Rating: Three Stars

What is RecordForAll

RecordForAll is a good recording and editing program designed especially for the novice podcaster. While not a full featured sound processor, it has a simple interface and enough tools to do the job quickly and efficiently. While there are other, more powerful programs available, RecordForAll has a fast learning curve and can get you started right away.

Features

RecordForAll allows you to record or import clips from your desktop, layer sound effects or transitions between takes, save in compressed formats (mp3, wav or wma) for all mp3 players, and enter tags for RSS feeds.

Included are a few basic transitions and sound effects. One transition, Beat Mixing, allows you to match the beats of songs to keep the groove going.

The Video Tutorial takes three minutes to watch and will have you recording immediately. The Help Index is also very helpful with many tips to guide you through all the features and their variations.

Using RecordForAll
There are three components to the program:

• The Library: where you drag and drop the elements you will use in your podcast and where you record your voice tracks
• The Playlist: where you place the clips in the order in which they will be used and you add the transition effects
• The Timeline: displays a graphic representation of each segment’s wavelength and where you edit the segments

When you are finished with your podcast and are happy with the results, the mixdown and save processes are automated into one step, “Exporting to File.” Rewrite this line.

Bottom Line
RecordForAll doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other audio recording and editing programs contain but it is easy to learn and simple to use. This program will allow the novice podcaster who wants to jump in and get his feet wet quickly to do just that.

Related Guide Picks

• Audacity

Retail Price: $39.95

Manufacturer’s Site

Product Review – Andrea Electronics ANC-300 Dual Function Hand-Held Microphone
by Richard Arfin

The Bottom Line

Andrea Electronics’ ANC-300 Dual Function Hand-Held Microphone is one of the best podcasting tools for “soundseeing” podcasts. [Link this term to a definition in stage 2 when you publish this.] It performs exactly as advertised and you cannot beat the price. As a hand-held omnidirectional microphone, it picks up everything within a range of more than 100 yards. In the Active Noise Cancellation mode, it cuts out anything more than three or four inches away.

Pros

• Two modes: Omnidirectional and Noise Cancellation
• Good handgrip design
• No batteries needed

Cons

• Practice needed to achieve good recording
• Fade-in record effect
• Cheap desktop stand adaptor

Description

• Dual Operation, 3 Position Selector Switch
• Includes: Microphone Holder, Software, Windscreen
• 1/8” plug
• Retail Price: $39

Review - Andrea Electronics ANC-300 Dual Function Hand-Held Microphone

This unique microphone is ideal for remote hand-held recording application, especially in “soundseeing” podcasts. Interviewing musicians in a small club while in the noise-cancellation mode, amidst loud music and crowd noises, the sounds were reduced to the bare minimal and the resulting interview had a rich clarity.

Andrea Electronics has a long history of creating microphones for jet pilots and astronauts. They have incorporated their Active Noise Cancellation chip into the body of the comfortable hand grip of this mic and it works like a charm.

There is one problem with it that takes some getting used to. There is an automatic fade-in that takes about 5 seconds until it records at full volume. With some practice, the problem can be compensated for and overcome.

For the low price and the high quality, this mic has to be one of the best values available.

Manufacturer’s Site

Indiana University has announced that it will support more than 60 innovative faculty members as they explore the potential of podcasting in higher education.

Supported by Apple and AT&T with equipment and software, The Indiana University Faculty Podcasting Initiative, has projects beginning this fall.

Nearly 100 proposals were submitted and, after review, almost 60% of them were funded. The podcasts are intended to take instruction out of the classroom and create additional learning opportunities.

The podcasts approved include:

· A video podcast of basic orthodontic skills for the School of Dentistry

· Instructor-led video podcast tours of museums in Indianapolis and Chicago

· An audio podcast of Portuguese language pronunciation and listening skills

The university has even created a podcast portal, podcast.iu.edu , as a gateway for easy access to these and other educational programs.

Technology market researchers IDC have released an Internet advertising forecast that looks like very good news for Podcasters.

The forecasters predict Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2008 to $51.1 billion in 2012. During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large, they say. While much of that money will be spent on Internet video, a sizable amount will be spent on Internet audio, as well.

As traditional radio’s audience plummets, so do their advertising revenues. Where will this money be spent? The industry buzz is that it will go towards supporting Internet radio in its many forms, from streaming radio to podcasting. And that’s just the beginning of the good news.

