TalkShoe Company Blog

The TalkShoe Blog has MOVED

2007-07-03T14:06:00.000-05:00

The TalkShoe Blog has MOVED to a new location. The new blog has many different categories including announcements, what's new, podcast host information, press, etc.

Go to the New Blog
http://www.talkshoe.com/blog/

Pod-Planet and TalkShoe Partner

2007-06-19T10:46:00.000-05:00

Be sure and check out Pod-Planet, TalkShoe's new directory listing partner. When TalkShoe hosts create a new podcast, it will be listed on Pod-Planet, along with the 900+ already listed.

Kiva.org Microloans Made on Behalf of TalkShoe

2007-04-27T10:16:00.000-05:00

As a result of the Kiva microload Talk-a-thon, TalkShoe raised $1,200 + lots more though direct contributions. So far, Kiva has made 7 loans on our behalf.
$100 to Nomg Sophead, Cambodia
$100 to Pech Hou, Cambodia
$100 to Phen Ravy, Cambodia
$100 to Sem Samoun, Cambodia
$100 to Namig Farzaliev, Azerbaijan
$100 to Chea Sotheary, Cambodia
$100 to Fiapaipai Grey, Somoa
We'll keep you posted as we here other information from Kiva.org

New Barcelona Software Release

2007-03-21T11:43:00.000-05:00

TalkShoe has just released a new version of its website and software called Barcelona. It's jam packed with new, different and powerful features. There's something for everyone. Many thanks to all those users who've contacted us with suggestions. If you have any issues, as always, contact us at info@talkshoe.com.

Upload Episode to easily upload your previously recorded podcasts and earn money with TalkShoe Cash. Click the "Upload Episode" tab on your Talkcast pages.

TalkShoe Player & Badges to list past, live and upcoming shows on your blogs and web pages. You can get a badge to link to your Talkcast page, or play all of them right on your website - And it's updated dynamically. Go to "Create a badge" on a Talkcast page.

New TalkShoe Cash. We're continuing to write checks monthly but it is now based upon # of downloads instead of number of hours. This was done to make it more fair for short shows, and how many ads can be placed in a show. See the Forum for more details.

TalkShoe Cash Referrals are now shown in detail on your reports. They're listed for each referral. Why not contact those people who haven't yet hosted a show.

Detailed Statistics on downloads and hours are now available for each episode for each week. The stats button is now on your myTalkShoe page.

More Featured Shows are now listed. 10 are shown, and more can be randomly rotated. Making it to the Featured List is based on show popularity, # of episodes, show topic, and show rating.

PSST... We have a SECRET!!!

2007-03-16T07:53:00.000-05:00

If you are REALLY into Podcasting, you must know Paul Colligan - Internet strategist, author and speaker, CEO of Colligan.com and numerous popular Internet properties. His passion: The Business of Podcasting and eMedia. And if you've ever looked for the How To books on Podcasting, undoubtedly you have run into a book he has co-authored with Alex Mandossian: The Business Podcasting Bible. Alex Mandossian is considered one of the top 10 freelance direct marketers in America today.

So what do you get when bring a top 10 direct marketer and a top Internet strategist turned podcasting guru together and converge teleseminars, podcasts, and the Internet?

Podcast Secrets Live and Interactive on TalkShoe.com – a seminar series by Paul Colligan & Alex Mandossian

Podcast Secrets is the premier seminar series on podcast monetization, a six-week course being held over the phone and Internet for podcasters worldwide. This course is exactly the kind of instruction that TalkShoe hosts need to learn to better promote their podcasts.

Join the Podcast Secrets Talkcast, where Paul & Alex will reveal:

The identical Podcast monetization tactics that have generated 10 to 1000 times the profits of other Professional Podcasters!

If you are currently a hobbyist - why you may want to turn your podcasting hobby into a business…

Proven Podcast secrets that can dramatically boost your sales and profits WITHOUT making you spend a single dime on advertising or production costs...

