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[Ediese]

Okay, please excuse me if this sounds totally ignorant, but I'm a newbie and would love if you all would answer my questions.

I'm interested in creating a podcast for our Nursing Grand Rounds session, and have it available on my company's Intranet webpage. I've been reading up on 'How to Create Podcasts', and believe that I have all the steps down. My question is after you have the address to the podcast file, is it absolutely necessary to put it in I-Tunes, etc in order for our employees to access it? Would I be able to add the address to our webpage and have them access that way. If we had put it in I-Tunes, etc, is there a way to make it only available for certain people? We only want our employees to have access to it. Also, is there a way to make the podcast unavailable/expire after a certain time?

I have to submit this project request to our IT department in order to get Tech Support. I'm wondering other than bandwith concerns, is there any other reasons that an IT person would feel that they're not capable of offering this feed on our Intranet page. I'm just trying to work through the possible responses that I can get from IT.

Sorry for all the questions. Thanks:D
E

[WyethDigital]

The short answer is that you don't need to use iTunes for your podcast. But that's being overly simplistic, because you do need a program that does at least some of what iTunes does.

What you need to do first is make sure you have a working RSS 2.0 file (Feed) that is in a static location on your network. You also need to have static server space for the audio files that the RSS feed can point to. Finally, you need to have software installed on your client's computers that can read the RSS feed and play the audio files referenced within it. In other words, once you get your podcast set up, your users need a podcatcher.

ITunes is many things in one package. It's a music store, it's a podcast directory, it's a jukebox, and it's a podcast aggregator (the "podcather"). I suspect iTunes is out of the picture because of the store feature? A lot of secure networks don't like the number of ports it opens, so I wouldn't be surprised.

What you (and maybe your IT personnel) need to do is find a podcatcher that is acceptable to them that can be run behind a network firewall. I would think that the simpler the program, the better. Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/) may be one route to look at.

Sorry if I covered some familiar ground, but it never hurts to have what you already know reinforced. Best of luck!

Eric

[Ediese]

Thanks that was really helpful. I notice you keep mentioning 'static server space' and a 'static location' on our network. What does that mean exactly? Sorry, but I'm totally new at this.

[dpeach]

He just means that it will be a permanant location. It won't move around. The problem with an intRAnet is that sometimes the different servers will be given an internal addres dynamically, instead of always having the same address. Web servers on the intERnet have static addresses, that is why you can go to an address and hit the page you want. But within an internal network this address can be handled dynamically. You don't want that to happen to your podcast files, otherwise the software won't know where to look to grab a new file.

Usually dynamic addresses only get handed out to user machines. Servers are almost always given static addresses. I don't think it will be anything you need to worry about, but when your files mysteriously can't be downloaded to the clients, and you know they are on the server, you can come back to this thread and it will all make sense.

[WyethDigital]

Right. Exactly what dpeach said. And he's right: usually servers don't change addresses. But sometimes on small networks admins get creative and start doing things to their configurations. I just wanted to emphasize that the podcasts need to be in a consistent space all the time.

Eric

[Ediese]

Thanks to the both of you. You really simplified that for me. I appreciate it!