There’s an audience out there looking for interesting, diverse and niche content and they are finding it though podcasts. This audience grows daily as new hardware hits the market. Hardware like:

· The new iPhone 3G with its neat iTunes interface that speeds podcast downloads.

· The 2009 Chryslers with their wireless Internet radios.

Advertisers are closely watching these innovations, analyzing the trends and looking for the best ways to spend their money.

As you’re planning your podcasting future, think about how you will provide accurate metrics - the term used for traffic and related statistics - to the advertising industry. The more accurate your statistics are, the more likely you will be able to cash in on this developing income stream. For years, podcasters have knocked on agency doors seeking advertising revenue only to be turned away because the numbers didn’t jive. But now, as those numbers increase, opportunities are opening up for podcasters to find ways to monetize their efforts. Once the numbers illustrate this growth, advertisers will be knocking on your door.

And that is really good news.

There’s a new listening audience out there and it’s not listening to traditional radio. That’s the conclusion of The Arbitron/Edison Internet and Multimedia Study, “The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008,” released recently.

In every category, traditional radio is losing listeners – by age, by sex, by income and by volume. The numbers are devastating. According to the report:

· 79% of those polled have listened or viewed a podcast on their computer or mobile device.

· A full 30% of them download new podcasts regularly.

The trend of finding entertainment through non-traditional means is also on the upswing. The numbers jumped by 18% in the first quarter of this year.

These figures are very significant because 2008 is the first year podcasting has amassed a large and quantifiable metric – enough to finally scare the heck out the traditional media outlets.

What also frightens them is the finding that podcast consumers are very active online purchasers but are resistant to unwelcome advertising. In other words, podcast listeners don’t want to be advertised to death. They will accept advertising and sponsorships before and after the program but not during the program - a completely alien concept to radio and TV execs who live by the bottom line.

They have only themselves to blame. By eliminating the creative end of the business in favor of analysis generated computerized feeds and by eradicating local programming in order to create one large generic national audience, they forgot that they were in the business of entertaining.

Fortunately, we podcasters can pick up the slack.

Eight years into the 21^st century and we are witnessing the rapid death of traditional terrestrial radio and the major record labels. Many fingers are pointed and many excuses made but the bottom line is that they just don’t get it. They refuse to see the trends in front of them every minute of every day. What’s so hard to see? Just stand on any street corner in any city or town anywhere in the world and count the people with earbuds. It’s that simple.

Still, with all the money and all the assets that today’s consolidated radio and music corporations possess, they cannot count the earbuds. I find this most astonishing since these consolidated companies are run by accountants (read bean counters) and lawyers (read litigators). Their tried and true methods just don’t work anymore. They just don’t get it. Absolute control of the market worked for eighty years and industrial consolidation only added to the destruction. You need not look any further than all the failed marketing strategies, all the failed congressional initiatives and all the failed lawsuits to see that this is true. To make matters worse, the bean counters cut the budgets and let the creative people go. In their genius to find the bottom line and increase their profits, they brought in canned programming (remember the “Jack” format?) and it served to turn off their audience. How absurd? Wasn’t it obvious that programming entertainment was their core business? Not to the bean counters, they saw their core business as programming marketing – less entertainment, more advertising! Perhaps it was just a case of trying to hold onto inflated incomes and golden parachutes that allowed them to kill creativity. Still, at the end of the day, they couldn’t count the earbuds all around them. Simply put, consolidation bred homogeny, homogeny alienated the disparate market, the market evaporated, the assets lost their value and the stock tanked. End of story.

Radio is free. To the listener, it always was and will remain that way. Radio was subsidized by the advertiser and the record label. Today, two out of three of those components are failing. Advertising cannot salvage them. So what caused it? Most analysts point to the iPod and the new technologies. That is wrong. What killed them was consolidation. Consolidation breeds homogeny and, in a creative business, homogeny creates boredom and kills creativity. The iPod filled the vacuum, that is all. Now the listener could filter the distracting clutter and really listen.

Is it radio or is it listening? It is listening, perhaps even interactive listening. The only success in radio today is found in “talk” radio. Why does Limbaugh still garner a large audience? Whatever you may think about his opinions, he is a large personality who entertains his audience. Why does Paul Harvey, at 90, still garner a large audience? Because he is a large personality who entertains his core audience. And these people listen! Where are the music personalities today? Where are the deejays with a musical attitude? How are these listener markets supplied? This is what the iPod and the new technologies supply – a way to customize listening.

