Today’s podcast is about the first year of Mac 20 Questions and a bit about what I plan for the show in the second year.
Well it has been one year and a couple of days with the Mac20Q blog and podcast
It has morphed into a whole series of podcasts called 20 Questions

Last year when I started the podcast I was bashing out a podcast nearly every other day in order to build up a catalogue of podcasts for listeners to find when the arrived at the site and I kept up a fairly frantic pace through most of the year, only slowing down when I was working during the summer in the camp site reception.

I have had good feed back and great following from quite a few people during the year and each podcast at the moment has about 200 downloads in the first 30 days but keeps on getting downloaded after that. The most popular people like the photographer Steve Carty from Canada has been listened to 984 times at this moment and there are quite a few like the Rob Hanson, Adam Christianson and Don MacAllister episodes which have been downloaded more than 700 times.

The podcast still has not reached the critical mass and gone viral but I believe it will given time. I keep the Apple rumour mongering to nil if I can. I only ramble for about 5 mins at the start of the podcast and I like to make the podcast about the person that is the Mac user or the film maker or the photographer.

Creativity is what interests me and even the lowliest Mac user gets doing some creative things with his or her Mac because that is what Macs are so good at. It is no surprise that some of the Mac interviews have been able to be re packaged and sent out in Photo20Q or Video 20Q or Writers 20 Q

Give a donation to the Haiti Fund

So the other monetary comment for me to make now is about donations, as in donation ware like you have with software. Other podcasters work with this model so I put up a donation button. Someone will use it one day I expect, although if cash is short and you are thinking that you would rather give to a charity than pay for what I am giving away for free anyway – then the desperate people of Haiti have a better claim to the money right now.

My aim still is to be a professional podcaster and seeing as other people have got there then I should be able to also. Persistence and loving what I do should win the day eventually. Compared to a bricks and mortar business where you could see 3 to five years before your business starts to see a profit – being a podcaster is not at all bad in the scheme of things.

It has been a good year for Mac 20 Questions and looking towards the second year I expect things to get even better. Video20Q is really taking off and thats exciting, Writers 20 Q has also been great with having best selling authors like David Hewson on the show and successful audio book podcasters like JC Hutchins. There are more interviews to come with novelists and writers.

Updating the web presence

It was getting a bit tedious with looking after each of the podcasts on its own website with all the WordPress installations. WP is pretty easy but becomes a chore when you have a few sites that you have to be updating WP from time to time, and also the plugins too. So I have just found out that I can do it all from one site with category podcasting . Enter stage right Answer20Q.com

I can re direct the visitors of the current web sites by forwarding them at hosting level with Godaddy so the change should be fairly seamless. And I can publish each of the podcasts separately as categories.
There is some messing about with the RSS feeds a little – although that is made a little easier by using feed burner. I only have to change the feed going into feedburner and that is a lot less painful than trying to change the feed at iTunes.

For Mac20Q there have been some a few screencasts, with a Mac tip or two and I plan this year to do more with video. I have my green screen and the Shure SM58 mic that I can connect to the camera so I am all set to go.

Thanks to all the guests that have been on the shows, couldn’t have done it without you. Huge thanks to all the listeners likewise.

Some of the interviewees will have professional broadcast quality cameras and will be using the top Pro applications to edit the resulting video. On the other end I will be talking to the person that wants to make some funny videos of their friend getting kicked in the nuts for YouTube.

The idea is to have the full range possible and you never know we could all improve our video knowledge and skills. We can talk about codecs to use to get the best quality, or to get the best compression, and which is the best way to get a good compromise between size of file and quality.

I have 20 questions that I will ask and over time they will evolve to get the best information from the featured guests. I may have to use different sets of questions depending on the level of skill and knowledge of the guest.

If you want to be featured on the podcast contact me using the form below. Of course question 20 is “Tell me about your web site ” and that is your chance to tell the world about your website or product, with links to it in the show notes for the episode.

Click the picture to hear the podcast

BJ Wanlund talks to me in the about what he does on a Mac. He is a bit of a gamer and lost me totally talking about some of the games he is into. I have only had a quick play with World of Goo which came with the MAcHeist thing and I would not have otherwise. Still have to fire up CroMag Rally and the mini games too.

