idealist.org Podcasts About Ubuntu
Submitted by liz on 23 April, 2008 - 22:34.
I just found out that idealist.org is now doing Community Podcasts, and their latest one looks at "how people are building community through software." Specifically, they take a look at Ubuntu and the community of developers working on this free, open source operating system.
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Awesome - thanks for sharing!
Awesome - thanks for sharing, Liz! :-) Nice to see you and your photo up on the Kabissa homepage.
I love the idealist.org podcasts logo! It will be interesting to follow these podcasts (I'm particularly interested in the community podcasts) and see how idealistic people and organizations use them to connect and share with each other.
Hopefully people in Africa will also be able to participate by downloading and listening as well as contributing podcasts. I was just talking to Britt Bravo at Netsquared today about podcasting in Africa, and while I can imagine it is a more accessible way to share information I'm also concerned about bandwidth access for many people.
Incidentally: the idealist podcasts are hosted on http://www.libsyn.com, which apparently makes it fairly easy to host a podcast, for a fee. I suppose this would also be quite possible from Africa, as long as bandwidth is available. From the libsyn.com website:
Britt also reminded me of Flickr's new video service - anyone can upload 90 second videos from their computer to their flickr account. I'm very turned on by this idea for Kabissa members - 90 seconds is plenty of time to give a very strong impression or to convey an idea or two, and (still on the topic of bandwidth) is reasonably easy to download and watch even on a low-bandwidth connection. It also makes people think very carefully about what they are going to say. Most digital cameras these days can record 90 seconds of video, which I've noticed an increasing number of African civil society practitioners carrying around.
From the Flickr blog post announcing the Flickr video service:
The Flickr blog post happens to feature a video of a choir in Tanzania, taken by a Global Volunteers volunteer. Neat.
Thank for mentioning our
Thank for mentioning our podcasts. I work on the Community podcasts and I appreciate the positive feedback and I'm glad you like them (I also let our designer know that there are more fans of his work)!
I wanted to add my thoughts on to your thoughts about podcasting and Africa. First, I should say, I don't know a whole lot about the bandwidth limitations in Africa but I have some ideas on how to help in regards to podcasting.
There are a few things that podcasters can do to lower their bandwidth needs and their listeners needs. First, our podcast is posted in the "AAC" format. This format is similar to but smaller than MP3's at the same bit rate quality. The downside, though, is that it is a somewhat new format and is not universally supported which poses an issue for older computers. I imagine this would create an accessibility problem for people in Africa. However, many cell phones are starting to support AAC in addition to MP3.
Another way to reduce the file size is to simply encode the audio file at a lower bit-rate. The downside to this is that the audio will start to sound scratchy and grainy, but this may not matter if the original source of the audio is a phone or a low quality microphone. Here is a good explanation of MP3 bit rates from this page:
Most people can't hear a significant different between bit-rates in the 320 kbps to 128 kbps range. I think a podcast at 96 kbps is definitely listenable and two-thirds the file size. For instance, if at idealist.org our average length podcast (16 minutes) was encoded as a 96 kbps MP3, the file would only be about 3.5 MB (instead of about 15 MB as it is now).
You also mentioned Liberated Syndication, which is a great service. It does cost money but we thought it's fairly low fee was worth it. However, there are definitely ways to set up free podcasts. This page has information on the step-by-step process on how to start podcasting for free. Basically, you can use the open-source program Audacity to edit the audio, Blogger to set up your blog, Internet Archive to host the MP3 files and handle the bandwidth and Feedburner to host the RSS feed.
I hope that some of this information is helpful!
Thanks for the tips!
Hi Douglas - I appreciate you stopping by to give some tips on podcasting in Africa. That last bit about combining audacity, blogger, internet archive and feedburner is very insightful and worth following. Do you have some good examples of organizations doing this? It would be interesting to write this up as a recipe. I did a quick google search and didn't find anything easily. Let me know if you might be interested in authoring a Kabissa Guide on the topic.
I also googled "africa podcasting" and it seems most of the hits are from last summer and earlier.. perhaps that is when podcasting in Africa was first becoming a fad. I came across Pan-African Podcasting, an interestingt article in ICT Update by Firoze Manji. There are some links at bottom to some African podcasting resources:
re: Thanks for the tips!
Hi Tobias,
Unfortunately I don't really know of any orgs or podcasts who have used all of these free services to post a podcast. I think people have done it, I'm just not totally sure how to find them. I also think you'll notice a lot of "dead" podcasts because the whole idea of podcasting came into vogue around 2006 and a bunch of people started. The problem is it can be hard to sustain, even when it's done for free.
I'd also be happy to talk about contributing to the Kabissa Guide, please feel free to email at douglas at idealist dot org.
Douglas