Paper Requirements and Project Due Dates

Your technology paper should meet the following requirements:

• At least 5 full pages of text
• double-spaced
• 1" margins
• Times New Roman
• Bibliography
• At least five non-blog sources
• Do not use Wikipedia as a source
• Title page with title and author's name
• Paper is worth 8% of your final grade

Paper is due in class at 3:00 p.m. Monday, December 3.

Other due dates:

Podcast #6 is due on eLearning or on a CD under my office door by 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 28.
The iTunes University podcast is due on eLearning or on a CD under my office door by 5:00 p.m. December 7.

Let me know if you have questions. Have a good Thanksgiving!

Adding a Custom Icon to the Address Bar

One of your colleagues asked about replacing the Blogger icon on the address bar with your own icon.

Here's one of the better articles (please read the article before implementing this)

http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2007/04/18/how-to-make-your-blog-stand-out-add-a-favicon-to-blogger/

The key here is that you are using XML rather than straight HTML.

The information for this goes in the head section of the document. Here's what the code looks like.

<link href="http://www.mattwardman.com/favicon.ico" rel="icon" type="image/ico" /><link href='"http://www.mattwardman.com/favicon.ico" rel='"shortcut icon" type="image/ico" />

Notice the end / in each tag us outside the " marks. This means it is actually closing the tag. Without it, it will not work. Also, if you cut and paste, you need to make sure that the quotation marks paste correctly.

• "icon" refers to the icon in the address bar and tab
• "shortcut icon" refers to the icon that shows up in your bookmarks

Make sure you read the article--don't just start messing with your template.

Blogger allows you to save a backup of your template. I encourage you to do this BEFORE you start editing it.

To get to the point that you can use the above code in Blogger, you will need to go into Customize | Template | Edit HTML

Find the tag and then paste the code (with links to your icons in it) on the next line. Make sure you don't over right anything.

New Media and Education

As radio emerged as a tool for broadcasting in the early 1920s, educational institutions began setting up stations. In many cases, the institutions used the stations to deliver educational material rather than just teach about the new medium. The idea of radio as an educational tool was actively promoted and supported by the United States Office of Education (now the Department of Education), which developed both scripts and recorded programs for educational institutions--it created over 700 programs between 1936 and 1940 alone. Educators similarly touted television as educational tool and a number of colleges of have offered course via that medium. Not surprisingly, educators are now using the Web as a way to deliver courses and course material.

Online courses are not new. Faculty have, with varying degrees of success put syllabi, PowerPoints, and other course material online. Products like Blackboard, WebCT (which have merged), and Texas Tech's own eLearning have attempted to make the process easier. Social networking tools such as MySpace have also been co-opted as educational tools

Other products, have tried to replicate the classroom itself in the virtual world in a synchronous (everyone meeting at the same time) mode. One option for this is a MOO (Multi-user domain, Object-Oriented), a text-based virtual reality system that was originally developed for role playing games, but was rather quickly adopted as an educational tool. Internet-based video-conferencing classrooms go back to at least the mid-1990s and the program CU-SeeMe, which allowed faculty to meet with multiple students to using Webcams.

More recently, many educators have returned to the radio model of education and have begun posting their lectures on iTunes--take a look at the offerings in iTunes University for Texas Tech and other colleges. The idea of interactivity, however, is strong. One option that faculty are now exploring is Second Life. If you haven't been to Second Life yet, you should take a look at the homepage. Options include creating virtual worlds as well as building virtual campuses. Check out EDTech Island and see what the folks at Linden have to say about options for educators.

What are your thoughts on new media and education? In your post, I would like you to address a)have you had classes with new media components? b)if so, describe what you liked and what you didn't like c)having looked at Second Life a bit, explain why you think it is a good or a bad environment for learning.

For class, be prepared to discuss the above questions as well as your ideas on how you think new media could be better used in education.

Embedding YouTube Video (not a discussion topic)

Some of you may be interested in embedding video (or other media) in your blog. There are a couple of ways to do this. The first is to use the built in video player in Blogger that you can find when you are using the customize blog option. This will pop the video up at the top of your blog when the user plays it. The problem is that this may not be what you want to do.

