Teach42

From cogdogblog: Podcaster Request: Feed With a Summary

Alan brings up a good suggestion to podcasters. He simply requests that we add a bit more of a description to our show notes so that the occasional listener can read a summary and decide whether they want to subscribe/listen or not. Nobody wants to waste their time downloading a show and listening to it only to find that they totally misunderstood the topic and that it’s nothing even vaguely interesting to them.

What I’ve always struggled with has beent hat I don’t really want to spoil the content of the show by providing too detailed a description. However, a clear, concise summary would definitely be helpful to occasional or new listeners.

My biggest problem so far has been the MP3 tags. Dircaster, the PHP script that creates my podcast feed, uses information in the ID3 tags to fill out the feed. I have a very peripheral understanding of how it all works, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t pick up the tags I assign in iTunes. I use a program called Taggerwocky to fill the file in with tags that Dircaster DOES pick up on. However, with Taggerwocky, I can’t do more than a limited number of words per tag.

So what’s my point? I need to find a better way. Perhaps I need to move away from dircaster, perhaps I need to find a better tagging program. But I think I need to add a better summary to the show notes on the blog AND find a better way to populate the feed. Ideas anyone?