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Free Podcasting Hosts?
TheZorch asks: "I'm looking for a free online Podcast hosting site which offers RSS feeds. The feeds are important for submitting to iTunes. I've found Odeo, however uploading to the site is difficult and hangs about half-way through, most of the time. Currently, my Podcasts are being stored at Archive.org, the Creative Commons Internet Archive, but the site doesn't generate RSS feeds which allow you to post your podcasts on iTunes. Uploading large files via HTTP is a pain even on a cable modem. I'd prefer to be able to do it via FTP. Does anyone know of a good free Podcasting host with RSS feeds and reliable uploads for large files?"
Web hosting's pretty cheap these days - for instance, I get loads of disk space and about a terabyte of monthly bandwidth on the vaguely-reliable, cheap-and-cheerful Dreamhost. [NOTE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF AFFILIATE LINK!]
I've no idea if there are any off-the-shelf, open source 'podcasting' packages available (any suggestions, anyone?), but RSS is very simple and it could be worth learning just enough PHP to write your own, incredibly basic system for generating it yourself.
But wait, this is the difficult solution, isn't it?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Maybe we would enjoy reading this: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/10/03/itunes-music- sore/
Wotta Coincidence!
The lunch should be tasty, but nutritionally balanced. I'm thinking it should start with a small salad, tossed greens, crushed pepper, oil & vinegar, nothing too fancy. Some porto bello mushrooms would be nice. Then perhaps a small cup of soup, either a light tomato or some gazpacho. Some of that freshly-grated parmesan would go great with either, I'm thinking. For the main event, no big deal, howza bout some roast beef, thinly sliced, on a French baquette, lightly buttered, and some au jus to dip it in, A half-bottle of a good Aussie Shiraz to help it down. Coffee and cookies for dessert.
You let me know how your search works out; I'll keep you posted on mine, 'kay?
It looks like OurMedia.org, which uses archive.org for storage has RSS for its users.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Never used them, but have heard that they're good.
http://www.libsyn.com/
This guy's the limit!
Sure we all like free things, both beer and that other kinds that's s popular around here. But isn't this Slashdot? Don't we all have web servers lost in our couch cushions? I'm not even terribly skilled, but I could write an automated RSS feed in pretty short order in language I'd never seen before on some cheap, $5 a month hosting plan.
Pay for it. If you don't value what you have to say enough to sacrifice a little for it, no one else wants to hear it either.
To offload the bandwidth you might consider using a P2P CDN like Red Swoosh (www.redswoosh.net). The nice thing about P2P is the more people you deliver to, the more efficient it becomes in pulling from peer, and the faster the downloads go.
I've been podcasting with Libsyn for almost a year and a half, and I would recommend them heartily over any free services out there.
The basic Libsyn accounts costs $5/month for 100MB upload a month, then $10/month for 250MB upload, scaling upwards. If you are using the basic account, and say one month you need to bump upwards for more space, there is a $5.00 dollar charge to change service levels, and no charge to scale back down. This is an excellent option, if you have one particularly busy month out of the year, and don't necessarily need the more expensive account all the time. There is also no bandwidth limit.
There is an ftp upload, as well as other features like future publishing (uploading a podcast, and having it published, i.e made available at a future date). Libsyn is probably in the 99.5% uptime bracket. Maybe once a month there are a few hours of downtime for upgrades, or the occasional hardware problem. Users are always notified of these events, and these aren't an issue for me, given the overall excellent quality of the service.
Libsyn RSS feeds are automatic, and are actually integrated with the Feedburner feed service, which provides scads more functionality than the basic vanilla RSS. There are also a host of Podcast content listing sites out there, that automatically index all Libsyn feeds, so without any effort on your part, your podcast will be indexed on probably 20 or more Podcast aggregators.
As for iTunes. When iTunes first starting listing Podcasts, all Libsyn feeds were automatically included in their Podcast store, but this has been tightened up recently. Podcasts now have to jump through more hoops to get listed, and generally seem to have to have an established track record. Try to get on iTunes anyway you can though, as over 80% of my initial listeners come through iTunes (though this trends down towards 2/3's over time for each individual Podcast).
If you need free podshow is definitely your best option. You get feeds, a commenting system, blog, and stats. Plus it's got the built-in social networking mechanism that may help you build an audience. Just go to podshow.com and create an account and show page and you're off and running. If you don't like the somewhat cluttered myspace-like appearance, then just get a cheap hosting plan with bluehost or some other place, set up a wordpress blog and use the podpress plug-in. Wordpress already supports feeds and Podpress will handle all the enclosure stuff for the feed. Wordpress and podpress are both free, and bluehost offers plans from $6.95 a month.
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Hey look, William Shatner posts on /.!
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