A second option is to use the embed code that YouTube gives you, which looks something like this:

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wuZc8B9AdFw&rel=1"></param><paramhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfwvb5mw_61gth58z# Publish name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wuZc8B9AdFw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

It comes out looking like this:









Here's the problem with that, while it works well for the main blog (and you want to make sure you copy it into your blog entry in HTML mode), it does not work well in a sidebar where you need a smaller version. Here's another video (it's on the right hand bar as well), with the code modified--I cut all the dimensions in half. Note that you have to tweak the numbers in the <object> tag and in the <embed> tag. I also added an extra paragraph tag at the beginning to bump the video down a bit and a <center> tag so that the video sits in the center of the page.

<p></p><center><object width="212" height="177"><param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Uaw2CdjU3c&rel=1" name="movie"/><param value="transparent" name="wmode"/><embed width="212" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Uaw2CdjU3c&rel=1" wmode="transparent" height="177" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></center>

Handy isn't it? This also means that if you are putting your video podcasts on YouTube you can embed them directly into your blog.

Speaking of video, if you want to use images in Garageband, but are unsure how to do it, check out my podcast offering for this week. It's a bit simplistic, but should work. In an ideal world, I would have used a screen recorder, which I think is going to be included in Leopard, the new version of OSX due out shortly.

See you in class.

New Media and Politics (for discussion in class)

On a July evening in 2003, over 100 people attended a meeting at a brew pub in Alexandria, Virginia to support Howard Dean's candidacy for president of the United States. Normally, a meeting like that would not be merit inclusion in a national paper. Yet, USA Today found the meeting worth writing about as part of their article "Online, off and running: Web a new campaign front." The reporters pointed out that the meeting was newsworthy on three accounts. First, it was set up using the social networking site Meetup.com. Second, the social networking-based meeting was being replicated in over 300 cities nationwide. Finally, all of the sessions shared a member-generated project, writing to potential voters in the upcoming Iowa primary. Dean's campaign was clearly ahead of the curve for mobilizing people using the Web. His bid for the democratic nomination, was not, however, successful. He did not fair well in the primaries and his campaign imploded in part due to the Web and his infamous "Dean Scream" following the Iowa Primary. The scream quickly began circulating online. It was reused, remixed, and repurposed (okay, I couldn't resist the alliteration)--it was even added to Dramatic Prairie Dog. This is in addition to being parodied on television.

The 2004 election was not, however, the first time the Internet had played a role in a national election. According to the USA Today article mentioned above, Jerry Brown used email to help with fund raising in 1992 and credits former professional wrestler Jessie Ventura's 1998 election as governor of Minnesota to the Internet. By the 2004 presidential campaign, the Web and the Internet were clearly playing a major role in politics. Of the$36 million John Kerry's campaign raised in June 2004, $12 million came from online donors. Overall, 80% of donors age 18-34 donated online. As the 2008 campaign moves into high gear, the candidates are clearly taking advantage of the Web, and particularly Web 2.0. Senator Hillary Clinton, and most others running for president, maintains both office and campaign Web sites as well as sites on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, flickr, and eons. Visitors and supporters are encouraged to start their own blogs, buy Hillary paraphanaelia, watch "HillCast" (see the video section), and of course contribute. Having visited the Clinton campaign site (and using her site as an example should be construed as an endorsement), check out the sites of the some of the other candidates. Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul is seen by some pundits as this year's Howard Dean (in a positive sense), leveraging the Web, and particularly Web 2.0 technologies, to garner national attention, though not, as you will see in the article, without some criticism.

Even the debates have taken a Web 2.0 turn, particularly through YouTube's YouChoose channel. The Democratic debate on YouTube was met with mixed reviews. The Republican debate is scheduled on November 28. Even Second Life has become a political venue with virtual offices staffed by volunteers and the occasional virtual appearance by candidates--not to mention the virtual defacement of virtual campaign offices.

Needless to say, blogs are playing an increasing role in the campaigns, as are podcasts. If you have any doubt about podcasts, just do a search on iTunes--in fact do a search on iTunes and report back on what you find. Pick a couple to listen to. Wondering about blogs? Etalkinghead provides a great list of blogs sorted by type. The question is, of course, how and if this will change the political scene. If you took EM&C 3300, you may remember some discussion on cybercascades--the idea that sites dedicated to a cause tend to only link to sites that have similar views. People both in and outside of academia have raised a concern that blogs and the Web in may lead to a fragmentation of American society, others have argued that while the bloggers may make a difference, they tend to follow rather than lead. So what do you think? How do you see the move to new media campaign tools changing politics in the United States and why do you think it is changing or not changing? Is it something we should be worried about? Is there a direction you think we should be heading in but are not?

*Apologies for not having flyovers in this weeks blog. Google Docs quit working as I was finished this and I had to relink everything again.

