Book Review: Podcasting Hacks
October 31, 2005
Podcasting Hacks is a very good book for both beginners and experts.
A few points:
The books is organised into a series of tips that the book calls ‘hacks’. Each hack is cross-referenced with other relevant hacks and the information is presented in a no-nonsense way … the author gets to the point quickly. Makes for a great reference book.
Everything you need to know about podcasting is covered:
- Tips for those just starting out.
- How to get good sound: choosing hardware, on speaking well, on reducing room noice and more.
- Tips on editing – again addressing both the tools (software) and the process / techniques.
- Instructions on publishing your podcast (blogging,) and even on monetizing your podcast.
One criticism (if you wanna call it that,) is that the material does not necessarily flow from one hack to the next. The hacks (tips,) are designed to standalone, so it’s hard for me to criticise this point.
Anecdote: one of the hacks came in really handy for me the first day I got the book, saving me a bunch of time and improving the quality of the audio for my videos big time.
Any negatives?
I found the chapter on videoblogging to be weak, but videoblogging itself is super new …
Conclusion:
If you are into podcasting, this is a book that you probably want to have on your shelf.
From the press release:
Podcasting, simply put, is the idea of downloading an MP3 audio file to a digital device and listening to the program–a song, a lecture, a rant, whatever–at a time and in a place of your own choosing,” says Dan Gillmor in his Foreword to “Podcasting Hacks.” “It is the marriage of several genres including weblogs, audio, radio, and TiVo-ish devices.
It is made possible by the ever-powerful forces of technological progress, competitive instincts and–this is key–our perfectly human wish to express ourselves.