Success in monetization requires knowledge and promotion. Paul and Alex will lead you through the information to arm you with the knowledge, they will impress you with their results in promotion techniques, and you’ll get a first-hand feel for how they combine telesales seminars, podcasts, and the Internet to succeed.

*** EXCLUSIVE BACK-STAGE OPPORTUNITY ***
ONLY ON TALKSHOE

TalkShoe members have an exclusive opportunity to join a non-public Talkcast of the seminar - to be able to chat during the event, and then meet Paul immediately following the seminar for a private discussion and Q&A!

So come join us at the Podcast Secrets seminar and…

Be sure to CLICK HERE to save $79 by using this TalkShoe Discount link!

Off to PodCamp Atlanta

2007-03-15T13:42:00.000-05:00

TalkShoe is sponsoring another PodCamp in Atlanta, March 16, 17. By the way, the PodCamp sessions are always recored as audio or audio/video podcasts. The video podcasts from PodCamp Toronto are excellent! Mark Juliano from TalkShoe is giving 2 sessions -- one on live interactive podcasting, and another on monetizing podcasts.

Kiva.org Charity event on TalkShoe

2007-03-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

A 24-hour live interactive podcast charity event for Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) is being held starting Sunday, March 18th at noon on TalkShoe (http://www.talkshoe.com/). The event will raise awareness and money for Kiva, web-based microfinancing organization which enables individuals to lend money to people in developing countries for starting small businesses.

Please help us spread the word.
More information at http://Talkathon.org/

PodCamp Tornoto

2007-02-22T10:07:00.000-05:00

How about taking a trip up North to Canada and join TalkShoe and hundreds of others at PodCamp Toronto from Feb 23-25, 2007. Sure to be fun for all. TalkShoe folks will be there.

Can You Digg It?

2007-02-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

Digg now allows you to post your Podcasts and Talkcasts on its new podcast directory. It's easy to do. You just need a Digg account and your RSS feed link (go to your Talkcast page under RSS/Podcast to get the link address). Several TalkShoe hosts have already done it.

So go list your podcasts (www.digg.com/podcasts)

And remember to Digg your fellow hosts' Talkcasts!

Just search for "talkshoe" to see all Talkcasts that have been listed.

Host Linda Pate Featured in Richmond Times Dispatch

2007-01-24T10:47:00.000-05:00

TalkShoe host Linda Pate is featured in an excellent article in the Richmond Times Dispatch. Her new Talkcast, The Talking Book Show, airs at 7:00 EST on TalkShoe. The program features book reviews, authors, workshops and advice. Linda also owns the book store Precious Memories & Collectibles in Richmond, VA.

Podcast User Magazine features TalkShoe

2007-01-04T16:46:00.000-05:00

TalkShoe was featured in a story in this month’s Podcast User Magazine - PUM Issue #12. Read the TalkShoe Article or go to the Podcast User Magazine website

Quote from the article: “Back in 2005 when I started my podcast, Skype was the main accessory that every podcaster had to use. In 2006, it was MySpace. Now as we enter the New Year, I believe that TalkShoe will be the podcasters tool of choice for 2007.”

The story was written by Lance Anderson, who among other things is the head of the LA Podcasters group, and uses TalkShoe. PUM is the largest podcasting magazine on the web.

Lance interviewed about a dozen TalkShoe hosts to gather information for his article. We’d like to publicly thank those hosts. Their names and Talkcast links are listed below.

Lance Anderson (Podcast User Magazine: Interview) – full host interview

Art Blanchet (Your Home, Your Money)

John Buehler (Rebuilding Eden)

Victor Cajaio (Typical Mac User Podcast Live)

Carter Harkins (Conversational Podcasting)

Philip Gatlin (BBN: Growing Business and Making Money)

Kain (Tech Bytes)

Scott Kurtz (PVP Live Podcast)

Leo Laporte (net@ nite)

Mike Connor (Connor's Corner - EMC2 and Santuary)

Paul Stanton (Home Business Radio Internet Talk Show)

Don't be a Scrooge - Chime In on Friday December 22nd at 21:00 EST / (Saturday 02:00 GMT)

2006-12-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

When TalkShoe was launched, many of us thought about lots of applications for the service: Connecting people with like interests, Live Interactive Podcasts, Experts answering questions, Radio talkshows with lots of people in the discussion, Online book clubs, Multi-person conversations, Podcasting for newbies, and more.

