On Free Podcast Hosting Sites

I'm not impressed. True, the for-pay versions might not be any better, but the free ones have left me unimpressed.

My brother recommended Switchpod. It says 450MB for free unlimited transfers. For a little extra you can remove ads from your web page. Then you register and, "welcome, you have 250MB to play with." Huh? What about the 450MB? And how hard should it be to upload a 30MB mp3 file? Pretty hard. It has failed twice.

Other sites offer archiving... that is, you get 100MB per month of fast access space, then your old episodes are "archived" to slower access storage. The storage is unlimited, but the download transfers are limited. So, hopefully your podcast won't get too popular. Huh? OK I can live with that for starters, the only problem is the sites don't work that well.

Take Libsyn.com for example. Liberated Syndication. They have this cool feature called the "Sandbox." You login: sandbox, with password: sandbox, and presto! you're able to test out their system. Only problem is, it isn't too hot. Images fall off the page. Setting the look/feel of the web page didn't work for me. Uploading a podcast file ... got uploaded, but then I wasn't able to do anything with it. Not impressed.

So, what about MyPodcast.com? Looked good. Nice clean web pages. Player right on the page, with option to download and many options for subscribing. Comments. A place for adding links. Now the down-side. They embed an audio ad in each of your podcasts... that's maybe OK if they are just advertising the free podcast hosting, but it's probably more than that. The on-screen player didn't seem to work... it worked once, but that was it.

Then there is podserver.info/. Doesn't accept Yahoo e-mail accounts. Maybe that's a good thing, but I didn't want to give my other personal e-mail, so had to set up a Gmail account. OK...

So, I continue to search and ponder the $4/month option.

Update:

Finally went with GoDaddy, bought a URL and use a service called Quick Blogcast. Works fairly well. Still thinking about going into my own website.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Sources:

Is the State Secrets Privilege Legitimate?

With the state secrets privilege making headlines, its worth looking back at where it came from.

Associated Press reporter, Pamela Hess, writes:

The principle was established a half-century ago when, ruling in a wrongful-death case brought by the widows of civilians killed in a military plane crash, the Supreme Court upheld the Air Force's refusal to provide an accident report to the plaintiffs. The government contended releasing the document would compromise information about a secret mission and intelligence equipment.

But she ends it there. Further investigation reveals that the deaths might have been wrongful, which was the only secret being hidden by the State. According to Answers.com

In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and it was found that the argument was fraudulent, and there was no secret information. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case.

The state secrets doctrine becomes illegitimate when we loose trust in the Government (i.e., the executive branch). We have good cause to lack trust in the Government. Another example from the AP article follows:

a federal judge in Virginia last week ordered the government to give trial prosecutors, defense lawyers and her clerk security clearances to review classified material in a terrorism case. Defense lawyers say the material will show the government failed to turn over evidence obtained by illegally monitoring their client's communications, and they want a new trial. The government says the information is protected by the state secrets privilege.

In that example, we see evidence that attorney-client privilege is unraveling, while the state secrets privilege is tightening.

It's called the State Secrets "Privilege;" it's not a right, and the current government has lost it's privilege. We need to use the checks and balances, which partly define our democracy, and require judicial review of all specific Government claims of this privilege.

Sources:

Associated Press, Challenges brew over 'state secrets', Pamela Hess, November 26, 2007.