Need a copy of your RSS file for iTunes (RSSI)?

Right click on the link for your feed and save the file. The link in the iTunes list doesn't work because it is an itpc link rather than HTML

• EMAC 4300 Podcast (iTunes)
• Kristen Augelli's Podcast (iTunes)


• Max Bhakta's Podcast (iTunes)
• Jacqueline Garza's Podcast (iTunes)
• Lauryn Lecuyer's Podcast (iTunes)
• Matt Lopez's Podcast (iTunes)
• Patrick Moreland's Podcast (iTunes)
• Ron Oswalt's Podcast (iTunes)
• Justin Ramirez's Podcast (iTunes)
• Mickey Savage's Podcast (iTunes)
• Zach Tijerina's Podcast (iTunes)

Let me know if you have questions.

Web 2.0 (this will be discussed in class)

(pay attention to the mouse overs)

What is Web 2.0? We tend to throw the term around a lot, but can we actually define it? The designation 2.0 indicates an entirely new version, not just an incremental upgrade to the existing system. Wikipedia, itself often considered a Web 2.0 product, says that Web 2.0

"refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. The term became popular following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web." (all links are from the original Wikipedia article)

Internet pundit Tim O'Reilly describes Web 2.0 in part as "The Web as Platform,"--the Web page is actually an application. Some of these applications, such as Google Docs, which I am using to write my post right now, are clearly applications. By the way, the handy little rollovers you see when you mouse over the links on this post are created in Google Docs, which includes a word processor that can post directly to Blogger and other blog accounts. Other "Web 2.0" products include many of the social networking sites people use, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and many others. The intelligent ads, Adsense developed by Google are also part of this transition. Many of these products rely on user created content, be it content a user physically creates or content that the user finds. Example of the latter would be Digg and Slashdot. One of the things that makes Web 2.0 intriguing to me, and others, is that so many of the technologies can be tied into each other. For example, I'm writing this in Google Docs, posting it to Blogger, and if I wanted to, I could embed the YouTube video clips I've linked to directly into my Blogger page.

The technology behind many of the technologies is Ajax, Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Wikipedia's article on Ajax is worth reading over. If you are planning to work in new media, you've got to at least know what the term means and the basics of what's going on.

Several people have tried to put the ideas of Web 2.0 into short video. Michael Welsh, a professor at Kansas State University posted a short video early this year which tried to define the idea of Web 2.0. You can also read a transcript of an early version. He's not alone, here's another short video, based in part on the Wikipedia article, describing Web 2.0.

Not surprisingly, there are podcasts that are geared specifically to Web 2.0 issues. The Web 2.0 Show discusses many of the Web 2.0 technologies and products, as well as providing interviews with a variety of people involved in the industry. Episode 1 includes an interview with the founder of Wordpress, a blogging tool/site, and a discussion of what Web 2.0 is. It's also an example of how to use a blog/Web site to support a podcast. Note the subscribe options on the page. You might also check out the Web 2.0 Summit podcasts on iTunes--no I don't expect you to listen to all of them, but it's worth listening to at least one (or part of one). While you are in iTunes, see what else you can find on technology and Web 2.0.

By the time you've finished reading this entry AND have gone through the links inside of it, you should be forming an opinion as to what Web 2.0 is. I'd like to hear your version of what Web 2.0 is, as well as find out what your favorite Web 2.0 products are. So, in the comments section, tell me what you think Web 2.0 is and what your favorite apps are.

Oh, and don't forget, at least one or two of you are supposed to be presenting a podcast series in class....

Thoughts on blogs and podcasts and exporting for the iPod

Here are some thoughts on the blogs and the podcasts:

1. Find ways to get listener to use both your blog and your podcast
2. Make sure you provide links on the blog to any Web addresses you mention directly on the podcast
3. Consider looking for some intro music other then the music in Garage Band
4. Be careful about natural sound in the background of the interview, make sure it isn't too jarring and be ready to fade in/out or add some separating sounds to make the audio flow--much like watching for jump cuts in video
5. The text you use for linking to your podcasts should be descriptive
6. Create a button specifically for your podcast--think about it as a promotional tool
7. Pay attention to your audio levels, make sure they are consistent throughout the podcast
8. Before using the equipment for an actual interview, run a test interview with a friend so you know how close you need to be to the microphone
9. Make sure the colors scheme on your blog doesn't pose a usability/accessibility problem, watch for text that does not have enough contrast with the background and/or text that can be difficult to read--large blocks of text on a black background, particularly red text (here's a tool to see what the colors look like)
   

Getting your podcast ready for the iPod:

If you are using Avid or iMovie, the process is straightforward. In iMovie, use the share menu and select the iPod option. In Avid, use the export option and select "iPod." If you are using another program you will want to read through the podcast article from Apple to get the settings. Preparing the video for YouTube is covered here. I have found a couple of articles on this as well including "How to upload a video to YouTube," "Upload video to YouTube from your mobile," a blog entry called "Best Way to Upload Video to YouTube on a Mac," and an article called "Help-Key: How to Optimize Your Video for YouTube."

