Potion Factory Releases Podcast Maker 1.2, The Best-kept Secret Weapon of
Mac Podcasters.
LOS ANGELES, California -- March 2, 2006 -- Potion Factory is pleased
to announce the release of Podcast Maker version 1.2, a tool that takes the
geekery out of publishing a professional podcast. Designed to be easy to
use, and yet powerful, Podcast Maker is a compelling alternative to the
poorly regarded iWeb when it comes to podcasting.
With an understated Mac simplicity, Podcast Maker handles all the essential
steps of publishing a professional podcast. It creates a fully iTunes and
RSS 2.0 compliant podcast feed; it embeds id3 and atom metadata tags into
media files for such things as album art; it uploads only the necessary
files to an ftp, sftp, or a .Mac account; and then it pings servers such as
those at Apple's iTunes Music Store to publicize the update. All of these
steps, if done separately require at least 5 separate apps and 30 minutes
out of a busy schedule. Podcast Maker cuts that down to 1 app and 3 minutes.
=46urthermore, Podcast Maker creates enhanced podcasts. An enhanced podcast,
introduced by Apple with iTunes 4.9, contains chapters that make navigating
through long podcasts bearable. Additionally chapters can contain images
and links that the audience can interact with, creating a much more
pleasant experience. A good example of an enhanced podcast is Adam
Christianson's MacCast. Podcast Maker is the only program in existence that
can edit existing enhanced podcasts, making it a perfect companion to the
new GarageBand 3.
All of these features are important, but the must-see "feature" of Podcast
Maker, according to many of its users, is its user interface. The
innovative design has all the advantages of an easy to use wizard, but not
its major disadvantage: the blister on your index finger you get from
clicking repeatedly. The interface guides the user what to do next, but
does it in a way that doesn't treat the user as a sea urchin.
Although never previously publicized, Podcast Maker has already received
some honors and high acclaims. Within a day of a quiet launch, Podcast
Maker was featured at Apple's Mac OS X Downloads page as the main item,
beating popular programs such as Mozilla Firefox in the number of
downloads=F3a testament to the people's need for an easy to use podcasting
tool. In October of 2005, it has received a perfect 10 out of 10 rating
from Macsimum News, and most recently, it has repeated this rare feat with
a 5 out of 5 mice rating at Macworld.
According to the research firm eMarketer, podcasting has seen "meteoric
growth" last year, and in just 4 years from now, the size of the podcast
audience is projected to be somewhere between 20 to 80 million people. In
iTunes, there are now so many podcasts that if you try to browse them all,
you crash iTunes. Call it narrowcasting, citizen journalism, or whatever
you like, but it is obvious that podcasting is here to stay in a big way.
Podcast Maker lowers the entry barrier so that regular folks can join the
revolution.
A fully functional 30-day trial is available at the Potion Factory website,
www.potionfactory.com. Podcast Maker sells for $29.95 and can be purchased
securely at the same website.
A video tutorial that shows how to publish a podcast from start to finish
in less than 3 minutes is also available at the website.
About Potion Factory:
Potion Factory, founded in 2005, is a partnership between Jin Kim and Andy
Kim, two switchers who fell in love with the Mac OS X so much that they
decided to make a business out of writing software for it. Since then
Potion Factory has dedicated itself to developing simple and elegant
software that only %5 of all computer users would understand.
