USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES Soundcloud Divshare + embedding podcasts/MP3s

This should be familiar by now, but just in case... Take note of the instructions on how to change gadget sizes (works with all sorts of gadgets).

Since originally posting, I've largely switched to SoundCloud, which is widely used by musicians in particular, but so long as you can upload and generate an embed code to post within your blog you could use any site from dozens that offer this facility.

SoundCloud

Don't use YouTube for podcasts.

A GCSE student making use of SoundCloud

RESIZING THE SOUNDLOUD EMBEDDED PLAYER
The default player is rather large!
Below I'll show you how to alter the size, so you can (if you wish) get something like this:



Thats a bit extreme: WIDTH 20% HEIGHT 100

Adding audio to your blog

Basically, you need to create an MP3 file, upload this to a site which will give you an embed code- I suggest www.divshare.com - and then copy/paste in the embed code.

The two screenshots show you how this works; as with Scribd the upload is very simple; you now click on more options and  you'll see the box in the 2nd screen shot appear - now just copy the embed code.


I'll test this out with a random music track...[14th Feb: changed this; must have mistyped the email adrs on the account sign up]





As you may well be using a video camera to record your audio, an alternative to extracting the audio track and putting it through GarageBand/iTunes is to add some relevant stills to the imported track within Final Cut (preferrably - try to start using this!), upload it to YouTube and use the embed code it generates. You're also then using additional new media for your project.

How to convert your audio file to mp3

You can import your file into iTunes where you can convert it ... but you have to change some settings to do this.
Open iTunes
Click 'iTunes' on the top menu
Click 'Preferences' from the drop-down list
Look under the General tab for 'import settings'
By default, iTunes will convert files to the aac format ... no good ...
So change this to mp3 from the drop-down menu

Quicker still, import an audio file into iTunes, click ADVANCED and select CONVERT TO MP3