He has a black MacBook and uses it for his school work, so that’s for business and pleasure. He did have some experience with an Apple 2 many years ago, too many years ago to mention. Since then he used Windows like many of us did before coming back into the fold. Mainly due to having hardware problems with a Gateway computer.

BJ is keen on watching TV on the computer using ElGato products, this makes it one of hos favourite applications. He also uses MS orifice for some things on his Mac, in particular to do some snazzy alignments of text for a front page of a document.

ScummVM
Boxer
BJ’s Mac blog
BJ’s Twitter account
Dual Screen Radio
Being James Bond
The MuppetCast

BJ wonders why Apple can’t make a decent version of iTunes for Windows users, he also uses Parallels in coherence mode so he can drag and drop things from Windows to OSX.

BJ has a play with Garageband formn time to time but has not much time to keep up with his photos he takes with the iPhone. he tells me he plans to upgrade to iLife09. For backing up he loves Time Machine. I recommended using SuperDuper and also Mozy and DropBox.

I did an upgrade of my MacBook and BJ told me that he also has done upgrades of his computer and didn’t have any screws left over either.

I got a few tips on how to use World of Goo and make structures to get the goo into the pipe. We talk about a whole load of other things including Twitter clients so listen to the show now.

I watched a tutorial video in which Joseph Nilo shows how to do some stuff in KineMac. Makes it look very easy to do some 3D animations with a camera following a path and being able to zoom in or out as well as have objects moving around too. spinning floating and whatever.
Looks very easy to put colours, textures , video on to objects to get some really fancy things going on. You can even put in 3D objects you have created in other 3D applications  into an animation.I will have to put a day or two aside to get in there and create something.

Just visited the Pussycat club that is the British Mac podcast by Will Green. Not a lot of news in the period covered by the podcast so the content was thin in the Mac end of the wedge.
Nothing wrong with putting in other items to entertain though if there is a gap in the news.
Talking of News, Don McAllister thinks we are due for an announcement from Apple. I didn’t see what he thought might be coming in his posts from the Twitterverse.

Interviews

I will probably record an interview today, different in that it will be face to face with a local Mac user and a female. The lesser spotted female Mac user will be able to give me an idea if the Mac has a feminine side or not.
Dave Brown, from Australia, Paul Shadwell who lives in Switzerland, Alvaro Monoz-Aycuens from Madrid, Allison Sheridan in the USA and the MacMommy also USa have said that they will tell me their deepest darkest secrets about how they use the Mac on a daily basis.
Rob Hanson who recently was on the Nosillacast will be talking soon about how he helps people switch to the Mac from Windows.

So you can see that I have a busy time ahead over the next couple of weeks. I will need extra space on Libsyn for all of these podcasts.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about Mac 20 Questions, please re-tweet when you see that I have posted a new Podcast.

Allison of the NosillaCast has said that when will do an interview on the 13th of February, but that is not going to put much of a dent in the male – female scoreline.

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I have other interviews lined up that will have some interesting angles, like a sailing connection and video and audio set ups to discuss.

Me, I am keen to know what applications my interviewees are going to recommend. I am wondering how you all interact with your Mac. Everyone is different so this is going to be good.

Here is a guide to the questions I plan to start with, may change as time runs on as I may think of some better ones or drop some questions depending the responses I get.

1    What is you name and where are you from
2    Name rank and serial number please – What hardware are you using
3    What was your first mac
4    Recent switcher. always used a Mac, Still using other systems
5    Geek in training, Card carrying Geek or Uber Geek
6    Do you have a halo? ipod or iPhone came first?
7    Just a tool to use or are you a fan boy?
8    Which Browser do you prefer? do you use more than one?
9    Bootcamp or virtual machine
10    Anti virus on the mac ??
11    Are you a creative individual
12    Do you create content anyway with the Mac Apps
13    Favourite application
14    When you work on your computer do you have lots of apps open or just you concentrate on one or two
15    Do you switch it off at night or leave it running always
16    If you spend a whole day working with your Mac how does that go generally, a bit of this a bit of that
17    Do you organise your life with the Mac, Mobile me, address book, to do lists
18    Wish list for a next machine or what are you lusting after now
19    Do you have a web site that you would like to tell us about of your own  / or one that you just recommend to Mac users
20    Do you consume podcasts.