Richard Farrar's Blog

The Internet Monthly is a podcast dedicated to the latest news and developments in the internet, produced for Zen Internet by myself, and subsequently syndicated on my blog. However, things don’t always go according to plan!

Recording podcasts is just like anything else in life; there are good days and bad. During our monthly recording sessions for the podcast, mistakes are invariably made, some of which I kept for posterity. As such, I have put together a short collection of these out-takes and bloopers for your seasonal amusement…

Podcast Bloopers 2009

The Internet Monthly – Podcast Bloopers 2009:

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Or, download: bloopers_09.mp3 [3’ 14”, 1.5MB]

Thanks

As the final days of 2009 fade away, I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks very much to you all for following my blog over the last year.

Hopefully the New Year will provide me with further inspiration for new and interesting posts in the month’s to come… we can at least hope!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Album or cover artwork can easily be embedded within MP3 files via ID3 tags. However, the ID3 specification caters for over 20 different image categories. So which is the best image category to choose, and is it ever worth embedding more than one image into your MP3 files?

Since the release of version 2 of the ID3 tag specification over ten years ago it’s been possible to add album artwork to your collection of MP3 files. This feature of the ID3 specification is now pretty well supported. Most MP3 players with a screen capable of displaying graphics (be they software or hardware  based), now support this feature.

However, as usual with these sort of things, MP3 player manufacturers tend to implement the ID3 tag standard in subtly different ways. This inevitably leads to unpredictable results for the user, particularly when displaying album art.

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MP3 files can have a range of ID3 tags buried within them providing additional data about the track, such as artist name for example. If you produce your own podcasts, you could embed an array of these descriptive ID3 tags in your podcast files, but which tags should you really be using?  

Whenever you play a podcast on your portable MP3 player or PC, you will invariably see a host of information about the track on the player’s screen. This information typically includes the cover art for the track, the album, artist and track name, its genre and track number.

Such information is stored in the MP3 file itself using ID3 tags. However, in addition to the tag information in the example above, the ID3 tag standard can support over 80  different tags. So, out of this vast array of tags what are the key tags that you should consider using in your podcasts?

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Every time you use an MP3 player or an iPod, you’re using compressed audio files, whether you realise it or not. Whilst MP3 is probably the most common compressed audio format, it’s certainly not the only one available.

Manufacturers like to develop and retain technologies that gives them a commercial and technological advantage over their competitors. To this end we as consumers have ended up with a collection of competing, but unfortunately technically incompatible, solutions to the same problem; that of storing large amounts of audio on portable audio players.

Thankfully the majority of manufacturers (but by no means all) of these portable audio players have eased our potential incompatibility problems by making sure that their players can play the majority of compressed audio formats that are in common usage today.

So what are these common compressed audio formats, why do we need them and what are the associated problems with having so many different formats?

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Podcasts are now common place, with almost anybody being able to produce one themselves if they wish. However, with a little thought and a little extra effort, it’s possible to take this new medium to a whole new level and produce your own radio play.

Thanks to the advent of digital audio and the power of modern PCs, it’s now well within the capabilities of virtually anyone to produce and publish their own radio play using the same technologies as used in podcasting.

As a small kid I remember producing plays with my toys, an upturned stool for a theatre, a few torches and the tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter as a script. Since then my interests graduated to music production; I played in numerous bands and have always been keen on recording bands as a hobby.

However, my recent visit to an audio post production film editing suite at Pinewood Studios, re-sparked my interest in plays (I’ve always been a fan of the BBC’s radio series: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and got me to thinking about using the same equipment that I use for podcasting, but pushing it’s use a bit further.

All I needed was some creative inspiration, but in it’s absence, I did the next best thing and borrowed it from someone else…

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