The book is divided into 5 parts consisting of listening, joining, recording and performing, 

hosting and preparing and posting.  This is all done in 15 short chapters.  Probably the meat for 

me is in parts 3 and 4 where Todd digs into the recording process and cites software needed to do 

the job as well and publishing and distribution methods. You will need plenty of bandwidth once 

your PodCasts become popular so you will need to find a way to make this hobby pay for itself 

or end up with a unhappy surprise in your ISP bill and Todd nicely covers that in Chapter 14 on 

Feedback, Promotion and Paying the Bills.. 

PodCasters broadcast what they love. There are lots of  podcatcher  applications out there, 

depending on which platform is being used to listen to them and Todd captures most of them in 

Chapter 2.This book was published prior to iTunes 4.9 so no mention is listed in Chapter 3 on 

Finding and Subscribing to Podcasts. Chapter 4 is valuable in that it sets aside formats, 

preparation tips and licensing and legal issues.  

If you have been reading our own Blog at 

http://www.maccompanion.com

, you can search on 

Podcasting and find that we have been exploring PodCast enabling software. Todd captures 

those in Chapter 5 and also ones on non Mac platforms are discussed as well. Chapter 6 delves 

into gear and gets technical about mics, mixers and professional digital recorders.  There is even 

stuff about telephone interview equipment. 

For post production, Todd obviously likes to use Audacity for cleaning up noise.  

Way back in Chapter 12, Todd brings it all together with RSS before getting into uploading and 

publishing your work. 

Personally, I've been participating with Tim Verpoorten with his Mac ReviewCast 

(

http://www.macreviewcast.com

) weekly presentations for a few weeks and Tim has been 

prepping his PodCasts and footing the bill as he migrates from the WinTel environment (Surf 

Bits fame) to the Mac environment and discusses his discoveries. He read Todd's book too. What 

I learned from Todd is that I should not be so worried about coming across as a professional and 

lighten up a little. The joy comes through as we discuss our passion for something we enjoy 

doing.  

Going global with your work doesn't require an FCC license nor thousands of dollars in 

equipment and sound studio gear anymore. And it doesn't take all that much effort to get the 

word out to computers, MP3 players or cell phones any longer.  With this book, you can follow 

Todd Cochrane's lead.  

Apple didn't start the  PodCasting  phenomenon, but they enabled access to the technology on 

the Mac and with iPods. And quite a few of the presentations I`ve listened to recently are 

sounding and acting a little more   professional  as time goes by.  Those who are vocalizing their 

work and moving from Blogging to PodCasting are having the time of their lives!

  MPN, LLC 2005 macCompanion 

Page 49 

August 2005, Volume 3 Issue 8