Testing Podcast

I was looking for a site that would collect all audio podcasts on software testing. Since I could not find it, I had to create it myself. It is called Testing Podcast. It is far from finished, but I think it is usable. I have collected all audio podcasts on software testing that I could find. If I have missed something, please let me know.

Testing Podcast » About

[14:29] <alan_baird> jarib: if you are still around I have a follow up webdriver question for you
[14:36] <jarib> alan_baird: shoot
[14:36] <alan_baird> ok
[14:36] <alan_baird> so, in the podcast, Simon says that Webdriver is built on top of html unit
[14:37] <alan_baird> is that correct?
[14:38] <jarib> it has several backends
[14:39] <jarib> htmlunit being one of them
[14:39] <jarib> in addition it drives IE, Firefox, Chrome, with support for Opera, iPhone and Android on the way
[14:39] <alan_baird> ok
[14:40] <jarib> was the podcast that confusing? ouch :/
[14:40] <alan_baird> so, it seems kind of analagous to what a JVM does for different operating systems?
[14:40] <jarib> i guess we ended up talking too much about HtmlUnit
[14:40] <alan_baird> well, I don’t know that it was all that confusing
[14:40] <jarib> you might say that
[14:40] <alan_baird> but, in trying to type up the show notes I’ve come up with my own questions
[14:41] <jarib> it gives you a common interface to the various browsers
[14:41] <alan_baird> ok
[14:41] <alan_baird> so, that common interface is written in Java right?
[14:41] <jarib> not really – there’s bindings in java, ruby, c# and python
[14:42] <jarib> the java and ruby bindings are the most complete
[14:42] <alan_baird> ok
[14:42] <alan_baird> i guess I’m not real familiar with the bindings concept, but I guess I can get the gist of it
[14:43] <alan_baird> but basically there is this thing at the core (webdriver) which can talk to the browsers natively
[14:43] <jarib> alan_baird: these slides may be helpful: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dgpzbjs_33cxsxd9dd
[14:43] <jarib> check slide 11+
[14:44] <alan_baird> k
[14:44] <alan_baird> looking…
[14:44] <jarib> also slide 27 is telling
[14:44] <jarib> although the c# side is mostly complete as well now
[14:45] <jarib> alan_baird: there’s not really a “core” – webdriver speaks to each browser through the mechanism that fits that particular browser the best
[14:45] <jarib> so for firefox and chrome it’s through their extension system
[14:45] <jarib> for IE it’s C++
[14:46] <jarib> for opera (when it’s released) it’s using their scope protocol (which is also used by their built-in JS debugger)
[14:46] <jarib> etc.
[14:48] <alan_baird> seems like this webdriver.h is kind of at the core of all of this?
[14:48] <jarib> only for IE
[14:48] <alan_baird> ok
[14:49] <jarib> for FF, there’s a firefox extension, for example
[14:49] <alan_baird> so, when you wrote selenium-webdriver, you didn’t have to worry about all of the different browsers though did you?
[14:49] <alan_baird> (cause, that’s what webdriver’s supposed to do right?)
[14:50] <jarib> alan_baird: nope, i had to worry about them
[14:51] <alan_baird> hmm
[14:51] <alan_baird> well, how did having webdriver make things easier?
[14:52] <jarib> before i started, they had code that would bridge java->firefox extension, java->C++ IE driver, java->chrome extension etc.
[14:52] <alan_baird> (btw – I’m typing this in the middle of an ice storm, so if I suddenly disappear and don’t come back it’s probably cause the power went out)
[14:52] <jarib> so i basically ported the java parts to ruby
[14:52] <jarib> so now you also have ruby->firefox extension, ruby->C++ etc
[14:53] <alan_baird> ic
[14:53] <alan_baird> and that’s what selenium-webdriver is right?
[14:53] <jarib> it made it easier since i could reuse those browser-specific parts
[14:53] <jarib> yes
[14:54] <alan_baird> so, i looked at some of the examples in selenium-webdriver, would it be correct to say that that gem’s api follows selenium’s existing api?
[14:54] <jarib> how the “language bindings” talk to the browser still differs somewhat from browser to browser
[14:54] <jarib> alan_baird: it’s more correct to say the webdriver API
[14:54] <alan_baird> ok
[14:54] <jarib> although “webdriver API” =~ “selenium 2 api”
[14:54] <alan_baird> got it
[14:55] <jarib> however “webdriver API” != “selenium 1 api”
[14:55] <jarib> most people associate “selenium” with the selenium 1 api
[14:55] <alan_baird> cool…ok now how does webdriver remote come into the picture
[14:55] <alan_baird> is it required?
[14:55] <alan_baird> why would you use it?
[14:56] <jarib> the remote is basically two parts: a java web server, and a client driver
[14:57] <jarib> the server will accept commands like “click”, “findElement” (using a REST-like JSON-over-HTTP interface)
[14:57] <jarib> before they had java client->java server
[14:57] <jarib> now we also have a ruby client for that server, so ruby client->java server
[14:57] <jarib> does that make sense?
[14:58] <jarib> it’s not required, but it’s useful if you want to run your tests launch the browser on another machine
[14:58] <alan_baird> is that kind of the replacement for Selenium Grid?
[14:59] <jarib> say, if you’re developing on linux, you could easily run your tests on IE on windows, firefox on mac etc. using the remote driver
[14:59] <jarib> no, Selenium Grid is more than that
[14:59] <alan_baird> ok
[14:59] <jarib> but the webdriver remote stuff could be used to build a similar system
[14:59] <alan_baird> well, right now, I think I kind of have the same thign
[14:59] <alan_baird> i have a bunch of VMs that I execute tests on
[14:59] <alan_baird> and a system that tells the vms when to run the tests
[15:00] <alan_baird> but, it seems like the remote would be one computer telling the other computers what to do
[15:00] <alan_baird> as opposed to having it be independent the way I do it now
[15:00] <jarib> right – with the remote, you wouldn’t need to distribute your test scripts – each command to the browser would go over the network
[15:00] <jarib> so it’s a long-running server process
[15:01] <alan_baird> thats pretty nifty
[15:01] <alan_baird> is that the main way people would use that kind of feature for?
[15:02] <jarib> yeah – also makes it easier to test on various combinations of browsers/platforms
[15:03] <alan_baird> i’m just noticing the slide that says Webdriver has a “lovely API”, but apparently we didn’t consider it lovely enough so we made watir-webdriver
[15:03] <alan_baird>
[15:03] <jarib> haha
[15:04] <jarib> well, compare it to the selenium api
[15:04] <alan_baird> i guess that’s mainly so people could backport their watir tests without a major rewrite
[15:04] <jarib> yeah, for my part it’s mainly because we have a lot invested in the watir api
[15:04] <alan_baird> right
[15:04] <alan_baird> same here
[15:04] <alan_baird>
[15:05] <alan_baird> ok, well thank you very much for letting me bug you
[15:05] <jarib> if i were starting from scratch with experienced developers, i’d probably use the webdriver api directly
[15:05] <jarib> no problem
[15:05] <alan_baird> i’m going to forward this conversation to zeljko
[15:05] <jarib> yep
[15:05] <jarib> do that
[15:05] <alan_baird> maybe we might do a little follow up