Requirements for the Podcasts

I'm in the process of reviewing the podcasts for this week and will have feedback for you in class on Monday. Here are the general guidelines for the podcasts from here on out

• Script/outline - this does not need to be word for word for what you record, but you've got to do it before you start recording. Preparing it before you go into the studio will save you a tremendous amount of time in the studio. One of the students commented that preparing the script ahead of time meant that he could record the spoken part of the podcast in one take.
• Natural sound and/or interviews - your podcast should include one or both of these. The podcast should not just sound like you sat down in front of the computer and began recording. Even an instructional piece can incorporate some natural sound.
• Time: 5-10 minutes.
• Format:
  Audio- MP3 and/or M4A: Remember not everyone can play the M4A format
  Video- MOV or M4V: We will be talking about converting video to iPod and YouTube formats next class.

If you need a video converter for the Mac, checkout handbreak. I'll look for some other options as well for both platforms.

See you Monday!

An introduction (sort of) to YouTube

Have I used YouTube before? Sure, we all have. I’ve used it to provide material for class--what better way to introduce a unit on the telegraph to a lecture class than Monty Python’s “Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights"? Where else are you going to find the Volkswagon advertisement with the suicide bomber that caused so much controversy right before class? It's been handy for those moments when I've been debating the lyrics to a song such as the "Merry Minuet" by the now somewhat obscure group, the Kingston Trio (dang they took down the concert video, must have been a copyright issue--at least I can still see a clip from the first Grateful Dead show I went to). It's been handy for those odd skills you want to learn like using chromakey or lockpicking. You can look for the latest on your choice of political candidates in the section called YouChoose. You can even find people who will offer you a guided tour of YouTube.

As you wander through YouTube, you'll notice that there are a basic set of categories you can choose from as well as "channels," which work suspiciously like a podcast. Oh, and some of the material may be less than safe for work, though YouTube does have a set of guidelines for submitting video. Oone of the big no-nos is copyright infringement, not surprising given the Viacom-Google lawsuit (and here ). Google, is of course, YouTube's parent company. There are other lawsuits out there as well, one of the most recent is from recording artist Prince. One of YouTube's attempts to tackle the copyright issue has been to limit the length of videos to ten minutes, not that people haven't been known to upload individual segments. YouTube has also gotten in trouble with the Thai government for a video that insulted the king, resulting in the Thai government blocking access to YouTube for several months.

Not everyone is upset over the repurposing of material. In an interview with Wired magazine, CBS President Leslie Moonves argued "If there's a one-minute clip of CSI, or user-generated clips like different shots of David Caruso taking off his glasses, that's great promotion. If they were showing a whole episode of CSI and we weren't getting paid, we'd object." He added that he was in favor of multiple delivery platforms "They're all good. We don't care how you get our content — over the air, over cable, satellite, the Internet, or on your cell phone — as long as we get paid for it."

One of the keys to operations such as YouTube is finding a way to make them profitable. The most common way is through advertising, YouTube is not exception. They have tried a couple of options including banner ads above the videos and a translucent banner over the bottom of the video. Rather than making this a requirement for videos, YouTube has elected to work with select video partners. The goal is to link the ads to the video content, much like Google does with its search engine. YouTube is not only one hoping to make money through advertising, the difference is that outside companies are trying to use viral ads and product placement. Imomus of Wired worries that this may change the nature of user-created content on YouTube.

"Put these developments together and a rather sobering -- and strangely exciting -- idea emerges: We're all involved in the future of advertising. Anyone with a video blog is, potentially, just one irresistible offer away from becoming a corporate stooge, a sock puppet, a product placer, an astroturfer, a shill. An industry that once confined itself to Madison Avenue is now operating from your town, your street, your bedroom. It's using your voice, your sex appeal, your mannerisms. If you can grab eyeballs, it'll pay for them."