But no one here thought of a use that we learned about today, which is not only unique, but really really cool and just in time to get those of you out there of the Christian faith into the Christmas spirit. So unless you are Ebenezer Scrooge, check this out...

Freelance writer, L.A. Podcaster and TalkShoe host
Douglas Welch is hosting on his WelchWrite Specials Talkcast a LIVE reading of Dickens - A Christmas Carol. Welch invites call-in listeners from around the country and world to join him and read a section of this Christmas classic aloud LIVE! Douglas will be using Dicken's own condensed verison of the story that Charles Dickens used during his own LIVE readings.

Really cool Douglas! Have fun this Friday and beware of the
Ghost of Christmas Past.

Douglas Welch's other Podcasts on TalkShoe are
TechnologyIQ with Douglas E. Welch & Career Opportunities Live.

TalkShoe Swarmed by DiggNation

2006-12-04T16:57:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, Dec 3rd Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur did their latest live net @ nite show with guest Kevin Rose of Digg. The show was the largest live show on TalkShoe to date. Over 930 people participated, which was a 10x growth over the largest show a month ago, and a 2x growth over net @ nite’s previous record. TalkShoe has also seen its web traffic grow by 10x over the past month.

net @ nite show with guest Kevin Rose
930 Total live participants:
608 Streamers (listen-only)
322 Active talkers and chatters
80 Talkers (phone, Skype, VoIP)

The show began at 8:00 pm and continued for an hour, and the recording started at 9:00 pm. At 9:25 pm, people who were in listen-only streaming mode (not dialed in via telephone) experienced a drop in their audio for the remainder of the show. People on the phones were not affected at all, and the chat room was always available. (Note: you can listen to a recording of the net @ nite show on TalkShoe anytime.)

Our engineering team isolated the root of the problem to a network interface card in the audio streaming server at the ISP. The problem was diagnosed and resolved, and shows after net @ nite experienced no problems. Please see previous TalkShoe Traffic and Performance post below for more details.

We sincerely apologize for this problem and will continually improve the performance of our system.

TalkShoe Traffic and Performance

2006-12-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

Over the past 6 weeks, the usage of TalkShoe has grown by leaps and bounds. Over the past month alone, TalkShoe has seen both its web traffic and live show participants grow by a factor of 10x. On Sunday, Dec. 3rd, we had the largest live Talkcast show with 930 participants, which was a 2x increase over the previous record. It is safe to say this was the largest interactive podcast ever.

Some users have experienced performance issues with the TalkShoe website, and the live software interface.

Here’s the scoop:
- Bandwidth for traffic & web audio streaming is more than sufficient, and our ISP partner has more where that came from.
- Tomcat, Apache and database access servers are being added along with clustering software.
- The linux operating system is being upgraded.
- The TalkShoe application and database software are being continually optimized.

We’re racing to improve performance and provide a high level of service. Onward and upward.

And the winner is... Daniel Thor, Täby, Sweden

2006-11-29T16:51:00.000-05:00

You may have read below about TalkShoe's live contest following Leo Laporte & Amber MacArthur's Talkcast (net @nite) debut a couple of weeks ago - and a winner named Daniel. So Daniel who? you might say...

Meet Daniel Thor, a Masters student from Täby, Sweden.

Daniel is sporting the first prize - TalkShoe gear - together with one of the rune stones in Täby, Sweden. "We have a lot of old rune stones here that date back to the middle ages when Vikings roamed the land." Daniel told us. "Each stone tells a story through their inscriptions and this particular stone was raised by "Torbjörn" and "Ingetora" as a tribute to their father sometime in the 11th century according to a sign near by."

