Comments on: Using blogs and Web pages to raise your professional profile

By: Toronto Wedding Photographer

Toronto Wedding Photographer — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:13:19 +0000

4 months ago I knew nothing about SEO,but I learned a lot of articles like this. It's a great help and beats paying someone thousands of $$. I did it to my photography site and from being not even in the top 1000 I got to the page 4 within 2 weeks!

By: Faceman

Faceman — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:32:08 +0000

Good idea. A blog to promote myself professionally would not be difficult to keep up with since I already write so much every day for my business. People would get to see that I have experience and do know what I am talking about. It would be even easier to upload an audio blog except I don't have an iPod yet.

By: naoh

naoh — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:15:52 +0000

Hi, Thanks again for the tip. As soon as I am done at work, I am going to try this at home. I've been looking around to find that info. Thanks again,

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:14:32 +0000

Interesting point. I'm not sure how much bandwidth one would save with streaming. It depends on the format and the protocol. While a streaming audio or video file lets the user watch or listen before the download is complete, the original file must still contain the same data. I could have made a smaller file in any number of formats, including .mp3, but with the audio quality being inconsistent to begin with I didn't want to risk losing any more clarity. When choosing whether to stream or to podcast, I think I'd focus more on how the file will be used, and what is most convenient to the user. Here at Case we stream a lot of video through http://tv.case.edu and podcast files via the blogs. There are pros and cons to each, but I think a lot of it depends on the nature of the content. I consume far more audio and video content now that I have an iPod than I did a few years ago when I had to be online to view or listen to the material. For me the fact that I can download a file and play it later when and where it is convenient is very important. So too is the ability to subscribe. While that isn't so important with this file, since I don't podcast often, it is for a site that is presenting a series of lectures or programs on a regular basis. I'm subscribed to podcasts from a number of sources. New episodes will download to my computer whenever they are available and I can then listen later as I am available. If I had to go visit all these sites to watch or listen on line I would probably not catch every episode.

By: boxyad

boxyad — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:23:54 +0000

The downside of using podcast is the size of the mp3. You see, profile.mp3 is almost 67.4 Mb, if we have a 100 downloading this mp3 the total bandwidth will be around 6.7GB, which is quite a lot for a normal website. The alternatives are using adobe flash (macromedia flash) to generate the streaming file. It works like youtube and for sure it's smaller in size thought the sound quality is not guaranteed.

By: Edmund

Edmund — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:38:51 +0000

Heidi, it's working now. Thanks.

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:22:06 +0000

Dave, I uploaded the file again and it seems to be working properly now. Please let me know if you have any other difficulties with it. -Heidi

By: Edmund

Edmund — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 10:55:39 +0000

Hi Heidi, Thanks for the tips. I'm going to check out MediaVision.

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:33:45 +0000

Dave, Thanks for catching that problem. I created this on a Mac, and played it on a Windows machine, (Just clicked on the link and it played in the browser via quicktime) and it worked just fine. But now after seeing your message I tried downloading it on a PC and had the same problem. (Ctrl-click on a Mac downloads the whole 67.4 mb file in about 2 minutes on the Case network) It also downloaded far too quickly. It took a minute or two to post so it should have taken more time to download. Next, I tried opening it in Real Player and it said the format was incompatible with the file extension. I wonder if I chose some setting that isn't Windows friendly. I will try to fix it over the weekend. After all, it is rather bad form to proffer instructions then have it not work properly. According to Jeremy there are no space restrictions when it comes to uploading podcasts. If server space becomes tight, they'll revisit the issue, but for now, upload whatever you need.

By: dave

dave — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:09:45 +0000

Is bandwidth an issue? If I create a 60 minute podcast encoded at 64kbps the file size would be around 28mb. Encoded at 128kbps the file size would be around 56mb. If I want to store the last 10 podcasts I could be using up to 560 mb of storage space plus all the bandwidth used to download. Just curious as to storage and bandwidth issues.