June 26, 2012

Best Website for Podcasts and Making Your Own

Another great article from the folks at howtogeek.com.
Podcasts, or webcasts, are shows about many different topics that are broadcast over the web and broken up into parts, or episodes.  You subscribe to podcasts and new episodes are automatically delivered to you as they are released.
We’ve collected the best websites for finding many different types of webcasts and for finding resources to help you in creating and producing your own podcasts.
In the coming weeks, we will be publishing other articles about the best websites for educating and entertaining yourself online, such as sites for eBooks, audiobooks, movies and TV shows, documentaries, user-made videos, free online courses, news and information, and music (downloads, streaming, and radio).

Podcast Directories

There are several podcast directory websites that offer a central place to search for all kinds of podcasts and provide resources for creating your own podcasts and hosting them. Some also help you with the management and promotion of your podcast.

The Ultimate Podcast Collection

The Ultimate Podcast Collection contains a user-submitted database that divides the podcast subjects into channels, making it easy to find what you want to listen to.

Podcasts.com

Podcasts.com provides feature-rich podcast hosting for free and allows you to manage your podcast episodes using their easy-to-use backend and setup premium subscriptions. Your podcast also gets featured in their Search Engine Optimized (SEO) directory.
You can also submit your podcast’s RSS feed to be listed in their directory.

Podcast Alley

Podcast Alley is the podcast lover’s portal. It features a large Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners. If you’re a registered Podcast Alley member, you can also add your own podcast to the site.

Podfeed.net

Podfeed.net is a podcast directory that helps you find and listen to podcasts, read and write podcast reviews, and share your podcast with others. Add your favorite podcasts to a single feed that you can automatically download using podcasting software (see the end of the article for a list of software programs).

Digital Podcast

Digital Podcast is podcast directory that can also help you with creating and producing your podcast, managing the marketing, operational, and technical aspects of your podcast, and promoting your podcast in podcast directories, search engines, and social media sites. They also help you improve the service delivery of your podcast and manage your costs.

GPodder.net

GPodder is a podcast directory and a software program that allows you to manage your podcast clients via the web, subscribe to new podcasts, and even synchronize gPodder on your computer and on your mobile phone, so you can listen anywhere. They also have a list of the 100 most subscribed image, audio, and video podcasts.

LearnOutLoud.com Podcast Directory

LearnOutLoud.com provides a directory of educational podcasts that will instruct, inspire, and enlighten you. Easily subscribe to the podcasts through Apple iTunes and RSS feeds and choose to download the podcasts or stream them from the site.

TruMix

TruMix provides access to podcasts and Internet Radio from around the world. Download the podcasts or stream them from the website. Choose from packaged selections of podcasts and music. Create your own account to keep track of your favorite podcasts and radio stations.

MusicGoal

MusicGoal is a site that provides access to over 21,000 podcasts, as well as live online radio stations, webcams, and online games.

News Podcasts

Podcasts can provide your daily news rather than having to visit specific news sites to find out what’s going on in the world. The following sites provide news, financial, and sports information from some of the biggest networks.

Educational and Informational Podcasts

Podcasts are useful tools for learning. The following websites provide podcasts that educate and inform.

PBS Podcasts

PBS podcasts, such as the American Experience Podcast, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and the NOVA Podcast, are available on LearnOutLoud.com (mentioned earlier). In the near future, LearnOutLoud.com will be providing a data feed of all featured PBS videos.

This American Life

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.8 million listeners. There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. Most of the time, it’s mostly true stories of everyday people. You can also listen to old radio shows from their archive.

Scientific American: Free Science Podcasts

Scientific American offers free podcasts about different scientific topics, such as the weekly Science Talk and 60-Second Tech and the daily 60-Second Science and 60-Second Space. Subscribe to the podcasts as RSS feeds or through iTunes.