Perhaps Daniel should hold a Live Interactive Podcast about the ancient Nordic magical alphabet of 24 symbols, which are used for divination of the future, performing magic, or evoking Norse deities?

Congratulations Daniel! You look smart in AND magical in that TalkShoeSuit :)

Cliff Ravenscraft of Generally Speaking Podcast Network uses TalkShoe

2006-11-28T17:10:00.000-05:00

Cliff Ravenscraft, producer of the Generally Speaking Podcast Network
http://www.generallyspeakingpodcast.com/, is now using TalkShoe to create several live interactive podcasts. He's been podcasting since December of 2005 and has more than 8,000 subscribers from all over the world.

Cliff' was TalkShoe's #1 host in term of downloads the past 2 weeks.
Search for "Cliff" and Chime In on his Talkcasts!

Did we survive Leo's Army?

2006-11-06T16:02:00.000-05:00

In the first episode of the (tongue twister for sure) Talk to the TalkShoe Team talkcast - "Did we survive Leo's Army?" which was held immediately following the Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur net@night inagural netcast http://www.twit.tv/natn1 we had ~40 participants - both streaming to just listen and more than a dozen on the phones and in the TalkShoe Live! interactive environment. We honestly didn't think any of you would want to talk to us no-names :)

We introduced a couple of the guys who were manning the battlestations at TalkShoe and what they did to prepare for the onslaught of the net@night premier. And we talked about how Leo's Army and Amber's net@night loyal following were successful in overtaking the TalkShoe fortress in Wexford. While we didn't crash (as Leo mentions) , our website and back-end servers certainly lost the battle and we surrendered to the "No (soup) Shoe for You" page.

Near the end, we moved the discussion to our first TalkShoe contest. I challenged the participants to estimate the force of Leo's army on the live show. The contestants were told if they won, they must adorn themselves with the TalkShoe garmets they would win as the prize and send us a picture for our website... and we would do our best to make them famous! The guesses were:

Chuck_PA: 2001
Daniel: 736
EndUser 101: 1750
Jeff Chan: 2001
Joel_O: 898
Julian: 900
Musclemacman: 6533
Mike B. : 1250
Nation: 3140
Paulius: 1500
Robert: 2400

So results are in and Daniel wins!!! There were 165 participants in TalkShoe Live! (109 streaming and 56 on the telephone) and 264 participants streaming from the website - for a grand total of 429 participants. We'll be sending Daniel a TalkShoe shirt and TalkShoe hat (beta limited editions!) as soon as we get a shirt size and mailing address.

And ftr, TalkShoe had 3447 unique visitors that day, with at least one other very well-attended show immediately prior to net@night {The Andrews-Reiter Epilepsy Research Program} and several other shows with ~100 participants. So our best estimate is ~1888 showed up for the Leo & Amber inagural net@night netcast. And if we were better at this scaling game, Chuck_PA & Jeff Chan would have had a TalkShoe Shootout... so consolation prizes (Promoting Your Podcast books by Jason Van Orden) to them as well.

Hope you will join us on our next Talk to the TalkShoe Team talkcast!

The 1st net@nite show on TalkShoe

2006-11-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

The new 'net @ nite' Talkcast with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur will be premiering this Sunday, November 5th, at 9:00 PM. We expect this even to be extremely well attended, and will certainly exceed TalkShoe records for number of people listening, talking and chatting.
Here are a couple of tips:
1. Sign up as a TalkShoe user Now
2. Download the software Now
to avoid the rush of last minute downloaders when the website is busy.
3. If you receive a busy signal on the live phone conference, that means the TalkShoe Live phone conference is at capacity. You can then:
- Open TalkShoe Live and Listen along and text-chat
- Go to the 'net @ nite' Talkcast page and Listen-only (stream)
4. Host your own show after the show (you can make money doing this)
5. Tell your friends about TalkShoe

PodCamp Pittsburgh - Sponsored by TalkShoe

2006-11-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

Join us at the next PodCamp -- Pittsburgh: November 10-12 2006
www.podcamppittsburgh.com
TalkShoe was a sponsor of the 1st PodCamp in Boston earlier this year. It was great!
We're delighted to also be a sponsor of the Pittsburgh PodCamp.
Come talk to fellow professional, amateur and newbie podcasters.

