It took me quite a bit of time to get a background image that I was happy with. There was a lot of editing and uploading again, and again until I got it right. I would suspect if you're like me your experience will be much the same. So have patience when getting it just right. And remember that you are working within someone else's website and can't control all the features.

Update: This is the background that I based this tutorial on - Croncast background all by itself if you want to use it as a guide.

Here's my current background at work (note: it is now free-form) - http://twitter.com/croncast.

• Keynote - Leo Laporte, Host of TWiT and Tech Guy on KFI 640
• Keynote - Ron Moore, Executive Producer Battlestar Galactica
• Kris Smith - Leveraging Your Knowledge as a Podcasting Consultant
• Dave Slusher - "Amateur Means You Do It For Love"
• Panel - For Musicians Only: Promoting Your Music with Podcasting
• Paul Figgiani - Planning and Building a Podcast Production Studio/li>
• Michael Geoghegan - Solving The Corporate Dilemma
• Paul Colligan - 7 Proven Strategies to Monetize Your Podcast
• Panel - Monetize with Ads and Sponsorship
• Jason Van Orden - Promoting Your Podcast: Cost-Effective Strategies
• Panel - Podcast Metrics: Gauging Success With Different Audience Segments
• Keynote - Andrew Baron, Rocketboom
• Peter Levitan - Podcasting: Marketing's New Change-Agent
• Panel - Successful Podcasting in Education at the University Level

Podcast Academy 4, "Podcasting and Video for the Professional at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo" was announced earlier today. It is being held the Thursday before the Podcast and Portable Media Expo begins, September 28, 2006.

I have the great fortune of being one of the instructors for this event. I will be presenting in a morning session on podcasting integration. The title of for my session is "Successful Web Design for Podcasting".

The goal of this session is to have attendees take away an understadning of the essential ingredients that go into a successful podcasting website. We'll discuss different types of podcasting websites, their ease of use or lack thereof, interactive elements, graphic treatments and campaign readiness.

I would recommend that if you are the individual chosen to become your company's resident expert in all things podcasting that you consider attending this event. There will be plenty to learn about audio podcasting and its sibling video podcasting from experts like:

Michael Geoghegan (Willinick Productions)
Greg Cangialosi (Blue Sky Factory)
Craig Syverson (gruntmedia)
Noah Bonnett and Rachel Smith (88SLIDE)
Tim Street (French Maid TV)
Alex Lindsay ( MacBreak).

Registration is now open.

So a little due diligence I found the IP is part of Podshow's block at RackSpace. I skype Chris from Podcast Alley, cause I knew him way back before Podshow, and asked him what was up. Oh yeah, the IP was asking for authentication when I visited so I couldn't see what going on.

I asked him what they were doing with the feeds. His reply was that they were caching them. No big deal. Still problematic in a sense that I am not pinging them to send them an update, but whatever, they got a plan and caching isn't inherintly evil. At this time I requested him to add the User Agent information to the script they were using to pull the feeds. That never happened.

Needless to say I shared this information with a couple of podcasters who immediately blocked the the IP address. But I didn't. So for the last three months they have been hitting not only my feed but the feeds of many other people every half hour and caching them.

But this is where the problem comes in. Yesterday with the botched launch of the new Podshow+. I took a look at the IP which was no longer asking for authentication and took a look around. I look at it like if my feed is public and you are using it in your site and your IP is public and broadcast to my database I can use it too. So I took a look around. Yikes!

I found my feed . . . or did I? What I found as others are finding or any podcaster whether they belong to the network or are paid by podshow is that they are re-writing the cached feeds!! Yup. Changing tags, truncating data, modifying the RSS generator tag to say "Podshow Delivery Network" (Update: it reads "PodShow PDN") and . . . and rewriting the original URL of the feed that they cached. Are you kidding? They don't even link to my original feed. So how would I know people are even subscribed? I wouldn't and they would. More incentive to join their network I guess.

If people weren't sure about Podshow's intent to make money off the back of every podcaster then this is a sure sign that if they did't they sure do now. The fact that Podshow is purporting even at this early stage to be the proprietor of all podcasters is a joke. The arrogance to think that we all somehow owe them or should allow them to rewrite our feeds because their network is the be all end all signals that this is the end for them.

If you would like to stop Podshow from caching your feed and rewriting it as they roll Podcast Alley, Podsafe Music Network and the Podshow home page into the mega Podshow+ PDN then block this IP: 72.3.228.221.

Update: It appears as of 12 a.m. on July 7th the Podshow caching bot or script was turned off. But have some fun checking your logs for their IP address I bet it's there.

Update two: If you would like to see some screen shots and read more of this discussion check out Michael Geoghegan's post or Todd Cochrane's. For some other good opinions, Paul Colligan's "Podshow Hysterics" post and this one from FuzzyBlog. It will be interesting to see where this conversation goes today as this picks up some steam.

Final update then new post: 9:31 a.m. July 7 - Podshow is scraping from the ip again so lets have some fun.

