Space is dirt cheap these days, so I'm not sure I buy the idea that there is no room for an occasional podcast. To the best of my knowledge, however, you =could= use MySpace as a place to upload the podcasts, and they could be downloaded from there. I do not know what limits might exist space-wise. I could have sworn that several museums are using MySpace though, so someone will likely chime in soon.
My sense is that an okay mp3 averages about 1MB/minute, with considerable variance depending on the quality settings. In theory, any mp3 can just be linked from your webpage or blog and that will be treated as a podcast. In reality, mp3 doesn't stream well, and the experience of listening via Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, or Quicktime can be distracting. We use a modified version of one of the flash media players that we found on one of the opensource sites, and that gives us some control over look and feel (no weird backgrounds, no ads). Years ago it was important to use a streaming server such as Apple's Darwin, or the Real's Helix server. If you use a reasonable flash player, the user experience should be quite good, and barring a circumstance where you get lots of simultaneous hits, there should be no bandwidth issues, nor any other issues that would merit maintaining the separate server. If you had a lot of media files, or if they were very popular, chewing up lots of bandwidth, that would/could change, though. ari On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Lauren Zalut <Zalut at wagnerfreeinstitute.org> wrote: > Hi, > I am new to the Museum Computer Network and I am looking for any advice > regarding podcasting. I work for a small natural history museum with a very > limited budget and we are looking to make podcasts of past museum lectures > available to the public on our website. I have been told by senior staff that > we do not have enough space on our website, I wonder if anyone knows how much > space a 60 minute podcast would take up. Also, what kind of technology would > be required to post a podcast on our website? > > The museum has a myspace profile, and part of the reason we established it > was the possibility that the podcast could be downloaded from there. Is that > really a viable option? We do have a completely edited podcast ready to go > and hope to have it up and running by the summer. I would appreciate any > suggestions or advice, it would be very helpful to hear about others' > experiences with podcasting in museums. > > Thank you in advance. > > Sincerely yours, > > Lauren Zalut > Museum Educator and Communications Coordinator > Wagner Free Institute of Science > 1700 W. Montgomery Ave. > Philadelphia, PA 19121 > phone: (215) 763-6529 ext. 17 > www.wagnerfreeinstitute.org > > Become a fan of the Wagner on www.facebook.com! > > Follow us on www.twitter.com! > > > > > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
