor or rival becoming an editor and then deliberately suppressing my site in favor of his own? Certainly not because the process is ‘open’ or ‘transparent’, which it certainly is not.

I reckon that a sizeable number of the 74,000 are involved in SEO in some way - which means that DMOZ is flawed - you certainly could not rely on it for reliable content in my opinion. If there ever were any advantages in being edited by humans - they have now certainly been forfeited because it is edited by humans with their own vested interests. I believe that if Google and friends stopped placing any weight on DMOZ listings (which they should), then the 74,000 editors would disappear very quickly and this anachronism would very quickly go where it belongs - into information technology history.