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Video Interview With Greg Cangialosi Author of The Business Podcasting Book

I got a chance to chat with Greg "The Trend Junkie" Cangialosi, CEO and President of Blue Sky Factory, today regarding his new book "The Business Podcasting Book." The book is a great guide for any corporate executive or other party interested in better understanding podcasting. Greg and I chatted about a number of topics related to podcasting and social media which ranged from discussing our podcasting pal Gary Vaynerchuk who has been changing the wine world to a quick getting "how to get started with podcasting" step-by-step.   

SplashCast's Shiny New Player

SplashCast Media, a Portland-based media player startup, has launched an update to its exisiting SplashCast media player. SplashCast has added a number of features to the player as it continues to improve the product that launched earlier this year.

SplashCast Now Playing Podcasts & RSS

SplashCast, a Portland-based media player startup, has launched MyPodcastNetwork to enable users to play podcasts directly from the feature rich Flash-based media player. Previously, the SplashCast player was limited to only pulling in RSS feeds from YouTube and Flickr but with the MyPodcastNetwork feature you can pull in any podcast feed you like. Users can now play any podcast on your web site, blog or personalized startpage. When a podcast updates, the SplashCast player will automatically pull in the latest. This will make it easier to collect and play your favorite video and audio podcasts which could disrupt some podcast subscribers dependence on iTunes.

SplashCast is also assembling a Podcast directory to help users find the podcasts they are looking for. Users can submit any RSS feed with enclosures to the SplashCast catalog and it will be available for viewing in a SplashCast player.

What's next for SplashCast? It sounds like the focus will be on improving its search functionality and adding some basic editing tools to help users remix media content.

Find out more about MyPodcastNetwork from SplashCast Director of Content, Marshall Kirkpatrick in the video below.

SplashCast Launches Mixed Media Embeddable Video Player

SplashCast, a Portland-based startup, launched today (January 30, 2007) to offer an easy way to create and share videos, photos and audio online with its embeddable player. SplashCast is a Flash-based site and enables users to create a Flash player to play custom videos comprised of photos, uploaded videos, YouTube videos or even RSS feeds from YouTube or Flickr. Since SplashCast is Flash-based it will allow MySpace users and the rest of the web to place video or slide-shows on their sites with ease. Check out this instructional video by Marshall Kirkpatrick, formerly a key contributor to TechCrunch, for more details on how to get started with SplashCast.

Simple to setup and use, a SplashCast feature that I found interesting was the ability to create a video by passing an RSS feed from Flickr or YouTube. I decided to create a video which randomly pulled videos from my YouTube video feeds. Since it just pulled in a feed I was able to create the SplashCast video very quickly. Code was then offered to be snagged and placed on the page below as shown. 

SplashCast is backed by QMind, its parent company, and raised $1.3 million for the use of related software in enterprise e-learning and is now working on another round of funding. To stay up to speed on the latest from SplashCast check out the SplashCast blog.

Bottom-line: SplashCast makes it very easy to create Flash-based video to be embedded into any page.