apps

Tom and I recently shot a video called “Podcasting 101,” where we gave some tips on how to create your own podcast. I’m kind of glad that I hadn’t heard about the Pinnacle Podcast Factory from Pinnacle Systems. This things looks pretty rad:

• Podcast Factory
  The Podcast Factory professional audio interface brings your computer both microphone and instrument inputs, plus headphone and stereo outputs?all via a simple USB cable. It can also double as a professional audio interface for most popular music software like Apple GarageBand, Sony Acid, and Magix Music Maker.
• M-Audio Broadcast Microphone Included
  Use the included microphone with desktop stand to record broadcast-quality speech for professional-sounding podcasts?instruments too.
• Editor Software
  The package includes software that makes it simple to record and edit basic audio content, then convert it to MP3 files for posting on Web podcast sites.
• Ableton Live Lite 4
  This special edition of Ableton?s award-winning Live software lets you easily produce more sophisticated shows containing speech, music, sound effects and more. It even lets non-musicians create custom soundtracks for any podcast.
• Podifier
  Podifier is a simple-to-use application that automates the creation of an RSS feed, the enclosing of one or more MP3 files and the FTP application to upload them to a server.

from Product Summary

Intense. Pinnacle is a division of Avid, who also owns Pro-Tools: therefore, I’m sure there’s no question of quality. Doesn’t seem to be overly expensive either, although I could only find a price on Shiny Shiny for ?99.99. The product doesn’t show up in the dropdown menu for purchasing on the site.

The one thing it’s really missing is a good way to record interviews over VoIP. I know there are workarounds, but there really shouldn’t need to be. Give me that, and then I’d consider throwing together my own show! Hah!