Moe and I are always looking to improve the sites. One of the things that recently came up was podcasting.
If we gave you the option to listen to our articles/postings via podcast, would you subscribe/download/listen to them as an alternative to reading? We thought this might be useful for folks that take the train, or on a walk during lunch or for some that listen to their MP3 players while riding (please do that responsibly).
So leave us a comment and let us know what you think, if the idea flops, then we won’t do it. But if enough people show interest, then we’ll move forward with it.
Thanks,
RL
Popularity: 9% [?]
It could be interesting. I’m a big podcast listener, so I’m sure I’d give them a listen.
I think it’s definitely not a bad idea. I’m not a huge podcast listener, but I think one every couple weeks would be cool.
One thing that I think would be really cool though is a forum/message board. It would be a great place for no-talent noobs like myself to ask questions and get answers straight from professionals like you guys and other fellow commuters. The site rocks as-is, but it’s just an idea.
I would listen. I listen exclusively to podcasts while bike commuting (safer – not as deafining as music and there are some worthwhile ones out there). I subscribe to a dozen or so podcasts but run out of things to listen to by about Thursday.
I also produce a weekly podcast at work so I can tell you they are not easy. I don’t think just reading articles would work, but if you chat about the articles and have fun with it, it might be listenable and appreciated.
We’ll never know until you try!
Thanks for the input fellas….keep them comin’
I wouldn’t be surprised if our Hacker saw this idea and started podcasting on his sites…and he’ll probably take Evan’s idea about the forum/ board and implement that too…
Great site. I’d ask that you revisit some of your bike reviews (i.e. the shaft driven bikes) for long term reviews. Some bikes get mentioned initially and then not again.
Hey Doug, unfortunately some of the bikes have to go back to the manufacturer. We are allowed to test them for a short amount of time.
podcasts are great because they give you an opportunity to reach a different market. perhaps you have people that just plain don’t like to read – nothing wrong with that – and a podcast is just another medium to reach the audience. so long as it doesn’t kill you to produce it, i say go for it!
I don’t have an MP3 player or download music, but I think its a necessary move to keep up with competition, and a lot seem to want it.
+1 for interesting. Daily would be too much, but a periodic (weekly? monthly?) roundup could be cool.
The thing that keeps my attention on podcasts is snappy dialogue. Snappy is tough to do with just one person, but two or three people could keep it hopping.
Also, beware of becoming too insular. Occasional inside jokey stuff is fine, but if I don’t get any of your “insider” references, I probably won’t take the time to figure it out and stay sub’d.
Anyway, looking forward to listening in!
And one more thing…my friend Matt put up a nice tutorial on how he does his podcasts for Metafilter.
Might be worth checking out.
Two (non-podcast) suggestions:
I found that your sitemap link is broken:
http://www.bikecommuters.com/sitemap/
Maybe you should set your left-side html page margins to around 10px. The page is so close to the edge of the screen that it looks like some of the content is missing.
Jon,
many of our links are currently broken — all part of the server switch. Things should “reappear” over the next few hours.
I’m not seeing the page margin problem you mentioned…could it be a browser/display setting on your end?
I think that is great, I am from mich and It is 16degrees and snowing – it would help on my bus ride into the city -I usually just look out the windo and think about how soon I can pull the bike out… a podcast would help ease the wait
Thanks for a great site
M
Hey can you put the full articles back in the feed? I know everyone wants people to click back to their site and sometimes I do if an article particularly interests me or I want to share it but man is it annoying to have to click back on every post to read the whole thing. I read allot of blogs in my feed reader and right now this is the only one with truncated posts