This Week in Technology (TWiT)

This Week in Technology (TWiT) is a network of podcasts that cover aspects of technology as well as a few other subjects, such as junk food. It started out with a small cable network called ZDTV, which covered computers, the Internet, and personal technology. Many of the same people who worked on ZDTV now work on TWiT. One popular podcast is Security Now (recorded live every Wednesday at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET), in which Leo Laporte of TWiT discusses hot topics in security today with Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation, creator of Spinrite, Password Haystacks, and ShieldsUP.

National Radio Podcasts

The following four major English-language public radio stations offer their content online. All the programs on these sites are downloadable outside of their native countries.

U.S. Government Podcast Directory

The U.S. Government Podcast Directory provides access to podcasts from many different sections of the government, such as Science and Technology, History, Arts, and Culture, Business and Economics, and Public Safety and Law.

White House Podcasts

White House Podcasts provide access to White House Press Briefings, the Weekly Address, Speeches and Events, Music & the Arts, and Open for Questions, which is a series of live chats with White House officials and the general public covering a wide scope of topics.

University Podcasts

The following are websites providing podcasts from major universities. Some are podcasts of courses and some are about various other topics.

Free Educational Podcasts from Universities

Open Culture provides a collection of educational podcasts created by leading universities. These are not class lectures, but rather information covering various topics such as science and law, and some cover internal issues within the universities.

UCLA Course Webcasting

UCLA Course Webcasting (or BruinCast) is provided by the Office of Instructional Development. Some course lectures are made available to the public online as audio podcasts, but some have restricted access.

University of Oxford Podcasts

The University of Oxford Podcasts site features podcasts about topics such as public lectures, teaching material, interviews with leading academics, and even information about applying to the University. The material may be in audio, video, or document format and is arranged within a series of related talks or lectures. A full list of all the series is available.
Content is regularly added to the site and all content is free to download and watch, listen to, or read.

Comedy Podcasts

Once you’ve listened to some educational podcasts or gotten your daily dose of news and information, you’re probably ready for a break from serious content. Well, you can entertain yourself with the following popular comedy podcasts:
There are many more comedic podcasts available on the web you might like, depending on your taste in humor.

Podcasting Guides and Tools

Podcasting guides and tools are available online for those of you who want to create and produce your own podcasts. There’s “producer” software that helps you create and edit podcasts and deliver podcasts to end users and “catcher” software that allows you to receive the podcasts and RSS feeds and listen to them.
The following sites provide guides and tools to help you create, host, manage, and promote your own podcasts.

iPodder

iPodder is a resource for discovering and enjoying podcasts, or downloadable audio programs. The website includes tutorials, how-to articles, and other information designed to help you make the most of your podcast experience and your portable music device and how to create and publish your own podcasts. They also provide a list of podcast tools and softwareyou can use when creating your own podcasts.

PoducateMe Podcasting Guide

The PoducateMe Podcasting Guide is meant for those creating podcasts for education, but the information in the guide is useful for anyone looking into starting their own podcast. Topics cover the entire process from selecting a microphone to getting a finished podcast onto iTunes.

Podcast 411

Podcast 411 contains information to teach you practically anything you want to know about podcasting. They also produce their own podcast with interviews of popular podcasters.

How to Podcast

The How to Podcast site contains a free, thorough, step-by-step tutorial on how to podcast for minimal cost. It’ll help you take your podcast from concept to launch.

Podcasting Tools

The Podcasting Tools site provides a comprehensive set of resources, including tools and how-to articles, that help you create podcasts, with an emphasis on distribution. There is a wealth of information detailing everything you need to know about podcasting.

