EveryZing CEO Tom Wilde recently spoke on the show Online Marketing with RSS Ray, a weekly Internet talk radio show that brings advice and information from world-class online marketing experts to listeners. The show covers many topics including online marketing, blogging, podcasting, videocasting, and RSS plus social networking.

Tom talked with the host about how EveryZing works for content providers and consumers as powerful search and publishing solution. Listen to the show here or at everyzing.com. You can also visit the RSS Ray blog.

We’re thrilled to be attending the 3rd annual Podcast & New Media Expo being held September 28-30th at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California.

For those of you unfamiliar with the event, its an annual convention that educates individuals and companies about how to produce high-quality audio and video digital content, grow a loyal audience, and market or monetize that content in creative ways. Obviously this event is a great fit for PodZinger and anyone in the podcasting and portable media business.

Our CEO Tom Wilde, will be talking about how to plug your content into the search economy. You can see more of the details here: “Creative Ways to Grow Your Audience Every Week“

Check out the Expo and conference just by clicking on the button below.

We’ll see you there!

After years of slow albeit steady growth, the number of those enjoying and creating podcasts is taking off. According to a report on podcastingnews.com, the audience for podcasts has grown 18% in the past year and furthermore, awareness of podcasting has grown even more, jumping from 22% in 2006 to 37% in 2007.

And just in case you’re one of the 63% who is still in the dark or a little fuzzy on the term, wikipedia has a comprehensive explanation.

With this good news, I figured I would share some tips for those who are interested in getting into podcasting:

• How to create your podcast - So you have an idea for a podcast, but really no clue as to the resources needed to produce or host it online. Check out our Podcasting 101 section by our in-house podcasting guru, Henry Houh for a thorough tutorial.
• Naming your podcast – When naming your podcast you want to be careful to be concise and avoid redundancy. People who are searching for your podcast generally know that it is a podcast and therefore placing the term in the title is a big waste of space. Also, you should note that placing a web address as your title can be pretty confusing and doesn’t look so nice to searchers.
Example of good podcast titles: Southwestern Florida Real-Estate, Bob Mackey Celebrity Interviews
and the bad: The Real Estate Podcast, celebrityinterviews.com
• Meta-data: Describing and tagging your podcast – When creating a description for the meta-data associated with your podcast be clear and keep it short. Listeners want a brief overview of what they’re about to hear, not a novel. Also, many are tempted to associate a large number of tags with their podcast in hopes of popping up in a larger number of searches and directories. While you may be successful in this endeavor, you will undoubtedly also succeed in annoying listeners who aren’t looking for your podcast and making podcast search less effective in general.
• Letting others find your podcast – Once you create an RSS feed for your podcast register it with PodZinger! It’s quick and simple and will allow all of our users to find your podcast. Also, through our sign-up page, you can create your very own customized html search box to enable easy search of your podcast from your site.

PodZInger’s own Jeff Baer, attended and was a presenter at this event held February 24th. Jeff is manager of co-brand and advertising solutions for PodZinger and an MIT alum.

This from Jeff:

“Last nights’ event, ‘Video Podcasting, Is it For You?’, at MIT was a lot fun…great group of folks in that are members of the “Software and Advanced Computing” group of the MIT Enterprise forum of Cambridge.

Steve Garfield (Rocketboom and http://stevegarfield.com), Peter Marx (audio and video production consultant to legal and education industries), and yours truly each presented our businesses with respect to the topic of the night “Video Podcasting: Is it for you?”

Steve talked about blogging as a pre-cursor to VLog’s, and demonstrated just how easy it is to do this live for the group. Using his digital camera, Mac, and a network connection, he added a video clip of the event to his Vlog.

Some very good questions were raised with lively discussions, including:

What is the difference between YouTube and Video Podcasting

Digital rights…how can I protect content that I create to share?

Does anyone offer “video search” based on image recognition?

Who pays for the hosting (in the case of blip.tv, not the content creator!)

And an interesting one.. Isn’t the name “PodZinger” denote podcasting, when in reality you work with all multimedia?

Discussion revolved around new information technology as liberating for the human race e.g. printing press, radio, tv, internet, etc. The rapid rate of current technological change ultimately enables the masses to create and consume media. That in turn drives more “freely available” information to the consumer that is in fact paid for through advertising. Much of the debate came from the type of advertising - pre-roll, sponsorship, prodcut placement, combinations of these, etc. and what will be the most effective for the consumer and the advertiser. One thing I think we can agree on is that these are early days for online video and ways to monetize it. Hang on! It’s going to be one heck of a ride!”

As we begin 2007 we can at once look back on the progression of PodZinger thus far and project forwards, speculating as to where that progression will take PodZinger in the New Year. In the spirit of looking back, I want to take a moment to highlight PodZinger’s Top 10 Most Played Audio/Video Podcasts of 2006:

1) WMMR’s Preston and Steve

2) Radio Leo

3) KitKast

4) ABC World News

5) Keith and The Girl

6) X-Play

7) CNN The Gryst

8) Rumor Girls

9) The Geoff Show: Virgin Radio

10) ESApod

As the most played podcasts, these are definitely worth checking out. They also beg the question, what will PodZinger’s Top 10 list look like in the coming year? How will new genres of audio and video content impact what users play on PodZinger and our partner’s websites?
And PodZinger certainly has an exciting new year ahead as partnerships new and old continue to broaden the amount of searchable audio and video content online. As Joe touched on in his last post, the implementation of the YouTube search box on www.podzinger.com brings the PodZinger technology together with the much talked-about user generated content of www.youtube.com. Many intriguing possibilities surface for consumers, content creators and advertisers as PodZinger’s technology brings Internet users greater specificity in their search of online audio and video.

