With the 10th anniversary episode just a month away I thought I would let you know about a few items that are coming up.
Podcast
Beginning in August we are switching back to mp3 distribution only. We added the AAC feed to deal with issues that some listeners were having with the mp3 files we were generating back in 2006 or ’07. I feel confident that our current export process is generating a standardized mp3 that should be readable across the board. In addition, I haven’t been able to spare the time to create chapter breaks in the AAC files for a few months (years?). This means that the only technical reason to offer an AAC feed isn’t being utilized and even just creating the AAC without chapters adds-on to my weekly production schedule. For those subscribed to the AAC feed I will point the AAC RSS feed to the mp3 feed so you shouldn’t have to do anything to continue to receive the podcast.
The podcast and blog content has been provided under a Creative Commons license since we started, but we have never updated the licensing. In August we are shifting to the current CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0. Not much of a change in terms of what you can do with the podcast, but it makes me happy to update from 2.5 to 4.0. All existing/archived content from the last decade will shift to the updated license.
Website
I tried to update the site before we hit Episode 500…it clearly didn’t happen. I plan to take a couple of days in mid-July to move us over to a new WordPress Theme that will maintain the blog as more of an archive and focus primarily on the podcast since that is the content we are generating. I will make sure that the RSS feed still picks up all posted material so those accessing VerySpatial through RSS shouldn’t have to make any changes.
We are looking for new contributors and interns to help us with site content (columns, posts, reviews, etc) and podcasts (guests, interviews, etc). If you are interested, please shoot me an email. We are still contemplating what to do after July, so jump in and share your thoughts.
Taking a break
Finally, we may take the month of August off. Not a definite, but a strong possibility. More in July as we make decisions. You have to admit that I am due a break after editing around 700 podcasts in 10 years (weekly, conference, special episodes, and video podcasts). I should probably count them all at some point.
That is it for this update, but there will be another in July as we get these updates and decisions made. Thanks for listening!
