To podcast or not to podcast – is that the question? Remember! The Show is happening again tonight at 7pm PST – with live calls, voicemail questions and opinions, a couple of interviews, and a lot of advice sprinkled throughout. You can keep track of the show notes on our wiki (thanks, in LARGE part, to usrbingeek). We had quite a few “geo-location” interviews last week, and each one of them will be posted for your consumption soon. The big news today is that we're currently sitting at #33 in iTunes Top 100 Podcasts list! Swing into the chat room before the ball starts rolling, then tune in live. What else is there to talk about? There's always something on your mind. 1.888.PIRILLO for live calls, 1.206.428.6082 for voice mails.

The following are the show notes for the July 7th, 2005 edition of the Chris Pirillo Show.

New Voice Mail System

Chris set up a voicemail system. To leave a voice mail call 206-428-6082. Use it to give Chris your thoughts, comments, reviews, remarks, questions, etc. It’s as easy as picking up the phone… dialing it… and then talking into the mouthpiece thingy. Your audio message will be instantly emailed to Chris in a high-quality WAV format (128kbps, as opposed to the more common lower- bitrate recordings that most free services offer). To give this a true test, why don’t you call Chris right now and tell him: (a) Who you are; (b) Where you are; (c) What you do for a living; (d) Which podcasting program you use, and why you use it. If you’d like, go ahead and insert a plug for your blog or favorite Web site. 206-428-6082 – put it in your speed dial now, ready to record and share your thoughts at a moment’s notice.

FeedBurner

Rick Klau edits:
We let publishers run their RSS feeds through us, and then provide stats on those feeds, including:

• circulation (how many people are subscribed to your feed)

• item views (how many items were viewed each day)
• click-throughs (obvious)
• re-syndication (this is worth talking about with Chris – it shows where your content is being resyndicated, which helps alleviate some publisher concerns)

In addition, we will insert ads for publishers (bloggers) who want to generate revenue on their feed. We will not, however, insert ads if the publisher doesn’t want them. Also, there’s no lock-in: if you use our service and decide you don’t like it (entirely hypothetical, of course), you can not only leave, we’ll _help_ you leave (details here). You can also, for a small fee, map a sub-domain (like feeds.yourdomain.com) to us so that the URL people see in their address bar is yours, not ours. More on feed redirection here (note, this is free) and here (this is for a fee).

Over 50,000 publishers run 73,000+ feeds through FeedBurner. About 10,000 of those feeds are podcast feeds – the reason for that high a number is that we do some auto-conversion of feeds to make them podcast friendly. (This is our SmartCast service. See here for an example of how people are encouraged to podcast using Blogger. You can, of course, use any feed creation tool to use FeedBurner & SmartCast.)

Lots of other fun stuff that we do – let you splice in your del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr photos, and other tools. We have “browser-friendly” stylesheets that render your feed more readable in a browser (not an issue for the tech-savvy, but for the mass market, we hear a lot of “I think I broke my browser” when they see lots of angle brackets), “smartfeed” (which will send a custom version of the feed to each aggregator based on what we know the aggregator can support. Among other things, this lets you redirect multiple feeds – RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, ATOM – to one FeedBurner feed, and ensure complete inter-operability), and other services designed to make feeds more functional and powerful.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions – I’m at rickk@feedburner.com, my cell is 630-362-8911, our office line is 312-756-0022.

Thanks to Chris for having me on – it was a great time!

Blogging Tools

LordKat

LordKat (aka Jason of This Week in Games and GeekStreak.com) called in to talk about gaming and a person that was arrested for chipping an xBox. He also teased the idea of RSS being used in Games:
Could RSS invade gaming?
RSS in Gaming Part 2

Installing Linux

Seth called in with a question about Fedora Linux and dual booting. Chris suggested using a Knoppix or Unbuntu Live CD before trying to set up a dual boot.

Podcasts

Another Chris called to ask about managing Podcasts and what program he could use to subscribe to Podcasts on Windows. Since Chris has a Creative Zen Jukebox mp3 player he could not use iTunes. Chris suggested he give FeedStation in Newsgator a shot.
The caller Chris also mentioned that he subscribed to a few podcast feeds that are only available through BitTorrent. Chris Pirillo suggested that he try the RSS plugin in Azureus. Jake suggested RSS Radio.
Chris Pirillo also suggested that firmware and software for the creative be obtained at RedChairSoftware.com

Podcasts on Media Center

John asked how to listen to Podcasts on Windows Media Center. Charlie from Microsoft’s Media Center team suggested, Newsgator Media Center edition.

Sites mentioned on tonight’s show

• Official Google Toolbar for Firefox
• Apple iTunes
• Subscribe to the CP Show with iTunes: itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330048 (paste into your browser)
• WebAir
• k7.net voice mail
• Feedburner
  • Redirect your feed (walks you through the details of using .htaccess to redirect your existing feed)
  • Details on our iTunes support
• Delicious
• Flickr
• RSSContact.com
• Extended64.com
• WordPress.org
• Movabletype.org
• TypePad
• FreeTalkLive.com
• Cyworld.com
• GeekStreak.com
• Iwill 16-Core System with 128gb of 4-Rank Netlist RAM Benchmarked
• Bloglines
• RedChairSoftware.com
• Orb.com
• LeonScape BPConf
• Audacity
• MattHartley.com

–usrbingeek 15:33, 7 Jul 2005 (PDT)