Audio Activism

Export OPML from iTunes

1) Launch iTunes (duh?)

2) Click on the Podcast icon in the Source area on the left side of iTunes

3) Goto …

File > Export Song List

In the dialog box that appears select OPML from the formats drop down menu near the bottom of the window. Don’t forget to name your opml file and make sure there is a .opml extension on it.

5) Click save & your done!

Import OPML from iTunes

1) Launch iTunes (duh?)

2) Click on the Podcast icon in the Source area on the left side of iTunes

3) Goto …

File > Import

In the Import dialog box find your OPML file. Click choose.

4) You’ll see a box comes up that says, “Are you sure you want to add XX subscriptions?” Click yes, of course. (XX is a place holder for the number of RSS feeds in your OPML file that iTunes is importing.)

This tutorial was created with iTunes 6.0.1 on a Mac OSX 10.4.3. I’ll test it on a PC and report back.

To see a difference in your present playlist try exporting a OPML file then clearing a podcast feed or two. Go back and import that OPML file you just made. Your RSS feeds should be back where they were.

Another thing I noticed was iTunes gives errors when trying to import OPML files made by Radio Userland. I’m guessing it’s the difference in the xml syntax.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how I create a interview podcast. It’s inexpensive and very mobile. Just about anywhere you can have a conversation with someone you can record what you talk about and share the results with others. To learn more about Podcasting in general please see my article Podcasting Tutorial and Intro. Click more for the rest of the tutorial.
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Mike Outmesguine, who I interviewed a few months ago about Wi-Fi security, has written an article for Popular Science’s online mag How 2.0 called Be Your Own HotSpot. I wish I could afford to combine this idea with my Ultimate Mobile Audio Creation Kit. Mike was my influence for that post. Nice to see he’s spreading the word. Imagine the LIVE on the spot podcasts you could do with this gear!

via: Hack A Day

I wish I had written Battle the Podcast Bandwidth Beast with Bittorrent. This person’s humor is great. A bit juvenile but great. I wish more teachers with a genuine sense of humor wrote a bit of weirdness like this once in awhile. [Off the wall humor can engages learners.] Find out how to make a torrent of your podcast mp3 and let people download it using the fabulous peer-2-peer technology called Bittorrent. [What is Bittorrent?] This HowTo is simply written but not really simply done. It assumes a good amount. But hey… I know there are lots of people out there with many different levels of knowledge. Tackle this HowTo and get with the future.

This cool gear list is short. But it packs a punch! It just contains three parts or less.

1) A computer w/internet access - Drop by your local computer technology center, library, or a friends to use their computer.

2) Olympus DS-2 - A wonderful voice recorder with a stereo mic, a mic input, earbud headphones, a external speaker, USB, and software that creates uncompressed versions of your recordings! [Thanks for hipping me to the DS-2 Sooz!]

3) Cheap External Mic - (Optional) The Labtec AM-222 is a good handheld mono mic with a 1/8″ high impedance jack. Works great with the Olympus DS-2 and isolates a persons voice well.

[Check out last weeks podcast One Man Protests Racism at WalMart for an example of this gear in action.]

The Details:
First, I’m assuming that most computers now have a USB port. So does the Olympus DS-2. This is the exciting part of this kit. The Olympus DS-2 records digitally to a internal flash drive. This means when you’re done recording you have a audio file to share immediately. With the USB connection you can quickly copy the audio files to your computer. No more digitizing of your audio. It’s already done. Once it’s on a computer you can upload it to the internet and share.

I like to convert the WMA file the DS-2 makes to AIFF then to MP3. (You don’t have to…) The Olympus software can convert the WMA to a AIFF. Why AIFF? It’s a lossless audio file format. This way I can edit a bunch of audio together and have good sounding results in the end. Plus AIFF is a good archiving format. (BTW…the Olympus software for the PC converts to uncompressed WAV.) You can also just convert the WMA file straight to MP3. (I couldn’t notice any quality loss from the conversion process.) We share MP3s because it’s the most used audio file format in the world.

The Olympus DS-2 has a built in stereo mic. It works great. The stereo left and right channel can be important to create the auditory illusion of space. But for interviews a stereo mic sounds weird. Focusing on one person speaking, like in an interview, sounds more full and clear with a mono mic. (FYI - mono audio still has a left and right channel. It’s just the same signal in each side.) Using a external mono mic with the Olympus DS-2 really helps the sound quality.