On Windows, install it with

gem install selenium-webdriver
gem install watir-webdriver --pre

and use it with

require "rubygems" # optional
require "watir-webdriver"
browser = Watir::Browser.new(:firefox)

Supported browsers are Internet Explorer (:ie, :internet_explorer), Firefox (:ff, :firefox), Chrome (:chrome) and RemoteWebDriver Server (:remote).

Update 1: as Steve suggested, I have tried it on RubyInstaller.

Install RubyInstaller, DevKit and all required gems and it just works!

gem install selenium-webdriver
gem install watir-webdriver --pre
gem install win32-process

Update 2: It works on Mac.

My Mac came with Ruby and RubyGems installed, so it was just:

sudo gem install selenium-webdriver
sudo gem install watir-webdriver --pre

Update 3: It works on Ubuntu Linux.

My Ubuntu did not have Ruby and RubyGems installed.

Install Ruby with:

sudo apt-get install ruby-full

You can install RubyGems with:

sudo apt-get install rubygems

but Jari said it would be better to install it from source. Downland the latest RubyGems tgz or zip file (rubygems-1.3.5.tgz and rubygems-1.3.5.zip at the moment), extract it, open Terminal in extracted folder and run:

sudo ruby setup.rb

Install watir-webdriver:

sudo gem1.8 install selenium-webdriver
sudo gem1.8 install watir-webdriver --pre

This blog post is update of my recent Ruby Mail on CRuby, JRuby and IronRuby post. Mikel and Jimmy have commented on the post saying I did a poor job, and I would agree. I decided to do a better job this time. Please let me know if measurements can be further improved.