This morning PodZinger announced its partnership with Thames Valley pod.tv to power search capabilities for its Web site . Thames Valley pod.tv is the UK’s fastest growing video podcast webTV site, providing original content across a wide range of topics including art, music, culture, cooking, gardening, business, legal, illustrated audio stories, families and parenting, and documentaries. This partnership is unique for PodZinger in that it’s our first venture outside of the U.S.

For more details, click here.

It’s digg’s second birthday and with that, it launched several new features, including a section dedicated solely to pocasts. The new feature allows you to digg either a particular podcast series or individual episodes of the podcast and also lists the most popular episodes according to the number of diggs.

Digg, a community driven site, started out two years ago with mostly breaking news content. With that success, digg is starting to branch out to more content-rich media like video and podcast. Community voting has been proven to be a highly successful model in creating buzz around breaking news and for digg to start branching out to video and podcasts is a sure sign that the online video industry will have a strong stand in the next stage of online media.

Om Malik of NewTeeVee writes,

“Digg is the latest social web filter to embrace video aggressively. A few days ago, StumbleUpon added video stumbling to its offering. As more and more video moves online, finding the good stuff is going to become harder and harder.”

Malik is right. There are ton of rich media online now that is waiting to be discovered. Digg has categorized the podcasts in different categories and the top “diggs” are already populated by already highly popular podcasts. Like some of the other smaller news item, you still need to do a lot of digging to find a less popular podcast with similarly “good stuff” as mentioned by Malik. We’ll just have to wait and see if the community will be able to turn that around and use digg as a platform to “dig out” other great content in the podcasting world.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and while it is often one of the most festive holidays, it can also be one of the most stressful. Cooking an elaborate fest, deciding what wine to pair with which course, looking for quick time saving tips or finding that perfect pumpkin pie recipe can all be daunting tasks.

Podcasts and online videos provide a quick and simple way to get easy ideas for the holiday season, no matter what topic you’re seeking. PodZinger, the world’s most powerful audio and video search engine and online advertising network, also makes searching for podcasts and videos a simple task. Scanning each and every word, PodZinger lets users pinpoint exactly what they are searching for – taking them directly to the key word they are seeking and saving them the time of listening to the entire file. It also allows for immediate playback so if you miss an ingredient in a pecan pie recipe you’re listening too, you can easily replay that portion with just one click. Download any of these podcasts or online videos and have a portable, compact Thanksgiving lesson of your very own.

Eat Feed - The food and cooking podcast that looks at Thanksgiving’s historical significance and how you can bring those traditions into your own home. In a special Thanksgiving podcast, author Sandy Oliver is featured, discussing the history of Thanksgiving traditions from her new book, “Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie.”

Chronicle Podcasts: Food for Your Ears - Podcasts from The San Francisco Chronicle’s award-winning food department. Learn about their favorite places to eat, excerpts from interviews with celebrity chefs and other scrumptious content. Its Thanksgiving podcasts provide various tips for the holidays, including for baking your turkey and pairing wines with dinner.

WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show - Leonard Lopate hosts a diverse collection of great thinkers and talkers for smart, unpredictable interviews. For one of his Thanksgiving specials, Lopate hosts Gourmet Magazine’s editor, who discusses recipe swaps, as well as reveals some of her own specialties.

For more Thanksgiving podcast or online video suggestions, visit PodZinger.

PodZinger recently announced a unique partnership with the Cato Institute, which selected the company to power audio and video search capabilities on its Web site. Cato’s partnership with PodZinger will allow the renowned Washington, DC-based think tank to provide its audience with improved access to information contained in its Web site’s daily podcasts. Specifically, PodZinger will provide audio and video search capabilities for Cato’s Events Podcast, Daily Podcast and the entire library of archived podcasts, enabling users for the first time to easily search the contents of these files for specific topics of interest. Cato joins the growing, diverse network of content creators that are utilizing PodZinger’s innovative technology to increase their contents’ value by enabling users to perform in-depth research of audio and video content.

Cato is a great site for anyone interested in public policy and we encourage people to visit the site and search for the issue that matters the most to them.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 26 million Americans looked to the Internet as a source of news and information during the mid-term election this August, compared to only 21 million during the general election in ’04 and 11 million during the mid-term election in ’02. The increase in online videos and podcasts contributed significantly to this increase.

Online video created a new meaning for mudslinging campaigns, with political staffs airing any humorous event or mistake of their opponent, even skewing footage to slander a challenger. One of the most talked about videos currently is from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which put up a video showing Congressman Harold Ford Jr’s staff “freaking out” while a cameraman follows him. There is speculation that it was a set up by opponent Republican Bob Corker.

Podcasts are a relatively new source for information, but a significant factor driving people who look to the Web for election news. During the mid-term election in ‘02, podcasts were not even avaliable to the public. In 2003, they could only be found on well-known Web sites. By 2006, according to the Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia survey, 11 percent of the U.S. population had listened to a podcast. Some of my favorite podcasts for election coverage include:

Midweek Politics with David Pakman - Politics, news, and current events with heartheissues.com’s David Pakman.

Vote 2006 | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS - Coverage of the 2006 Senate, House and gubernatorial races including analysis from NewsHour’s Political Wrap. Reports on election trends and policy issues, and documentaries from key regions of the United States.

CNN News Update - The latest news happening in the U.S. and around the world.

For more policatical online video and podcast suggestions, visit PodZinger.