Sue Waters

The amazing aspect of tidying up is it actually creates more work because you see more dust which eventually plays on your mind until you do something about it! So I fix up the appearance of my blog (which is now 2 weeks old!) because I could not have my friend’s blogs look nicer. MMMmmm while I would like to improve the appearance of my wiki, my podcast site is in urgent need of a makeover!

First lets start with some reflections on about my podcast site. I uploaded my first podcast on August 27, 2006 and since then I have uploaded 58 episodes ranging in content on information on m-learning to e-learning and “how to”. I started out creating audio podcasts and then expanded to include video podcasts (why because some messages have more impact as videos). My podcast site has provided me with the opportunity to interview lots of people and gain a great deal of knowledge that I can then transfer into my own practises. People within Australia and around the World have be introduced to the work I am involved in which has expanded my ability to network with others and gain from their knowledge plus experience; in return I give back to others. If the statistics of my podcast site is to be believed; it is my most popular website (feed views about 1500 and downloads approximately 1000 per week).

So if my podcast site is the most popular the question asked would be “why haven’t I improved it’s looks before now!” The answer is simple, my podcast site is the most unstable platform. Updates in technology affect how my podcasts work. Like one step forward and six steps back. Older audio chipmunks when once it was fine; old video does not play when once it was fine (note if you experience these problems with my podcasts when you press play then click on download rather than play and it will start playing not a problem. This is only a problem when played on the site; episodes downloaded through iTunes or Juice experience no problems). Reasons for these problems relate to the embedded flash player that is used on podcast sites, and changes to this and how the podcast site converts audio and video as it is uploaded then impacts on existing podcasts (my podcast host converts all uploads into a format which is better supported by the flash player; however old episodes are not converted so then have problems).

I decided to just get on with it and see what happened. Well, as I fixed up the text, images and links in the posts for my podcast episodes, it is also then converted the associated media to a format that works in the flash player. Great now some of the old issues are actually playing in the flash player. Problem is I have so many posts to fix up that it is going to take time because the formats are being converted. So it looks like this housework will need to be spread out over several days so that I don’t stuff up all my podcasts. This is what my site now looks like!