So, I have an e-mail file called 1.eml:

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:37:34 Central European Standard Time
From: from@test.com
To: to@test.com
Message-ID: <4b336e9e762a0_a1014263a4689d3@2003-ie7.mail>
Subject: This is a test email
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="US-ASCII";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Some text for mail body

The First Try

This is the test from the first post. (RubyInstaller was not included in the first post.) It is included here so all code and numbers are at the same page, I guess it is easier to compare that way. Read the file, display subject and total time elapsed (in seconds).

time = Time.now
require "rubygems"
require "mail"
mail = Mail.read("1.eml")
puts mail.subject.to_s
puts Time.now - time

Executed the script three times for each Ruby implementation. RubyInstaller the fastest, CRuby and JRuby were similar in speed, IronRuby was way slower.

The Second Try

Since both Mikel and Jimmy said require could take the majority of the time, and I was not really interested in measuring that, I excluded it from the measurement.

require "rubygems"
require "mail"

time = Time.now
mail = Mail.read("1.eml")
puts mail.subject.to_s
puts Time.now - time

Times were way shorter. RubyInstaller the fastest (can not get much faster that 0.0 seconds), CRuby and JRuby in the same order of magnitude, IronRuby order of magnitude slower. JRuby has surprisingly the same numbers every time.

Benchmark

Mikel and Jimmy have suggested that I should use benchmark.rb, so I took a look. I have slightly modified the script. This time the file was read 1000 times.

require "rubygems"
require "mail"
require "benchmark"

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { 1000.times do; puts Mail.read("1.eml").subject.to_s; end }
end

This measurement said JRuby was the fastest, followed closely by RubyInstaller and CRuby, IronRuby again order of magnitude slower.

Environment

Tests were run in VMware Fusion 2.0.6 virtual machine, 512 MB RAM, Microsoft Windows Sever 2003 R2 (Standard Edition, Service pack 2).
Host machine is MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.6.2, 4 GB RAM.

>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]

>jruby -v
jruby 1.4.0 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 174) (2009-11-02 69fbfa3) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.6.0_10) [x86-java]

>ir -v
IronRuby 0.9.3.0 on .NET 2.0.0.0

>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2009-08-04 patchlevel 383) [i386-mingw32]

Mail version 1.3.4 on all platforms.

sudo port install webalizer

For more than a year I had a half finished blog post on how to create a podcast site. I never had the time to finish and publish it. Recently I had to create a podcast site and now is the chance to finish it. If I do not do it now, I probably never will.

I have already blogged on podcasts and podcasting and I just mentioned creating a site. Now I want to get into detail.

Hosting

You can host the podcast at blogger.com or wordpress.com but I would recommend a cheap shared hosting. It gives you way more flexibility. You can host wordpress.org based site on almost any cheap shared hosting.

Domain

Pick a domain. Make it short and relevant to the topic of the podcast. Please do not use www in front of the domain. Also, dashes in domain name are so 2009. I would recommend com domains. For example, a good name for a podcast on Watir is Watir Podcast. It is trivial to create a domain from such name: watirpodcast.com. Both the name of the site and the name of the domain make it clear what is the topic of the podcast.

If you already have a domain (you probably already have a blog) create a subdomain. For example, you have a blog at zeljkofilipin.com. The podcast could live at podcast.zeljkofilipin.com.

The site I am currently working on is a bit more complicated. Fellow tester, blogger and podcaster Pradeep Soundararajan asked if I could help him with the podcast site. He has a blog at testertested.blogspot.com and I have testingpodcast.com domain (the site is still under construction, but feel free to take a look), and we settled down for testertested.testingpodcast.com.

To create a subdomain, log in to cPanel (or whatever software you get with hosting) and create a subdomain. If you have cPanel, go to Domains > Subdomains and create it.

Install WordPress

cPanel has Fantastico script that makes installing WordPress trivial. Go to Software/Services > Fantastico De Luxe > Blogs > WordPress > New Installation and finish the wizard.

Go to testertested.testingpodcast.com and the site is there!

Theme

The site is up, but there is still some work to be done. Please, change the theme. Log in and go to Appearance > Add New Themes.

There is so much themes that you will probably spend some time looking for one that you like. I selected Atahualpa from featured themes. When you find the theme you like, you can preview it with Preview and install with Install. After you have installed it, activate it with Activate. Go to the site by clicking Visit Site link at the top of the page. (I usually have administration page in one tab and the site in another tab.)

Much better.

You can configure the theme at Appearance > Atahualpa Theme Options. I do not have any design talent, so I tend not to mess with the theme.

Configure WordPress

There are a few tweaks to WordPress that you should do.

