Podcast Spot launched a year ago today, if you can believe it! I still can't. It's been an interesting year, to say the least. We'd like to say thanks to everyone who has supported us over the last twelve months, and especially to all the podcasters who call Podcast Spot home. You're the reason we're here!

We have lots of plans and ideas for Podcast Spot, so I have no doubt that our second year will be even better than the first. If you have any feedback or suggestions, we're always eager to hear from you.

Thanks again, and happy podcasting!

One of the cool new things that we added to Podcast Spot in our January update is the ability to upload a FLAC file. FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec" - it's a codec (a way of storing audio information in a digital file) developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. Wikipedia has a good explanation of why FLAC is useful:

It does not remove any information from the audio stream and is suitable both for everyday playback and audio archival. The FLAC format is currently well supported by many software projects and hardware support is growing.

If you're interested in preserving the original fidelity of your audio recording, FLAC is a great option. The files won't be as small as MP3 files, but they will be lossless. Of course, certain kinds of podcasts are better suited to recording in FLAC than others. For example, you probably wouldn't record a voice-only podcast with FLAC, but if you are recording music, it might be worth it.

FLAC is nowhere near as popular as MP3 or other audio formats, of course, and that's where Podcast Spot comes in. You can record your episodes using FLAC, upload them to Podcast Spot, and like all other files, we'll convert them to MP3, WMA, and OGG Vorbis. You get the best of both worlds - the lossless, high quality recording of FLAC, and the ability to offer your listeners an option they can surely play.

One of our goals with Podcast Spot is to free podcasters from worrying about the details - we want you to focus on creating great content, using whatever is easiest or best for you. Supporting FLAC files for upload is just another small way for us to do that.

Happy Lossless Podcasting!

We're really excited to announce that Podcast Spot is now live! Check it out at http://www.podcastspot.com. We'd like to say a big thanks to all of our beta testers who helped us over the last couple months - your help was vital in getting Podcast Spot to where it is today.

We hope you like Podcast Spot. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you. You can leave a comment here, or post something to our forums.

You can read more about the launch here and here.

Despite a few initial setbacks, we are now in closed beta testing for Podcast Spot. Accounts will be going out over the next day or so (and indeed, some already have). If you're interested in taking part, email me at mack@paramagnus.com. We might not add you right away, but we will add more testers over the next few weeks.

Ah, I'm so excited for testing! This is one major step toward launch.

We've been doing lots and lots of testing with Podcast Spot lately, and things are looking good. I'm really excited!

Our plan is to start private testing (so more than just ourselves, some actual real users) in a few days, and carry that throughout August. If you want to be one of the testers, please drop me an email at mack@paramagnus.com, but keep in mind I can't promise anything! If we're getting the data we need with our existing testers, we probably won't add anymore.

If the testing goes well, we'll plan to launch Podcast Spot around the middle of September, so that we get a week or two of public use before the Portable Media Expo.

After some random discussion over the last couple months, and some serious discussion in the last week or so, we have decided to change our podcasting solutions logo. The egg man (or potato as many thought at first) we had been using is now gone, replaced by this:

The new logo is simple and easily recognizable, both of which are pretty important. Furthermore, we still have our egg shape! We might use the egg guy for some special things, but this new logo is the main one moving forward. We're pretty happy with it.

What do you think?

As you've undoubtedly noticed, the "no more data will be lost" message has not been posted yet! The reason is that we're still in the midst of our final hardware upgrades. We were hoping to have them all completed by the time Northern Voice rolled around, but with only a couple days left until we leave, that doesn't look likely.

I'll have an update on this later, but for now, we're pushing back the "launch" by at least a week.

I'm pretty confident that most of you reading this at the moment are not refreshing your browsers every five minutes trying to test out our new functionality, but just in case, a word of caution. We're making changes on the fly, and some of them are breaking changes. This means that until the official announcement is posted here, any accounts or data you create may be (and likely will be) lost!

In the meantime, we've updated our registration/login/logout system. In addition to being more secure, we've tried to make it clear that when you register for a Paramagnus Account, you get access to all of our podcasting services - you don't need to register for each one! We figured we might as well make life simpler for you. We've also gotten rid of some of the registration fields, so that registering is even quicker than before.

I'm anticipating we'll make the "data created from now on will not be lost" announcement sometime at the beginning of February.

If you're poking around the sites and want to make a suggestion, please do! You can leave a comment here, or you can contact us.

Welcome to 2006! We're completely back to work now (funny how the holidays tend to be so busy with other stuff) and trying hard to meet our release schedule. Speaking of release schedules, we had some discussion lately about whether or not to release a beta version of Podcast Spot. Our previous releases haven't really been betas, they have been "previews" or "prototypes", but it's easier to call them betas. We haven't completely decided yet, but we're leaning towards going straight for primetime, for a number of reasons. Timely then, that I came across some discussion about the word "beta". From Michael Arrington:

Every company does things a little differently. Some rush the product out, features-be-damned. Others wait, and wait, and wait, until its “perfect”. Some companies are secretive. Others open. And so on.

