Podcasting is now available from blogs.technet.com
Over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see more and more audio (podcasts) and video (screencasts) originate from http://blogs.technet.com. You may have noticed in the past couple of weeks we upgraded the website. One of the new features that was implemented is podcast support. We don’t actually store the file at blogs.technet.com. Instead, the posting author uses the attachment dialog to specify a link to the file and the appropriate RSS <enclosure> is created.
I have requested a number of mime types to be added and therefore supported. At the moment, the number of mime types is pretty limited but our site developers will change that in short order. Here are the steps to create a podcast on blogs.technet.com:
- Create the audio file. For our first example, we’ll just use a .mp3 file. I’m going to steal an episode of IT Heroes for this demonstration. All of the IT Heroe episodes are the work of Michael J Murphy who is another member of my team.
- Store the audio file on a public web server. I’m going to use my http://keithcombs.members.winisp.net/ hosting area.
- Create the blog entry. You can go into the settings area for your blog and create the new post that way, or use BlogJet or some other tool.
- If you aren’t in the settings for your blogs.technet.com blog area, go to Settings | Manage Content | Posts.
- Click the Edit button on the far right of the post you want to add the attachment to.
- Click the Post Attachments tab.
- Click the Add/Update button.
- Enter the http:// link to the audio or video file in the dialog box (see screenshot).
- Click the Save button.
- Click the Post button to post the blog entry.
The rss.aspx feed file will contain the <enclosure> link. I have tested adding the feed from my blog to Internet Explorer 7, iTunes and bloglines.com to confirm the enclosure is created and the file can be downloaded correctly. It works baby!!!
In fact, if you subscribe to my RSS feed with one of those tools, you’ll pickup IT Heroes Episode V from this blog entry. Look for the tell tale music icon in IE7.
FYI, I could not get SharpReader and RssReader to read the RSS feed and display enclosures of any type. If someone knows how to do that, please reply to this post or let me know.
Enjoy all of the new rants coming your way… <grin>