In conjunction with Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Three Rivers Film Festival!

Dates and Locations!
Friday, Nov 10, 2006: Evening Meet-n-Greet, 6-8 PM @ The Art Institute of PittsburghSaturday, Nov 11, 2006: 9 AM - 5 PM @ Pittsburgh FilmmakersSaturday Night Dinner: @ Bossa Nova (Time TBA)Sunday, Nov 12, 2006: 9 AM - 5 PM @ Pittsburgh Filmmakers

TWiT Podcasters Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur are using TalkShoe

2006-10-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur who currently host the most popular podcasts on the Internet (including TWiT and Inside the Net) have started to use TalkShoe.com. The new show is net@nite. www.natn.tv

From Leo & Ambers webpages: "Amber and I are proud to announce the first live TWiTcast (Click to web page). We’re reinventing Inside the Net, and renaming it net@nite. You’ll still be able to listen to the show as a podcast every Tuesday, but you can also listen live as we record it Sunday nights. Even better, you can participate. "

We’re using the Talkshoe client to do the show...if you want to participate in the chat, or as a caller, download the Talkshoe client.

Lastest TalkShoe Software Release - Paris

2006-10-25T10:08:00.000-05:00

TalkShoe's latest software release "Paris" includes a number of key features for listeners, talkers and hosts. New features include:
1. Host statistics for # of Talkcast downloads and content hours consumed
2. Ability to download/edit/upload recorded Talkcast episodes
3. Host can change/upload photo
4. TalkShoe Live chat sorting by latest chat, name, and whether user is on the phone or computer
5. Featured Talkcasts on the Home Page

About.com Interviews TalkShoe

2006-10-25T08:48:00.000-05:00

John Havens from About.com has written and article based upon and interview with Mark Juliano and Brian Schuliger of TalkShoe.

John summarizes, "this remarkable service [TalkShoe] allows for "live interactive podcasts," a service that I think will help encourage overall podcast adoption since it allows for so many applications as well as revenue models."

Check out the full article: TalkShoe - Live Interactive Podcasts

Steelers Keisel and Starks use TalkShoe for Live Talk Show

2006-10-04T17:44:00.000-05:00

Steelers players Brett Keisel and Max Starks will be hosting a live talk show at the Fox & Hound restaurant/bar in Pittsburgh at 7:30 on Monday, October 9th. They will talk and chat to people using TalkShoe as well as people in the audience. It's a great way to take advantage of both live and Internet talkers and listeners.

Fox & Hound
8000 Mcknight Rd # 2002
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
(412) 364-1885

Lynn Swann for Governor Campaign using TalkShoe

2006-10-04T17:38:00.000-05:00

The Lynn Swann for Governor campaign of Pennsylvania is now using TalkShoe for in-person and virtual Town Hall meetings. Click Here to listen to the meetings.

Squidoo Lens Creation & TalkShoe

2006-09-28T10:01:00.000-05:00

Using Squidoo (www.squidoo.com) is a great way to create a web page and integrate with TalkShoe. In Squidoo, you create a "Lens" which is a web page with lots of information about you, your topic, interests, etc. You can link to your Talkcast in a couple of ways.

1. Under any Links module. Name the link -- maybe the title of your Talkcast -- and copy/paste the URL of your Talkcast page into that link.
2. Go to your Talkcast page and select "Create a Link" and copy/paste that HTML code into your Lens somewhere. A TalkShoe logo should appear when you Publish your lens.

Check out www.squidoo.com/italyjules/ to see an example.
By the way, Squidoo is a great way to also list Talkcast and episode notes, info, etc.