How do I get started editing my podcast with GarageBand?

Last year I bought a Mac. It came with GarageBand preinstalled. I’ve used Audacity for years to edit the Inside PR podcast. However, I think it’s time to bite the bullet and give GarageBand a shot.

Audacity is great. But I want to learn a new tool. So that I’m not dependent on a single tool. Because so many other podcasters tell me they use GarageBand, and I want to understand why they like it. And so that I can reassure myself that Audacity has kept up with the times.

So I open up GarageBand and go to the Help files to learn how to use it. Where’s the tutorial? There’s no tutorial! What the heck, Apple?!?!

Yes, there are Help text files and pictures. But they seem to be geared to people who want to produce music. Nothing I can find in the help files really guides me in creating a podcast.

Time to turn to Google and search for “GarageBand tutorials.” Long story short – the Google results are led by Lynda.com tutorials. They’re good. But I don’t really want to purchase a subscription to Lynda.com.

Where else can I turn? YouTube, of course. A quick search on YouTube turns up several tutorials posted by enthusiasts, people who love to create things and publish them to help others.

I find exactly what I’m looking for – thanks to Ryan Palmer. His video, embedded in this post, shows me how to create my audio track, add a musical intro and outro, and export my finished file as an MP3. These are exactly the basics I’m looking for, the things that any podcaster needs to get going.

Ryan helped me with his video – offered freely to me and others. So, what could I do to thank him? Well, this post with the embed to his video is one small way I can say thanks. At the time that I viewed Ryan’s video, it had 11,184 views and 111 recommendations. If you discover this post and watch Ryan’s video and give it a thumbs up – if it gets even one more view, I’ll feel that I’ve given back to him the best kind of thanks I can offer.

So, if you are a podcaster wondering how to get started editing your podcast in GarageBand, watch Ryan’s video. I’m sure you’ll find it useful.

And if you do, think about recommending it to someone else.

Thanks Ryan. Your video was exactly what I needed to get me started in GarageBand. 🙂

How I use 76insights for content marketing

76insights logo76insights gives publishers and marketers insight into how their content is resonating with their audience. It does this through an intuitive user interface that enables them to see patterns in which pieces of content are resonating, on which channels and social networks, and with whom. They can identify specific pieces of content that they want to further share with their audience and click out to the native application or their preferred application such as HootSuite to republish and share.

76insights is very different from any other social media tool that I have seen. And after I’ve described it to people, I often see that they are still puzzled about it.So this weekend, I decided to record a video showing how I use 76insights to do my work as a member of the Thornley Fallis content marketing team.

In this video I demonstrate how I use the analytics dashboard to identify patterns in which of our content was most resonant with our community, to identify who was interacting with that  content, and then to share items that I think will be of interest to one or more of my communities on different social networks.

76 insights is being rolled out by invitation to select content marketers and publishers. If you’re interested in knowing more or even in becoming one of the early adopters, click over to the 76insights site to find out more and, if you’d like, to request an invitation to be an early user.

Disclosure: 76insights has been developed by my colleagues at 76design and I’m proud as punch of what they are creating.

LastPass 3.0: Ensure your passwords are secure

With LastPass 3.0, there’s no excuse for your passwords not to be secure

I’m a big fan of LastPass, the online password manager. I use it to generate and securely store unique passwords for all my online sites and applications. And I can do this from the device of my choice. LastPass offers apps for iOS, Android and the desktop Chrome Browser.

Now, with the release this week of LastPass 3.0, a great tool has become even better. There’s simply no excuse for your passwords not to be secure.

Generate Secure Passwords

LastPass doesn’t just provide me with safe storage for my passwords. It also generates secure passwords for me.

Last Pass Generate 131106

 

The password generator enables me to set the complexity of my passswords – specifying length and the type of characters to be used. And once I’ve generated and applied them, it saves them to my vault. All in one easy operation.

Continue reading…

Google Helpouts: Bring an expert to your desk, kitchen, couch, wherever

Helpout Real People 131105

Can you remember how you obtained answers to questions in the pre-Internet world? You could travel to the local library to find a reference book. Or more likely, you turned to a person you knew and whom you thought might have the information. You would phone them or visit them or if you were lucky find them sitting in the same room as you. Knowledge was transferred person to person.