This is all consumer audio gear that can produce professional sounding results. This stuff really helps the creative amateur to make and share audio as good and better than pros who spend thousands of dollars more. (Of course if you want to edit several files together and work in the field for days at a time you might need the Ultimate Mobile Audio Creation Kit.)

Mike Outmesguine’s blog entry ‘Sony PSP goes cellular using a JunxionBox gateway’ just reminded me of a really cool idea. At the Mobile media conference he showed us the Junxion Box which is a Wi-Fi to cellular gateway. Meaning you can get a wi-fi connection for your laptop anywhere a EVDO cellular connection is available. I had heard about the DIY Stomp Box that does the same thing, but hadn’t seen the cool commercial one. He also brought a backpack with photovoltaic panels on it. A solar backpack to power your mobile electronics! He casually challenged us to imagine what the future of media creation would be like if grassroots journalist had this gear. So in the spirit of this and because I love lists/howtos. Here is the Ultimate Mobile Audio Creation Kit. It always could be done cheaper, but this is the ULTIMATE kit.

1) Laptop w/wi-fi - pick your flavor, i like macs
Apple PowerBook 12″ 1.5GHz small screen is light

2) Wi-Fi to Cellular Gateway
Junxion Box or make your own Stomp Box w/ Linux

3) Audio Recording Device
Marantz PMD 660 - solid state, no moving parts, records to uncompressed wav on CF cards, low impedance mic inputs, USB

4) Microphone
Shure SM58, unidirectional (cardioid) dynamic, low impedance, bulletproof

5) Headphones
Extreme Isolation Headphones - block out all that unwanted noise in public spaces with these bad boys.

4) Solar Backpack
The Voltaic Backpack

5) Cables - audio, power, usb, powerstrip, etc.

Now if I only had all this stuff so I could write a howto on using it all together. Hint, Hint!

Last Thursday April 15 I spoke at a local 501Tech club meeting about Podcasting. Here are the Podcasting Presentation Slides in the form of a pdf. This document is 13MB in size. Thanks to Damita Chambers, the Triangle 501Tech club, RTPnet, and the Triangle United Way for hosting the get together. I’m giving a more complete presentation about Podcasting at the 6th Annual RTPnet Conference Friday May 20, 2005 at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC.

The Online Journalism Review has three wiki based tutorials on Ethics, Reporting, and Writing for Grassroots Journalists. It’s wonderful to see pro journalists reach out in the form of education. These tutorials are even under a Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Creative Commons License! Very Cool! Thanks to Lex Alexander over at the News & Observer in Greensboro, NC for sharing this link on his blog.

UPDATE 2 July 14, 2005: As it turns out most WordPress 1.5 installs will podcast automatically, without doing all this stuff bellow. It appears that my web host is set up in such as way to make it hard. This how-to is my work around. Use it if it is helpful. Otherwise bask in the automatic podcasting glory of Word Press!

As of this minute I only have one way to create my Podcast RSS 2.0 feed with Word Press 1.5. My old install of Movable Type had a plug-in that added the mp3 link and all info into my RSS 2.0 feed automatically. So far I haven’t found a method as easy in Word Press. But here is a HowTo to make it work in Word Press 1.5 anyway. This is what I did to get my enclosure tags for RSS 2.0 working and part of what I do each and every time I release a Podcast. IF ANY ONE KNOWS OF A PLUG-IN OR EASY HACK FOR WORD PRESS 1.5 THAT MAKES PODCASTING SIMPLER PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

Update: Supposedly WP 1.5 should add links to MP3s in the post to your RSS feed automatically. Here is the Word Press Codex page that describes this. I’m not getting this functionality. Hmmmm.

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I just discovered SlapCast linked from Dave Winer’s blog scripting.com. It’s similar to other services that record your phone call and email or send you a URL where you can pick up an audio file. (ex. k7.net, audblog.com) SlapCast goes one further and Podcasts the mp3 you record, OR UPLOAD. Blam! You have a totally mobile podcast. Nice to see services show up that are this innovative and make it crazy simple to share your own audio. This method, or one like it, is the audio grassroots journalism of the people! Now if we can just get a super cheap and or free version for non-profits and other advocacy campaigns. How about a package price for organizations where they can pay for a whole year of unlimited calls? This way anytime a activist has something to say they can just call up the number & give the world a piece of their mind!