Podcast Software

Some of the podcasting guides and tools sites mentioned above contain information about podcasting software. However, here are some additional links to software for creating and editing podcasts (producers), posting podcasts, and receiving podcasts (catchers).
  • Use iTunes (Windows, Mac) to encode podcasts into MP3 format and to subscribe, download, and play podcasts.
  • Use Windows Media Player (Windows, Mac) to download and play podcasts.
  • Use Audacity (Windows, Linux, Mac) to record and edit sound.
  • Use the LAME (compiles on Windows, Linux, and Mac) codec to encode MP3 files.
  • Use FileZilla (Windows, Linux, Mac) as FTP client to upload your podcast. FileZilla is also available in a portable version.
  • Use Juice (Windows, Linux, Mac) as a podcast receiver, to capture and play podcasts. Juice is also available in a portable version.
  • Use gPodder (Windows, Linux) as a podcast receiver to download and manage your podcast subscriptions. gPodder is also available in a portable version.
  • Use Pull (Windows) as a free, portable podcast receiver to automatically download podcasts and vidcasts (videos). Pull is not meant to be a media player or catalog.

The People’s Choice Podcast Awards

The People’s Choice Podcast Awards is the most important award in the world of podcasting, featuring the best by subject and production quality. The front page includes links to all of the current nominees.

How-To Geek has also published a guide to creating and running your own audio podcast. If you subscribe to podcasts in iTunes and you have an Android phone, you can learn how to sync iTunes to your Android phone so you can listen to your podcasts on the go.
Whether you just want to subscribe and listen to podcasts or create your own, this list should help you fully enjoy the world of podcasting.

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/117297/the-best-websites-for-listening-to-podcasts-and-learning-how-to-create-your-own/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=240612
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June 22, 2012

NYT: Songza, Spotify, and Pandora Internet Radio


June 20, 2012 - Pandora Faces Rivals for Ears and Ads

By        Pandora Media, with more than 150 million users, is perhaps the biggest name in digital music, apart from Apple’s iTunes. The question, as a clutch of new competitors arrives, is whether it can hold on to that dominance.
The latest challengers to Pandora, a source of free, convenient Internet radio, are the playlist app Songza and the digital music service called Spotify, which recently made its radio feature available free on mobile devices. Both companies have made splashy changes in the last couple of weeks, bringing warnings from analysts about the possible effects these updates will have on Pandora.




Songza, introduced last fall, is based on the principle that even using Pandora, which tailors song streams to a listener’s taste, requires too much thought. To use Pandora, a listener thinks of an artist or song and then gives feedback as the music plays. Songza has ready-made playlists for certain times of day or activities, such as getting going on Monday morning or romancing on Friday night.


“The idea here is that we can get you to awesome music without you having to think,” said Elias Roman, 28, Songza’s chief executive.

When Songza introduced a new version of its mobile app this month, it was downloaded 1.15 million times in 10 days, and shot to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings, passing Pandora and iHeartRadio, a radio app from Clear Channel Communications. Songza executives say the service’s number of monthly active users is in the seven figures.

With stick-figure icons and a whimsical editorial approach, Songza has created more than 100,000 playlists. The site’s three founders, who met at Brown University and previously ran the music download service Amie Street, explained in an interview at the company’s bare-bones headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, that elaborate thinking sometimes went into creating playlists for the dullest situations. For example, “epic film soundtracks” is meant to help listeners slog their way through a day at the office.

“If you’re at work, filling in cells in a spreadsheet, and you’re listening to the soundtrack to ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ suddenly that changes everything,” said Peter Asbill, the chief operating officer, who is also 28. “It feels awesome, fun and epic.”

Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research who has been critical of Pandora, said that Songza and Spotify put pressure on Pandora.
“It’s not that Pandora isn’t a good service; it is,” Mr. Greenfield said. “The question is, now that there is more direct competition, what happens to listener hours? Not to mention, some of these companies are going to be competing for the same ad dollars as Pandora.”
Pandora went public a year ago at $16, but its shares have been below that price since last July. On Wednesday it closed at $11.79, up 2.97 percent.

Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder and chief strategy officer, said in an interview this week that the competition had not affected the service’s growth. In the last two years, its user base has tripled, and the company’s revenue has also been growing rapidly, though it has never had a profitable year.
“Our growth just keeps going unabated,” Mr. Westergren said. “Nothing has impacted it: Spotify hasn’t; iHeartRadio hasn’t.”
Songza gets its music through the same compulsory license process as Pandora, Sirius XM and other forms of Internet radio. But unlike most of them, it carries no audio advertising. The company makes money from display ads and from partnerships with other media companies. It is available on a trial basis through Sonos, the wireless speaker system, and will soon be on Roku devices. It will also soon release an app for Android devices, the Songza executives said.
Mr. Roman declined to say whether the company was profitable over all, but said that it was profitable on every user stream it served.
“Our whole premise is not that this is more gamified than Pandora, or has more elite features,” Mr. Roman said. “It’s that this is simpler and more directly related to the thing you want, which is music to make whatever you’re doing better.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/business/songza-and-spotify-challenge-pandora-for-ears-and-ads.html?_r=1&nl=technology&emc=edit_ct_20120621
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June 10, 2012

6 Lesser Known Bittorrent Clients for Windows

Another great article from the folks at Makeuseof.com

There are a huge number of free BitTorrent clients floating out there in Internet space. Ever since its public launch in 2001, developers from all over the world have been working to improve and streamline the protocol, providing users with the best torrenting clients available.
If you know about BitTorrent, then you’ve likely already heard about the big name programs – uTorrent, Vuze/Azureus, BitComet, BitTornado, etc. They’re so well-known in fact, that they don’t really need any more publicity – word of mouth does them just fine. But here is a list of some great BitTorrent clients that are less popular and unique in their own right.
Don’t know what BitTorrent is? Are you interested in how it works? Check out this article on how BitTorrent works by our very own Tim.

qBittorrent

free bittorrent clients


qBittorrent isn’t obscure by any means, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes a household name. But does it deserve to become a household name? In my opinion, yes. It most certainly does.
This client has high goals – to leave a small memory footprint, to be intuitive for users, to be aesthetically pleasing, and to be powerful in performance and customization. Basically, it wants to do everything – and luckily for us, it succeeds. Think of it as an open-source and cross-platform alternative to uTorrent.

BitLord

bittorrent clients


BitLord is an offshoot of the once popular BitComet. It’s written in Python and GTK+ and boasts a tagline of being the “easiest torrent downloader“. Is it much easier than the big name beasts like uTorrent? Not particularly. But it’s definitely on par in terms of ease of use and visual goodness, so it deserves some commendation for that.


This client is packed full of unique features – a torrent RSS reader, a torrent search engine, safety scores for torrents searched, and more. On top of that, it has all of the common features that one would expect from a torrent client, like super seeding, bandwidth throttling, and blocking IP ranges.

Tixati

bittorrent clients


Tixati’s website claims that it is “one of the most advanced and flexible BitTorrent clients available“. It comes without ANY spyware, ads, or gimmicks – and it never will. You’ll find all the basic features here, like magnet support, connection encryption, and bandwidth throttling. Tixati runs native on Windows and Linux and the installation is easy. No Java or .NET required.
Tixati also boasts a great advantage that allows you to download torrents at ultra-fast speeds, all thanks to peer choking and unchoking algorithms. If you need your torrents fast, then Tixati will ensure that you get your files as quickly as possible.

OneSwarm

bittorrent clients

Because of the BitTorrent protocol’s design, user privacy can often be placed in jeopardy. If a third-party asks for data regarding your torrent activity, many clients will hand over that information. In steps OneSwarm, which is a torrent client that prioritizes user privacy over all else.
How does it protect your privacy? For one, it rewrites the source address when sending network packets. For another, OneSwarm will forward your network packets through multiple intermediaries to further obfuscate you as the source.
The client uses a few other techniques as well, and the website links to a number of published papers detailing peer-to-peer privacy and how OneSwarm circumnavigates the issues.

BitThief

list of bittorrent clients


BitThief is a torrent client that began (and continues) as a research project at ETH Zurich. The basic principle of the BitTorrent protocol is that it is user-operated – if there are no contributors, then there will be no files to download. However, BitThief is an attempt at creating a torrent client that contributes nothing. It is a pure leecher without any seed.
The creators of BitThief wanted to make a point – BitTorrent will collapse if the protocol is not modified to prevent individual selfishness and lack of contribution. However, even if you don’t really care about the research behind it all, you can still download and use BitThief. Just know that some metrics will be sent back to the research group for analysis of the performance of their exploit tactics.