The Internet placed trust in search engines over people

Then the Internet age dawned and with it search engines. Search engines gave us the ability to find information, answers to questions and solutions to problems as quickly as we could enter a search term into a browser. And when we did, a set of search results would be delivered to our browser. Choose the result we liked or trusted most, and we had our answer.

Information became instantly accessible. But it also became disconnected from the the human source we trusted. In effect, we transferred our trust to the search engine and its algorithm.

Continue reading…

Google Alerts restores RSS Feeds

Google Alerts is a basic research tool for anyone putting together a search of news about a topic. And it has now had one of its most useful features restored – the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of your Alerts results.

Google Alerts RSS Feed Returns highlighted

Delivery of Google Alerts via RSS Feed is restored

This feature had been a long standing part of Google Alerts until Google Reader was phased out last spring. At that time, Google also removed the ability for Alerts users to subscribe to RSS feeds, leaving only email delivery of results.

I don’t know about you, but I try to preserve my email box for one to one interactions. That means finding other ways to receive one to many and other types of notices and news. And by far and away, RSS is my preferred method for this purpose.

So, I was delighted to discover that Google had restored RSS feeds as a delivery mechanism for Alerts.

Thank you Google! You’ve just made yourself even more useful and indispensable.

Want a Google Reader Replacement? Feedly is the hands down popular choice.

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Are you like me, still testing a number of possible Google Reader replacements?

Well, it appears that Feedly is emerging as the popular Reader alternative. TechCrunch reported that Feedly “became the No. 1 news app across all three top mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad and Android) this week. It even climbed into the “Top Overall” section within all three stores.” This follows news that Feedly had picked up over 500,000 new users within days of Google’s announcement that it would shut down Reader.

Are Google Alerts on the Endangered List?

Google Alerts 130324I use Google Alerts to track references to my company and industry. Over time, I’ve noticed that the results have been sporadic and unreliable. I thought it was a problem with the search terms I’d set up. It turns out the problem wasn’t at my end. It’s at Google’s end. I found a Danny Sullivan post from mid-February noting that “It was awesome; but for several weeks, it’s become nearly useless. Google assured Sullivan that they were fixing the problem with alerts. But they didn’t. I’ve seen no change with Google Alerts. It’s continued to miss finding stuff I know it should be locating, Sullivan posted last week. Shortly after that, Mashable noted the same problem and investigated. Their conclusion: “Something definitely seems to be broken with the current Google Alerts system.”

Oh Oh. Is Google lavishing the same indifference on Google Alerts that presaged the shutdown of Reader?

Switching to Chrome? You don't have to give up RSS feeds

Like more and more people, you’ve made the switch to the Chrome browser. But you quickly discover a glaring absence: the basic install does not display the orange RSS icon in the address bar when you are on a site that offers a feed.

Dave Winer reminds us that we don’t have to live without RSS when we use the Chrome Browser. In fact, Google itself publishes an extension that restores the orange RSS button to your browser address bar.

Get the RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) in the Chrome web store. Install it. Subscribe to the content sources that you don’t want to miss.

William Mougayar at Third Tuesday Toronto Storify-ed

William Mougayar shared the story of the founding and development of Engagio with the participants of Third Tuesday Toronto. I’ve storify-ed the highlights of the twitter stream during the event. (This was the second of two presentations William made this week. I also storify-ed the previous night’s presentation at Third Tuesday Ottawa.)

I think you’ll find many quotable nuggets here in both of these streams.

 

[View the story “William Mougayar at Third Tuesday Toronto” on Storify]

William Mougayar at Third Tuesday Toronto

William Mougayar, the founder of Engagio, spoke at Third Tuesday Toronto about how he came up with the idea for Engagio and how it is being developed as a startup. This storify captures the highlights of the tweet stream from attendees at William’s Third Tuesday presentation.

