Apolitical Staples

As you may know I use Skype to host the Bloggers Hotstove and the interviews. Here you can find an article about the new features in Skype that allow for easier Skypecasts. This isn’t quite podcasting in the traditional (like there is such a thing as ‘traditional’ podcasting) but would more correctly be described as livecasting. You can bring up to 100 people on board to listen, and depending on the moderator, participate in the chat. Now I have a hard enough time herding the three other cats that I have so this may not happen with me. In other news I have find a Skype plugin that could make my podcasting a lot easier. It is from a company called Pamela-Systems and it automatically records Skype calls. The best feature is that it records in stereo, one channel for the microphone (me) and the other for the headphone (person I am talking to). This makes it much easier to balance the volumes on the podcast. I have to determine if their software works in conference mode and even if it does you would have multiple people on one channel so volume balancing would not work. But it would be very useful for the interviews. The other thing they claim to do is record the incoming video if the Skype user has a webcam. I am still trying to figure this one out but it certainly opens up more possibilities.