BitSpirit

free bittorrent clients

As of a few years ago, BitSpirit commanded an impressive 2% share of the BitTorrent client market, even beating out well-known program FlashGet. It was written in C++ and released as freeware like most torrenting clients. In recent years, however, it seems that BitSpirit has fallen out of development, seeing as the latest build was released at the very end of 2010.
Still, the program works just fine. It has a very clean and sleek interface reminiscent of the latest versions of uTorrent. As old as it is, perhaps it was the inspiring design behind it all. When all is said, other than an “always on top” download tracker, there is nothing particularly fascinating about BitSpirit. It’s just out there for anyone you’re looking for a different client.
Image Credit: Download Image Via Shutterstock

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-lesser-known-bittorrent-clients-that-you-may-not-know-about-windows/

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June 8, 2012

Job Site Picks from Ask.com

If you're in the market for a new job, you'll want to check out this list of the top eight best job search engines on the Web. All of these job search tools offer unique features and can streamline your employment search efforts so your efforts are more productive.

1. Monster.com

I've been using Monster.com for several years now and have always found it to be one of the best job search engines out there. You can narrow your search by location, keywords, and employer; plus, Monster has plenty of job search extras: networking boards, job search alerts, and online resume posting.
More about Monster Jobs

2. Indeed.com

Indeed.com is a very solid job search engine. Unlike Monster, you cannot submit your resume from Indeed.com, but the job search engine more than makes up for that by being a meta search engine of many of the major job search engines and job search boards out there. I've found that Indeed uncovers a lot of jobs that you wouldn't normally find on most job search sites, and they do a good job of making their job search features as easy to use as possible.
More about Indeed

3. USA.gov

Think of USA.gov as your gateway into the huge world of US government jobs. Navigate to the USA.gov home page, click on the Jobs and Education section, then Government Jobs. You'll find a wealth of resources here to help you find jobs working for Uncle Sam.
More about USA.gov

4. CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder offers job searchers the ability to find a job, post a resume, create job alerts, get job advice and job resources, look up job fairs, and much more. This is a truly massive job search engine that offers a lot of good resources to the job searcher; I especially appreciate the list of job search communities.
More about CareerBuilder

5. Dice

Dice.com is a job search engine dedicated to only finding technology jobs. It offers a targeted niche space for finding exactly the technology position you might be looking for.
More about Dice

6. SimplyHired

Simply Hired
SimplyHired has been one of my favorite job search engines now for a while; mostly because of their SimplyFired contest. SimplyHired also offers a very unique job search experience; the user "trains" the job search engine by rating jobs he or she is interested in. SimplyHired also gives you the ability to research salaries, add jobs to a job map, and view pretty detailed profiles of various companies. I highly recommend SimplyHired.
More about SimplyHired

7. LinkedIn.com

LinkedIn.com combines the best of two worlds: the ability to scour the Internet for jobs with its job search engine, and the opportunity to network with like-minded friends and individuals to deepen your job search. LinkedIn's job postings are of the highest quality, and if you are connected to someone who already knows about that particular job, you've got a way in before you even hand in your resume. If you really want to dive into the inner workings of LinkedIn, check out How to Use LinkedIn, a detailed how-to guide.
More about LinkedIn

8. Craigslist

There are all sorts of interesting jobs on Craigslist. Just find your city, look under Jobs, then look under your job category. Non-profit, systems, government, writing, etc. jobs are all represented here. You can also set up various RSS feeds that pertain to whatever job you might be looking for, in whatever location. One Craigslist caveat: because this is a free marketplace, some of the jobs posted at Craigslist are not legitimate (the vast majority are, however). Use caution and common sense when replying to job listings on Craigslist.
More about Craigslist
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