My personal concern is the amount time I find myself spending on YouTube when I start looking for something. This blog cost me at least a couple of hours that I'll never get back. Did I really need to learn about Dramatic Prairie, where the original clip came from, or how many other people have repurposed the video? Oh, and here's what I was originally looking for, how to prepare your video for YouTube, and strange to say, I couldn't find a decent YouTube clip on the process.

What are your thoughts on YouTube? Make sure you read through the links for class.

Even more on RSS feeds or, things I hate about Blogger

If you are in my class, you know that RSS feeds have been more than a little vexing this semester. I spent some time looking around on the Blogger forums and FAQs. What I think I've discovered is that there is a know issue with Blogger doing exactly what it seems to be doing in class--not letting go of the(explicative deleted) RSS feed. The simple, though inelegant solution to this is use standard links for the adding the podcast to the page. But wait you say, I though RSS was important! It still is. The iTunes RSS feed discussed in the last post generally won't work with programs outside of iTunes, after all, the XML tags have "iTunes" in them, so you'll want to include another RSS option for them. I've linked to the one I've set up for mine on the right side of the page. I've also included a link to a button creator. Well, on to the next topic...preparing a list of podcasts for the class to listen to. Don't forget to check the blog for changes, or better yet, subscribe to the blog using the Atom link at the bottom of the page.

Creating the subscription button (revised)

One of the things you will want to do for your blog is to give your visitors the option to subscribe to your blog via iTunes. Here's an example of what that might look like:

Click below to subscribe to the podcasts for this class using iTunes.

EMAC 4300 Podcast

Here's the code behind it:

<p>Click below to subscribe to the podcasts
for this class using iTunes.</p>

<p><a href="
itpc://podcaster.mcom.ttu.edu/eyoungblood/rssi.xml"><img alt="subscribe button" src="http://www.depts.ttu.edu/masscom/images/subscribe.png" height="36" width="109" />EMAC 4300 Podcast</a></p>

An important thing to note here is the use of itpc://. This is the iTunes protocol and is used to launch iTunes. Both the image (imgsrc) and rssi.xml are located on a server outside blogger. You'll notice that a href includes the text as well as the image. You can use jut the image if you move the closing A to the end of the image. You can also create your own subscription button and include it with your files (or host it on your own Web site) and do away with the text entirely. If you decide to use just an image, make sure you include the ALT tag information.

For more information on RSS feeds and podcasting, see the links section on the right hand side of the page and Atomic Learning (http://movies.atomiclearning.com/highed/highed). Atomic Learning will go through the rss feeds, but will often be using a tool to help create the rssi.xml file. In particular, you should look at the following episodes:

The item's publication date - 18011
The iTunes duration element - 18013
The iTunes Preview Pane - 18022
Categories and the image channel element -18005
Creating an Item element - 18007
The enclosure item - 18009
Manually updating a podcast's feed - 17976
The basic channel elements - 18002
The enclosure's unique identifier element - 18010
The iTunes item category element - 18012
Basics of RSS feeds - the channel - 18001

The username and password are on the syllabus which can be downloaded from eLearning if you have misplaced your copy. There are a number of other tutorials on Atomic Learning on various aspects of podcasting.

Here's the link for the regular RSS feed.

EMAC 4300 Podcast (RSS)

<p><a href="http://podcaster.mcom.ttu.edu/eyoungblood/rss.xml"><img alt="subscribe button" src="http://podcaster.mcom.ttu.edu/eyoungblood/4300button.gif" width="109" />

EMAC 4300 Podcast (RSS)</a></p>

Creating RSS files (revised)

It's time to get your blog and podcast linked. The key to this is RSS (Real Simple Syndication). RSS feeds let the end user check to see if you have anything new on your Web site. BlipTV has a nice discussion of how this works for the end user.

The key to RSS is setting up an XML document. You'll be setting up two types RSS files for your podcast, one for to create a list of your podcast files for use in a Web browser and the second so that someone can subscribe to your podcast using iTunes. Denis Sureau offers a nice discussion of the specific parts of a standard RSS feed. You'll want to make sure you use RSS 2.0.* If you want to check your RSS feed to make sure it is error free, open the XML file you created it Firefox--it has a debug feature.

A regular RSS feed and the feed you use for an iTunes subscription are a bit different. Standard RSS is transmitted using HTTP, while the RSS feed you use for iTunes uses ITPC. Creating content for iTunes also gives you the ability to add more metadata to your RSS document.

