But after three weeks of podcasting, they’re nearly gone. The key here is to edit the podcast yourself. Every speaking stutter during recording is one more edit you’ll have to make later. You’ll also get a really good sense of what your voice sounds like to others and how fast or slow you tend to talk, in case you need to make adjustments there too.

If you want to get started podcasting, here are the basic tools you’ll need:

• Audio recorder. I recommend the Zoom H2. It records high quality stereo audio, it’s easy to learn and saves your recording to an SD card, which you can pop into your computer when it’s time to edit. It’s also very portable, should you ever need to record something out in the world.
• Audio editing software. Audacity is free and the v1.3 beta lets you drag audio segments between tracks, which greatly eases editing. Seriously, don’t waste your time with v1.2.6.
• Leveling software. The Levelator is free; just drag and drop your final exported WAV file and it will even out the sound levels for you. This is particularly important if you mix in more dynamic audio, such as music.
• Music (optional). You don’t need music, but it does enhance your overall production value. You can find lots of free music at Mevio’s Music Alley as long as you register as a producer and provide proper credit.
• Podcast feed. To publish your podcast, you’ll need to create an XML feed. Since Apple iTunes has become the de facto standard, I recommend using their podcast feed specs to get started. You can also look at our feed as a guide (DON’T view it in your Web browser; instead right click the link to download and then open it in a text editor, such as Notepad). It’s basically just a text file that describes your overall podcast and each episode you release. Some blog packages such as WordPress have plug-ins you can use to automate feed creation.
• MP3 tag editing software. Your final podcast audio file should be exported to MP3 format (Audacity requires a free optional plug-in for this, so after you level your audio, open the resulting file back in Audacity and export it again). Once this is done, you may want to tweak the file’s tags and add an image that shows up in MP3 players. MP3tag is free and a quick way to prep your final file for release, or you can do this in iTunes by importing the file and selecting Get Info if you prefer.

That’ll get you started. Record something every week and see if your public speaking improves. I bet it does!

By default, Twitter posts are viewable and searchable by anyone. Using your real name or providing enough private details could make it easy for anyone to figure out where you live. If you don’t want to protect your tweets by making them private, you should not use Twitter to share your vacation exploits.

Here are some tips to help you stay safe in virtual space – and the real world one:

Twitter. The safest thing you can do is protect your updates and only accept followers that you know. This sort of defeats the potential of Twitter since none of your witty wordplay will be seen except by a select few and you’ll never get a gajillion followers. If this is important to you, just open two Twitter accounts – one for friends and the other for your public persona. Then just make sure that you only post the private stuff to your trusted friends.

Facebook. On the whole, Facebook tends to be a safer place to share your travel plans since most people only accept friend requests from trusted friends. But there are some ways you can fine-tune your privacy. Click on Settings in the top blue bar and select Privacy Settings. From there, you can choose who can see your profile and personal information, tagged photos, etc. If you or someone you know is going to be posting and tagging photos of your family to Facebook while you’re out of town at obvious tourist locations, you might want to limit these to just your friends. Be sure to go to Contact Information and set your current address to No one. Your friends will know where you live or can call you if they need this information. There’s a nifty feature that lets you preview how a specific friend sees your profile, which will give you a good idea whether you’ve done a good job locking down your private details.

Blogs. If you have a blog, you should use private domain registration so if someone looks up your domain contacts, they don’t get your home address and phone number. As a quick fix, you might be able to update your contact information to your ISP’s, so that any lookups and inquiries go to them. Private registration may cost a little more, though some places do offer it for free.

If your blog is only updated sporadically (once a week or less), taking a week off shouldn’t be any big deal. But if you have a following and readers have come to expect daily updates, you’ll probably want to mention that you’re taking a break and that updates will be a little less frequent while you “enjoy some personal time” (saying it this way doesn’t signal that you’re leaving town). You don’t have to be specific about your plans unless you feel comfortable doing so. You might also preload some posts and, if your blogging software supports it, schedule them to go live on the days you are away. In my case, I alerted readers that some regular features might be incomplete or delayed and then preloaded several posts that I then published remotely each day using the Movable Type for iPhone interface.

There are thousands of plug-ins to choose from, so from time to time I’ll call out the ones I have found indispensible or at least highly valuable, plus the occasional one I’ll suggest with reservations (and helpful tips to save you the trouble we had implementing it). Here are some of my favorites so far:

WPtouch iPhone Theme. I found this theme when browsing a friend’s blog and immediately installed it for our own. It greatly speeds up load times and improves readability for iPhone visitors, who have the option to turn it off if they prefer your default view. The way this makes your site look like an iPhone app is pretty compelling (see picture at right).

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button. If you write something worth sharing, you want it to be as easy as possible for your site visitors to do just that. You can select which social networking/sharing mechanisms are displayed by default. Hovering over the Share or E-mail This Post link opens up the full list, which is constantly expanding (see icons and link at bottom of this post).

WP to Twitter. This highly configurable plug-in automatically tweets your blog posts. We use this only for new posts, so any updates/edits do not result in an unwelcome Twitter flood. URLs are automatically shortened using the Cli.gs service, though we had some problems until we created and entered a Cli.gs API key.

Simple Tags. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time adding tags (aka keywords) to your posts, this plug-in can help, although it can be tricky to get working. First, you have to add at least one tag to a post before it will function at all (you’ll get a “Javascript must be enabled” message but that’s probably not your problem). The autotagging feature only pulls tags you have entered previously and applies them, where relevant, to existing posts. Once it’s up and working, use tag suggestions to find common keywords in your articles and apply them quickly. After you have a decent set of local tags, the auto-tag feature can help you quickly generate tags for older posts that don’t have them.

Have you had different (better, worse?) experiences with these plug-ins? Have a favorite plug-in that nobody loves but you? Let us know!

Movable Type is an impressive blogging tool, and I’ve invested a lot into it. I love the promise of community features, though I haven’t had the time to keep up with all of the updates that would enable these (they have to be manually installed and sometimes reconfigured). Also, price is a consideration. When I last checked, the richer community tools were targeted at corporate clients who invest $10,000 or more into their site. Too rich for my little labor of love gaming site.

Last Friday I launched my effort to move our The Writer’s Bloc business site from a collection of standalone pages to a blog where we can post articles and musings on the industries we work in. I had set up Philanthropy Northwest on Wordpress a couple years back and, while the experience wasn’t problem free, I liked what I saw and thought it would be helpful to keep up with another blogging platform. 

My hosting provider, Westhost, offers a Web-based interface for easily installing WordPress with just a couple of clicks. That was easy! I even had to upgrade a dependent PHP app first, but even that took only a few extra seconds. WordPress then auto-detected that there was a newer version available than what my host installed, so I clicked a link and installed that too. I browsed and found a theme that I liked and spent a little time customizing it. I might move to something flashier later, but this works for now and already looks nicer than the old site. I then used the WordPress plug-in auto-install feature to add some social networking/sharing links, a CAPTCHA with a built-in audio playback for form protection from spammers, SEO options and more in-depth stats tracking including Google Analytics. I still need to improve my old contact form (which I hastily ported to a WordPress page),  but really that’s not bad for half a day’s work.

It’s early to wholeheartedly recommend WordPress, but thinking back to the months it took to get CAPTCHA working on Movable Type a few years back, I have to say that so far I’m impressed. When things calm down, I’ll spend a day upgrading Movable Type and see if it has gotten any better than the early v4 build I’m using.

So we have relaunched this site as a blog where we can tell you some of what we’re up to and share the unique insights we’ve uncovered to help you navigate the stormy waters of Web 2.0 and beyond.