Final final update: 2:05 p.m. July 7 - The XML chicklet link now goes to podcaster's original feeds.

Tags: Podshow PDN caching feeds rewriting feeds 72.3.228.221 ]]>Three months ago I created a podcast management system. Part of that development was tracking everything that happens with all files, especially RSS. Being a huge stats nerd I freaked when I kept getting regular hits from this ip: 72.3.228.221 to my main RSS feed where the User Agent was null. WTF, a null user agent?

So a little due diligence I found the IP is part of Podshow's block at RackSpace. I skype Chris from Podcast Alley, cause I knew him way back before Podshow, and asked him what was up. Oh yeah, the IP was asking for authentication when I visited so I couldn't see what going on.

I asked him what they were doing with the feeds. His reply was that they were caching them. No big deal. Still problematic in a sense that I am not pinging them to send them an update, but whatever, they got a plan and caching isn't inherintly evil. At this time I requested him to add the User Agent information to the script they were using to pull the feeds. That never happened.

Needless to say I shared this information with a couple of podcasters who immediately blocked the the IP address. But I didn't. So for the last three months they have been hitting not only my feed but the feeds of many other people every half hour and caching them.

But this is where the problem comes in. Yesterday with the botched launch of the new Podshow+. I took a look at the IP which was no longer asking for authentication and took a look around. I look at it like if my feed is public and you are using it in your site and your IP is public and broadcast to my database I can use it too. So I took a look around. Yikes!

I found my feed . . . or did I? What I found as others are finding or any podcaster whether they belong to the network or are paid by podshow is that they are re-writing the cached feeds!! Yup. Changing tags, truncating data, modifying the RSS generator tag to say "Podshow Delivery Network" (Update: it reads "PodShow PDN") and . . . and rewriting the original URL of the feed that they cached. Are you kidding? They don't even link to my original feed. So how would I know people are even subscribed? I wouldn't and they would. More incentive to join their network I guess.

If people weren't sure about Podshow's intent to make money off the back of every podcaster then this is a sure sign that if they did't they sure do now. The fact that Podshow is purporting even at this early stage to be the proprietor of all podcasters is a joke. The arrogance to think that we all somehow owe them or should allow them to rewrite our feeds because their network is the be all end all signals that this is the end for them.

If you would like to stop Podshow from caching your feed and rewriting it as they roll Podcast Alley, Podsafe Music Network and the Podshow home page into the mega Podshow+ PDN then block this IP: 72.3.228.221.

Update: It appears as of 12 a.m. on July 7th the Podshow caching bot or script was turned off. But have some fun checking your logs for their IP address I bet it's there.

Update two: If you would like to see some screen shots and read more of this discussion check out Michael Geoghegan's post or Todd Cochrane's. For some other good opinions, Paul Colligan's "Podshow Hysterics" post and this one from FuzzyBlog. It will be interesting to see where this conversation goes today as this picks up some steam.

Final update then new post: 9:31 a.m. July 7 - Podshow is scraping from the ip again so lets have some fun.

Final final update: 2:05 p.m. July 7 - The XML chicklet link now goes to podcaster's original feeds.

Tags: Podshow PDN caching feeds rewriting feeds 72.3.228.221 ]]> Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:06:38 -0500 tag:croncast.com,416 Three months ago I created a podcast management system. Part of that development was tracking everything that happens with all files, especially RSS. Being a huge stats nerd I freaked when I kept getting regular hits from this ip: 72.3.228.221 to my main RSS feed where the User Agent was null. WTF, a null user agent?So a little due diligence I no Podshow, PDN, caching feeds, rewriting feeds, 72.3.228.221 http://www.croncast.com/rssk/309/Croncast---Kris-goes-solo-Ep-3_solo_croncast.php Podcasts Croncast - 2005-01-11.mp3

Show: #50
Length: 22:31
Format: mp3
Bit rate: 64k
Size: 10.4 mb

Croncast - Kris goes solo Ep.3

For today I go it alone. Not because anyone cancelled out or anything just felt the need to do another solo show. I got a great link this morning from a friend to a podcast that is at Corante.com titled "Challenges of Podcasting" and the guests are Greg Narain from BeerCasting.com, Eric Rice from EricRice.com, Michael Geoghegan from ReelReviews, MWGBlog.com.

Today's Show

Intro
Send us email
My co-host doesn't need an email address
My voice sounds different today
Richie Carey's OPML and ID3v2 work
Everything can come from the ID3 tag . . . maybe
Supposed to record with Nicole Simon - http://useful-sounds.de
Happy early birthday Nicole!
All the conversations
So we speak the same language . . . it is warm and fuzzy
Things have been a bit hectic
What is the language we're speaking?
Corante.com "Challenges of Podcasting"
Greg Narain - http://www.beercasting.com
Now my example of Jeeps for Paul Henry
One of the business models that I'm working on.
Thanks to those who have voted for us at PodcastAlley.com
Go vote keep us in the top 50.

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