Here's the RSS feed I'm using for people that want to subscribe to my podcast using iTunes. You'll notice a tag that begins with . This is a remark tag and allows me to leave notes to you in the code explaining what things do. Hopefully it will help.

<?xml version= "1.0" encoding= "UTF-8"?>

<!-- This code is commented to help explain which section does what. Comments describe the code below them -->

<!-- Some of the text is from the Apple web site http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html-->

<!--this file does not contain all possible iTunes tags-->

<!-- rss xmlns - points to a document that defines what each of the iTunes tags-->

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version= "2.0">

<channel>

<!-- Time before the feed refreshes in minutes-->

<ttl>60</ttl>

<!-- The name of the podcast series that shows up in the Podcast column-->

<title>Adventures in EMAC</title>

<!-- website link and arrow in Name column-->

<link>http://www.depts.ttu.edu/masscom/programs/emac/index.php</link>

<language>en-us</language>

<!-- copyright information is not visible in iTunes 2217 is phonographic rights and A9 is the copyright symbol-->

<copyright>&#x2117; &amp; &#xA9; 2007 College of Mass Communications, Texas Tech University</copyright>

<!-- Text in the Description column-->

<itunes:subtitle>EMAC 4300</itunes:subtitle>

<!-- Text in the Artist column -->

<itunes:author>Ed Youngblood</itunes:author>

<!--when the circled i in Description column is clicked in the iTunes store-->

<itunes:summary>Podcast for students in EMAC 4300</itunes:summary>

<!-- similar to above, but describes the RSS channel-these two should probably be the same-->

<description> Podcast for students in EMAC 4300.</description>

<!-- This is a section and is composed of two tags which designate the name and email address of the person or persons associated with the podcast-->

<itunes:owner>

<itunes:name>College of Mass Communications, Texas Tech University</itunes:name>

<itunes:email>ed.youngblood@ttu.edu</itunes:email>

</itunes:owner>

<!-- The location of the album art-->

<itunes:image href="http://www.depts.ttu.edu/masscom/images/masscommofficiallogo.jpg" />

<!-- Category column and in iTunes Music Store Browse-->

<itunes:category text="Education">

<itunes:category text="Higher Education"/>

</itunes:category>

<itunes:category text="Mass Communications"/>

<!-- An individual podcast item-->

<item>

<!-- Title of the podcast episode that shows up in the Podcast column-->

<title>Adventures in EMAC Vol. 1</title>

<itunes:author>Ed Youngblood</itunes:author>

<!-- Text in the Description column-->

<itunes:subtitle>EMAC 4300 Vol. 1</itunes:subtitle>

<!--when the circled i in Description column is clicked in the iTunes store-->

<itunes:summary></itunes:summary>

<!-- Location of the audio or video file-See Apple link above for more file type information. Length is total number of bytes. In thisw case 2.9MB. See total bytes in file infor-->

<enclosure url="itpc://youngblood.mcom.ttu.edu/~nyoungbl/emac4300_1.mp3" length="2946723" type="audio/mpeg" />

<pubDate>Monday, September 11, 2007, 21:00:00 GMT</pubDate>

<!-- Length of podcast in hours:minutes:seconds-->

<itunes:duration>3:04</itunes:duration>

<!-- Searchable but not visable-->

<itunes:keywords>Mass Communications</itunes:keywords>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

There is a link to the rssi.xml file under related links on the right hand side of the page. We will go over this in class in more detail--all the bugs should be worked out at this point. We will add somethings to this in the future.

Next up: Adding the various RSS options into Blogger!

* A word of caution on the Wikipedia entry. It's got a nice discussion of RSS 2.0, but is missing part of a line of code to validate correctly.

Welcome to the EMAC 4300 Blog

Hi, and welcome to the blog for EMAC 4300, Producing for New Media. For the next three months or so, I'll be posting podcasts, vodcasts, and blog entries for the students in my class and anyone else who stops by. Some of the entires will deal with tools and Web sites that may prove helpful for those interested in creating content for podcasts and blogs. Other entries will lay the groundwork for in-class discussion of some of the issues related to new media, including links to other blogs and podcasts--after all, isn't that part of what this is all about ? I'll also be posting links to my students' podcast. Each of them will be producing a six-episode series of themed podcasts this semester and blogging about the series. Watch for the links to be posted. The student podcasts begin the week of September 17th. All the podcasts will also be available on Texas Tech's iTunes University. Leave a note if you drop by.