I get a great mention on the 11.16.2005 MacCast about 5 minutes in. I met Adam Christianson at the Podcast Expo and it’s funny because he says he was thrilled to meet me! Well, I was thrilled to meet him – and it was cool that it came about quite by coincidence. That’s the problem with podcasting, unless podcasters have been snapped for magazine articles or get on TV (like Dawn and Drew) you don’t really know what anybody looks like. I expected Adam to look, I don’t know, more like a geek! He’s a really great guy and we talked for ages. Anyway, listen to that whole show and it sounds like Adam met just about everyone!

Also, I’ve mentioned that I met Adam Curry (that other Adam, yeah) at the Expo and told him that I flew with Virgin Atlantic for the first time, because the Gate Gourmet strikes were crippling British Airways at the time and he was raving about Virgin Atlantic on his show, so I decided to check them out. He asked for some audio feedback, so I sent that in and you can hear it on DSC #281.

I actually recorded two versions (OK, twenty-two) and I was hoping Adam would be able to use the better, second version that I posted where I didn’t “um” so much, but he didn’t – and the audio fucked-up on his show too, but that wasn’t my problem. This audio business is hard, especially when, like me, you talk about as badly as you type but have no delete key – you podcasters are welcome to it!

I also get a mention on The.Point No. 43 – no surprises that I met Paul Figgiani as I was originally set to do a Feeder demo during his session (but I decided not to). Sounds like Paul met some very interesting people too.

Someone I actually didn’t get to meet was Leo Laporte, despite wanting to and despite Leo wanting to meet me. He and Adam Christianson mentioned Feeder on Leo’s KFI Show #195, which was broadcast live from the Expo.

So there you go – famous at last! 😉

I had a great time at the Expo, met lots of people including some of the big names in podcasting. Far too many to mention, in fact, but for some shameless name dropping how about Adam Curry, Madge Weinstein, Dawn and Drew (and Moongirl), CC Chapman, Adam Christianson, Paul Figgiani, Swoopy, Soccergirl, Eric Rice, Michael Geoghagen, Brother Love, Michael Butler, oh the list goes on and on!

It wasn’t just podcasters and Madge’s stylists at the Expo, I seemed to bump into journalists, listeners, business-types and other developers. I also did lunch with Podcast Maker developers Andy and Jin from Potion Factory – thanks to them for making that happen!

Anyway, there are tons of photo from the Expo on Flickr, check ’em out here.

The other day I mentioned that I’ll be attending the Portable Media Expo and Podcast Conference (aka Podcast Expo) this week. I’ll arrive in Ontario on Thursday evening, will be attending some of the sessions, meeting people and briefly reacquainting myself with something called “sunshine” (enough about the weather already! – Ed.).

On Saturday I’ll be doing a quick demo of Feeder during Paul Figgiani’s “Podcasting and Advanced Post Production on the Macintosh Platform” session (6A). For the demo I’ll be showing a development build of Feeder 1.3 – due out next month – and this will be the first time these new features will see the light of day – not unlike the developer. 😀

Paul, who does audio production for IT Conversations in addition to The.Point Podcast, will also be presenting a session, “Audio Gear for Any Budget” for IT Conversations’ The Podcast Academy Live the day before the Expo begins. If you are attending the Expo and arrive in Ontario the day before, you’ll find a day filled with compelling sessions from some extremely well-known and respected presenters at that event – check it out.

I’ll try to blog as I go along, but I expect to be insanely busy, so that might have to come afterwards. Also it’s unlikely I’ll be answering emails on Thursday or Sunday / Monday, because I’ll be in transit and time zones are funky.

There has been some discussion on Apple’s Syndication Dev mailing list lately about an update to the iTunes RSS specification, available in the mailing list archives and FAQ.

The specification includes some new tags, changes to the namespace location and clarification on other items, and while it still needs some improvement it’s another step in the right direction and a much bigger one than the last time. It also includes useful information on iTunes submission timescales, missing image problems and tips on how to get your podcast featured on the iTunes Music Store.

All this sounds great, but I wouldn’t have known about the updated spec to ask to see it, had I not heard Madge Weinstein ranting about it in an excerpt from her show played on the Daily Source Code. We’d been promised a look at this new spec on the mailing lists, and this spec, dated October 20th, didn’t appear until requested. Anyway, thanks Madge!

The spec has not yet officially replaced the one dated 7/7/2005 but the functionality is live in iTunes and Sam Ruby has updated FeedValidator accordingly, which is great because FeedValidator practically runs Feeder’s support “department”. The changes are hardly major or screaming urgent; Feeder will be updated in due course.

To update a previous post, NewsFire 1.2 (v44) is now available and includes Feeder in the list of weblog editor applications, so anyone out there who wants to send news items to Feeder from NewsFire can now do so.

NewsFire author David Watanabe was also very helpful when he found problems with Feeder’s support for the weblog editor interface, and I rectified those in Feeder 1.2.3 earlier this week. Thanks, David!