So why is Podarama important? With the emergence of new listening delivery systems, Podarama encourages listening. Podarama encourages interactivity. Podarama encourages creativity. Podarama encourages the antithesis of homogeny as it encourages the diversity of the market of listeners. Why? Because earbuds count.

Welcome to Podarama’s Advanced Blog. While our regular blog allows you to embed images and videos (and even YouTube clips), this Advanced Blog (powered by WordPress) allows all of that plus lots of other very cool features (and more on the way). You can even upload your own podcast!

See, we think that Podarama is a part of the new media wave. We’ve always believed that, even back in the early days of the 21st century when we started this thing. Traditional media is over, it’s yesterday’s news. Sure, we all like to listen to radio-type media but who needs the noisy commercials, the hack disk jockeys, the loud-mouth commentators or the same songs over and over and over and over? So, we don’t do that anymore. We make our own playlists and we listen to that instead. And, while the traditional media companies are desperate to stay in the game (remember The New Jack Format? Stick a fork in it.), they just don’t get it. They never will. No, today’s media is more interactive and involved, more personal and more selective. We try to give you lots of options to enable your tastes.

We offer lots of great music by indy artists - some of it you can’t find anywhere else. Sure, some of it you can find elsewhere but our price is better and our artists keep more (we only keep 8% to cover our nut. Take that iTunes). Listen to it first and then buy it. Keep starving artists well fed and happy and productive. Do it, okay? There’s something for everyone: metal, folk, rock, jazz, blues, funk, classical, avant-guard, easy, mellow and even nuevo wavo.

We offer great podcasts and they are always free. Again, there’s a wealth of diversity to celebrate and we do our best to celebrate. Our most popular podcast is the Relax! Yoga series. So if you need to smooth out and center yourself from all the surrounding nonsense, this is for you. We first recorded these meditations in order to take the edge off commuting but we soon discovered that there was a global audience downloading them. Tree of Avalon takes it a step further and explores holistic and new age alternatives. And it’s all good.

On the musical side, The Ol’ Hippie Show is off the wall with music you’ve never heard before or maybe haven’t heard for years. Years ago, iTunes banned the Ol’ Hippie Show because they were afraid they would get into trouble for airing this stuff. Our position is that if The Ol’ Hippie doesn’t care then neither do we. There’s also Metalization, which sounds just like it’s name. ZydecoRoad On The Air brings you interviews and highlights of the Cajun/Creole/Zydeco/Louisiana/New Orleans region and it is absolutely guaranteed to shake your booty. dj blank’s show is groove/house/underground sounds. Six String Island is folky whith The Down Home Radio Show is folk history. noizepunk and Das Krooner bring you the new classical world of cutting-edge music. And then there’s Jim’s Kitchen with interviews, recipes and tours of the latest innovative cuisine. The East End Marine Report wants to make sure you boat safely. Spackle Queen will help you fix your house. Heather Buchanan’s Kiss and Tell takes a wisegal’s approach to the Sex in The City crowd (or in the country, too). And for all you aliens, Zenbock’s Great American Time Machine showcases the Sci-Fi & Horror Film industry as seen through the eyes of a Galactic Traveler. You’ll find some very, very videos there. The Cal Zone is a bark show by dogs for dogs. See what I’m saying? We offer podcasts for every species.

We have some very addictive online games to play. Play on.

We take radio to the next level with our streaming radio. Our Taste of Podarama stream is a never ending feed of podcasts and independent music. Just turn it on and let it play. These days, you don’t have to listen on your computer or your iPod, you can listen in your car, in your boat, even on your bedside clock radio. The DBC Clubhouse, led by Sconee, brings you into the world of Heavy Metal, motorcycles and crazy babes. You can enter the chat room and talk back to the deejays or the other listeners while the show progresses. It’s a great way to get your rocks off.

Blogs. Music. Games. Chat. Live. Videos Podcasts. Even stuff to buy, buy, buy (are you getting that message? We gotta eat, too, you know!). Podarama is the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow and the hippy hippy shake all rolled into one and we’re going to stay that way, adding new stuff and tweaking and innovating…just like e always have. We can’t help it. We’re just drawn that way.

Now it’s time for you to blog. Wadda you got?