Now Oddcasting

So, I've been meaning to tell you about this, and I've already added the links to my list of links over on the side of the blog page, but I put off posting on the subject until now.  So, here goes:  I've started a podcast.  Well, I've done a podcast.  One podcast, just one, so far.

My friend and colleague, Paul Levinson, had suggested that I get into podcasting a while ago, just as he suggested I start a blog (and here we are), set up a profile on MySpace, and stuff like that there.  So I finally got around to it, and on his suggestion, set up a profile on one of the free podcasting sites out there, Mevio.com.  So, you can find my profile at http://lancestrate.mevio.com, which is separate from my podcast page, it just seems like every site nowadays has to have a profile page, it's become a Web 2.o cliché!

So, then I had to think up a name for my podcast, which the good folks at Mevio call a show, a term I find amusing, that is, amusing as in amusing ourselves to death, public discourse in the age of show business, which is an excellent title for a book!  So, I concentrated on the fact that a podcast is entirely an acoustic form, like radio and sound recording, the term podcasting combining pod as in iPod, which was the main way that folks at first listened to these things (now there are a number of ways to do so, including on your computer, cell phone, and even via cable television services), and casting, from broadcasting, a form of distribution that began with radio and later expanded to television.  So, keeping in mind that I'm dealing with a sonic medium, I thought about it and came up with a name for the show:  Ear Relevance.

Maybe it's a bad pun, but the pun itself is a play on the spoken word.  So, I also decided to keep the title consistent with the name of my two blogs, and call it Lance Strate's Ear Relevance.  So that was that.  And it was hard to say what kind of "show" it was going to be before I actually got started on it, but I figured it would be a loose and open-ended educational program, a kind of class without curriculum, covering topics in communication theory, media ecology, general semantics, also including some poetry, and overall maybe a bit more coherent than the way this blog jumps from topic to topic whenever I post a new entry.  Anyway, that's how I tried to describe it.

So, in setting up the show, they asked for a picture to represent the show, and rather than use another picture of me (one, which was already there from my profile page, is more than enough), I asked an outstanding artist I know from MySpace, David Arshawsky, if he would do something up for me, and gave him an idea of what I was looking for, and he came through in spades.  Here's what he came up with:

Pretty cool, huh?  So with that image, all I needed was the actual podcast itself, which took a lot more time than I thought it would, but I finally got my first episode completed and uploaded.  I recorded and edited it on my Macintosh laptop, using the GarageBand program, and I had two options, so I first uploaded the episode in the better quality MP4a format.  But I learned that older devices can't play it, and when accessed online it plays more slowly than the more universal, lower bandwidth MP3 format, so I uploaded a second version in MP3, and I'll stick to that format from now on.


So, here is the URL for my podcast page:  http://earrelevance.mevio.com.  If you go there, you can "become a fan" and get email updates from Mevio whenever there's a new episode, and there are also links so you can subscribe via RSS feed, Zune, or iTunes--the URL for the iTunes subscription is http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/lance-strates-ear-relevance/id355714984, which I include here for your convenience, and because I think that's pretty darn cool!


So, you can head on over to any of these places to listen to and/or download the episode, but Mevio also gives embed codes, much like you can get for YouTube videos.  The embed option wasn't working for me for a while, which was one of the reasons I didn't post about the podcast earlier. I'm able to get the embed code now, although I'm getting some kind of error message from blogger, so maybe this won't work.  Well, I'll give it a shot anyway, and if it doesn't work, try the Mevio page or iTunes or whatever.


Before you listen, let me acknowledge that it's amateurish, my recording expertise is limited and my equipment far from professional (for example, you may need to push the volume all the way up, depending on the system...  oh, and let me warn you that the episode is about forty minutes long).  But for good or ill, here it is:









I'm pretty sure I'll do some more episodes, but I don't have any specific podcasting schedule, it'll just be whenever I can get them done, and whenever I want to get them done.  If you subscribe, you'll get them automatically, if not, well, I'll keep you posted and post them here for your amusement.