Category: Podcasting

I put together a longer promotional audio file for Missionary Talks last night. It can be used for podcasts that simply want a longer promo. But primarily I put it together for another podcaster who has a show specifically highlighting other shows. He plays these longer promotional files as a service. Ok, he calls it an Endless Ego Cavalcade, so maybe it is not such a service to the podcasters as much as it is a chance for other podcasters to get a big head and play their promo.

However you want to see it, the promo is available at Missionary Talks and can be used however you will.

Missionary Talks number 16 is up. I took a week off last week, not because I needed the time off, but because I did not have anyone to interview. Things are going in my favor at the moment though. Yesterday I went to a church service where I knew they were starting a missions conference and I knew they had a special speaker. I was thrilled to find out that he spoke English. It was all arranged for me to interview him this morning. I had posted on the Missionary Talks website that I was wanting to have a new show on Monday, but that was without having any idea who I was going to get.

Right now I am in contact with a missionary in Ukraine. I may be interviewing him in the morning. I think I have a good chance of getting a friend in Brazil on the line with me. France and Argentina are in my sites too. I could be coming out of my famine for the moment. I started with several interviews piled up and quickly ran out of those and was working from week to week. That caught up to haunt me. But, if things go well, I will have a week or two buffer to work with. I will feel much better about that.

This interview is with Marco Castro. No relation. He is a native of Costa Rica who is pastoring Hispanics in Kansas City. He has been there as pastor almost 20 years. He really shows a Pastor’s heart in his interview. Bro. Castro has traveled to many countries teaching other men and women how to disciple and build up the next generation of church leaders.

I guess I am getting better at asking questions. I am having to edit much less than I used to, but feel like the shows are getting tighter and more succinct.

Thanks for listening. Subscribe through the RSS feed, through iTunes or through a host of other feed choices that I have on the right hand side of the Missionary Talks site. Don’t forget to vote through Podcast Alley and, finally, Digg the show.

Yesterday I had something disturbing take place, that as I dug further, I realized it was not a new phenomenon. I downloaded some new podcasts, but could not find them in my iTunes smart playlist that I have set up for them.

My playlist is set to give me all podcasts that have never been fully listened to (“genre is podcast, playcount is 0”). Then I have iTunes delete all podcasts when the playcount reaches 1. This keeps me from filling up my hard drive and iPod with old episodes that I am sure never to go back and hear. If I need the episode for some reason, I can always re-download it.

But, I discovered that a couple of the new podcasts I have subscribed to have their genre marked as Comedy, Speech or other such logical name. While the genre might be appropriate, it breaks my playlist. Looking back, I found there were some other podcast episodes that I missed listening to because they had a different genre plugged in. Some were from podcasts that I normally hear, but for some reason changed their genre to something else briefly.

While the podcasting community certainly does not have no build their ID3 tags around my playlist, it does seem appropriate to mark a podcast as such. What would be nice is to be able to have multiple genre tags so that the show can be marked as a podcast and as another appropriate genre.

What’s your thoughts? Does anyone care about this besides me?