Storified by Joseph Thornley · Thu, Mar 29 2012 08:27:51

Third Tuesday Toronto fills up. Waiting for @wmougayar to take the stage. #3tyyz http://pinterest.com/pin/268879040223009835/Joseph Thornley
Third tuesday toronto: william mougayar discusses becoming a social media entrepreneur #3tyyzkate
Thanx to the sponsors at Third Tuesday #3tyyz http://pic.twitter.com/FypWihRqElizabeth Correia
Startups are a series of "brick walls" you have to go through, says @wmougayar #3tyyzHolly Bacchus
My favourite phase of a startup: Wiggles of hope 😉 #3TYYZKing Siu
Building is a start up is like having a blurry vision. #3TYYZJorge Lee
According to @wmougayar, u are more likely to see success with a restaurant than a start up. #3tyyzLaurinda Shaver
A great turnout for @wmougayar at third Tuesday Toronto #3tyyz talking about @engagio http://pinterest.com/pin/268879040223009941/Joseph Thornley
Having a blurry vision of the future is key to a start up. Christopher Columbus didn’t google America before he found it – @wmougayar #3tyyzHolly Bacchus
@wmougayar behind many successes, there’s a lot of failures #3TYYZJorge Lee
Angry birds was their 52nd game before they got it right #Learnfromyourfailures – W. Mougayar #3TYYZKing Siu
"if u polish shit, it still won’t shine." -@wmougayar #3tyyzLaurinda Shaver
Relationships don’t matter. Trusted relationships do. – says @wmougayar #3tyyzFarah Ng
Conversations is the new information. Intelligence lives inside social discussions. #3tyyzLaurinda Shaver
Behind all comments and conversations is potential connection #3tyyzAIMS Canada
Form relationships by tracking your conversations on #sm @wmougayar #3tyyzTabitha David
layers of social web cake from top to bottom monitor/listen,sharing/liking, replying/commenting via @wmougayar #3TYYZJorge Lee
Actually replying on the social web (creating convos) takes you above the "noise" of just reading, "liking", linking: @wmougayar #3tyyzHolly Bacchus
Listening to @wmougayar talking about his entrepreneurial journey #3tyyz. His latest startup @engagio was conceived on @fredwilson’s blogDavid Feldt
Engagio became a viable product after 8 weeks via @wmougayar #3TYYZJorge Lee
"The way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things." Paul (didn’t type fast enough to get last name) #3tyyzLaurinda Shaver
"we made @engagio look & feel very similar to Gmail in case Google wants to buy us out!" @wmougayar #3tyyzLaurent Magloire
Engagio let’s you follow a user on all social profiles in one click says CEO #3tyyzkate
here’s @engagio’s @wmougayar doing his thing at #3tyyz http://pic.twitter.com/1uU4W46GApril Dunford
I want this now. Getting demo of @engagio creates a universal mailbox for all your social interactions. Simply like gmail. #3tyyzAIMS Canada
@wmougayar showing engagio at #3TYYZ http://pic.twitter.com/y9gNNVIbJorge Lee
Getting a demo of @Engagio, am I seeing the future of #SocialEngagement right now? #3TYYZKing Siu
Engagio. #3tyyz http://www.engag.io/welcomeAndrea T
#3tyyz the @engagio tech stack -ruby on rails… Solar for indexing, bootstrap twitter…Rob Tyrie
Engagio will be available on iPhone using html5 via @wmougayar #3tyyzJorge Lee
Words of wisdom! Spoken by William Mougayar #3tyyz http://pic.twitter.com/qcMxzEH0Elizabeth Correia
Thank you to the sponsors who make #3tyyz possible: @Rogers, @CNWGroup, @Cision, @Radian6, @ciraJoseph Thornley
Sketchnotes: @wmougayar (@engagio) at Third Tuesday Toronto (#3tyyz) http://sachachua.com/blog/2012/03/sketchnotes-william-mougayar-engagio-at-third-tuesday-toronto/ (cc @thornley)Sacha Chua
Amazing & Thx! “@sachac: Sketchnotes: @wmougayar (@engagio) at Third Tuesday Toronto (#3tyyz) http://sachachua.com/blog/2012/03/sketchnotes-william-mougayar-engagio-at-third-tuesday-toronto/ (cc @thornley)”Engagio
Great learning @ #3tyyz last night with @wmougayar about @engagio Crafting meaningful conversations out of the social media chaos swirl.Heather Leigh Mundle