I’ve seen hundreds of new products launch over the last six months, and I think I have some pretty good advice for companies that want to improve their beta release.

Michael goes on to list advice in a number of different categories, like "first impressions" and "landing pages". His advice is pretty good - I'm glad I found his post.

Stephen Bryant also talked about betas recently:

The vicissitudes of the public beta have been thoroughly discussed on the Web this year by Webloggers, columnists and reporters alike. I think 37Signals' Jason Fried put it best in when he e-mailed me to say: "Release your damn product, take responsibility for it and constantly improve it. The 'Public Beta' flag is a cover-your-ass mechanism that needs to go."

I couldn't agree more. So before we ring in the new year, I'd just like to say: In 2006, first thing we do, let's kill all the betas.

All of a sudden, the decision is becoming easier :) That said, I think a beta is still useful for a software application for Windows (or any other operating system), because they are much more difficult to properly test than web based applications.

Combined with the fact that we plan to have a free account for Podcast Spot that you can use to evaluate the service, I think we'll probably go straight to release. Applications like Podcast Wizard will likely still have a beta period however.

More soon!

We spent some time yesterday nailing down a schedule for releasing all of the good stuff we've been working on. About time too - the Expo and all the work we did leading up to it kind of took it's toll for a few days. In any case, look for a much improved release of Podcast Spot by the time Christmas arrives. Shortly after the holidays we're planning to release a little more. We will of course be revisiting the schedule pretty often too, to make sure it's relevant and accurate.

Oh and Podcast Tags should be running properly by next week too, we're almost finished fixing the few issues we encountered.

Just a quick thank you to everyone who's been testing out the services we've made available! We have discovered some bugs and configuration errors that we're working to fix as soon as we can, so we appreciate you helping us flesh those out. If you discover anything you think we should know about, please leave a comment or email us!

I guess a little clarification should be made. Podcast Spot is really more of an alpha than a beta, while Podcast Tags is pretty much a beta. We're going to be working really hard over the next week or two to pump out some new functionality and make them better, so keep a look out for that. I'll also be adding some "beta" graphics to the sites, so that it's more clear what stage of the development process we're in!

As always we encourage and welcome your feedback, so don't be shy!

We're very pleased to announce the first (and very early) beta of our podcasting products! Of the four applications and services on our roadmap, two are now available for public testing. You can now tag episodes at Podcast Tags, and you can create your own podcast and upload episodes at Podcast Spot. We anticipate releasing beta versions of Podcast Basket and Podcast Wizard sometime next month. For more information on all four products, visit the Paramagnus Podcasting site.

Although we had previously released a version of Podcast Tags, it was more of a test for us than anything. We've worked hard to fix the issues we had with the previous version, and we've added a few things too!

• The website is now http://www.podcasttags.com, instead of the awkward http://podcasttag.com.
• We have ping interfaces in both SOAP and XML-RPC (including ExtendedPing support).
• In addition to looking for tags in your podcast, we also look for categories! That means almost every podcast can immediately take advantage of Podcast Tags.
• We're still working on the API, but it should be available soon. The API project will allow you to tap into Podcast Tags from your own applications and services.

Podcast Spot is our podcast hosting service. The first ever release is now available for you to play with and take a look at. There is still lots of work to be done, but for now you can:

• Create an account (register here)
• Add episodes and categories
• Select a Creative Commons license for your podcast

Additionally, these features are currently working:

• If you upload in MP3, we'll automatically convert it to WMA (and vice versa)
• You can download segments of audio files in MP3 format
• Users can subscribe to a dynamic, general feed for your podcast or more specific MP3 and WMA feeds

We're really pleased that we were able to release the first "beta" in time for the Podcast & Portable Media Expo! There is still lots of work to do, but we're looking forward to getting some initial feedback on what we've done. If you're going to be at the Expo this weekend, come see us in booth #312!

paramagnus podcasting podcast tags podcast spot portable media expo

Wow, what a very busy last couple of weeks! We've been working really hard to get beta versions of some of our applications and services ready for the Podcast & Portable Media Expo this weekend, and we're almost there. We should be launching the beta versions of Podcast Spot and Podcast Tags sometime tomorrow, with beta versions of Podcast Wizard and Podcast Basket coming probably in December 2005.

We have also launched our Podcasting Beta site, at http://www.paramagnus.com/podcasting/beta. There you'll be able to find information on all of our products and services. We're also bringing some information materials to the Expo, so feel free to drop by our booth - we'd be delighted to talk to you! Our booth is #312, which you can find on the floor plan.