At Settings > Discussion I usually check Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.) and uncheck Comment author must fill out name and e-mail and I change Comment Moderation to hold a comment in the queue if it contains 1 or more links (the default is 2).

At Settings > Privacy I change the setting to I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers.

At Settings > Permalinks I set Common settings > Custom Structure to /%postname%/.

At Settings > Miscellaneous I uncheck Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.

Plugins

There a few plugins that you just have to have.

Go to Plugins > Installed and activate Akismet. After it is activated you have to enter your WordPress.com API Key at Plugins > Askimet Configuration. You will need wordpress.com account. Create one if you do not already have it. Go to wordpress.com/profile to get your API Key.

podPress is must have plugin for podcasters. To install it go to Plugins > Add New and search for podPress. It should be the first one in search results. As with themes, there is Install link. After the installation, activate it with Activate Plugin link.

Since I am fanatic about knowing all possible statistics, I always install my favorite data gathering plugins. Since you already know how to install and activate plugins, do that for Google Analytics for WordPress. You will need Google Analytics account. Log in and click Add Website Profile» link. Get Web Property ID and paste it to Plugins > Installed > Google Analytics for WordPress > Settings > Analytics Account ID.

FeedBurner FeedSmith is a bit different to install because it is not in WordPress repository. Go to Creating your WordPress feed (self-hosted WordPress) and download FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload, upload downloaded zip file, and activate it after the installation. I received The plugin does not have a valid header error message after the activation, so I unzipped it and uploaded FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php to /public_html/testertested/wp-content/plugins with FTP client. Acitivate it at Plugins > Installed.

You will need FeedBurner account. Log in, and paste http://testertested.testingpodcast.com/ in text box under Type your blog or feed address here. Make sure I am a podcaster! checkbox is checked. Click button Next>> and finish the wizard.

Go to Settings > FeedBurner and enter http://feeds.feedburner.com/TestingStoriesFromIndia in text box under http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed.

I think we are done with plugins for now.

Podtrac

You will need a good statistics on podcast downloads. Create Podtrac account (click Podcasters). Log in, click link Register a New Podcast >>> and finish the wizard.

Links

Everything is set up, but there is no content. Delete all default links at Links > Edit. Add link to your blog or site.

Pages

You probably need only one page: About. Add your image and short description of the site there.

Users

Create new users at Users > Add New if you are not the only one editing the site.

Posts

Rename the default Uncategorized category to Podcast at Posts > Categories. Make sure you change both Category Name and Category Slug settings.

Delete the default post at Posts > Edit and add new at Posts > Add New. Enter title and short description of the podcast. Add [display_podcast] where you want the link to the mp3 file to appear. Check Podcast checkbox in Categories.

Make sure to add your small image. I think it is very important. It makes the site more human. While uploading make sure to enter your name in Title, Caption and Description.

Pradeep Soundararajan

Click Add Media File button at the bottom of the page. Paste URL of the podcast prefixed with http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/ in Location text box. In my example it was http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.skilledtests.com/testertested/FIET.mp3. Enter FIET.mp3 as file title and click Auto Detect buttons next to Size and Duration text boxes.

Click button Publish.

iTunes

You should submit the podcast to a directory. I would highly recommend to at least submit podcast to the iTunes Store. Requires iTunes application to be installed and launched. Also requires logging in to iTunes Store.

podPress

A few final tweaks to podPress.

Go to podPress > Feed/iTunes Settings and enter iTunes:FeedID. It is a number from the end of the podcast iTunes link. You got the link in e-mail from Apple after the podcast is added to iTunes Store. The link looks like http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=346653690 and FeedID is 346653690 in this case.

Enter podcast title, description and feed at the same page. Also, add an image as album art.

Go to podPress > General Settings and select Enable PodTrac Statistics.

The End

I think it is all for now. Feel free to comment. Please let me know if I missed something that should be done, or if I am doing something wrong.

Installation of each Ruby version and Mail gem was really easy so I will not describe it here. What interested me was how fast was Mail on each Ruby implementation.

I have created a simple mail and saved it as 1.eml.

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:37:34 Central European Standard Time
From: from@test.com
To: to@test.com
Message-ID: <4b336e9e762a0_a1014263a4689d3@2003-ie7.mail>
Subject: This is a test email
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="US-ASCII";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Some text for mail body

This script will read the file, display subject and time elapsed (in seconds).

time = Time.now
require "rubygems"
require "mail"
mail = Mail.read("1.eml")
puts mail.subject.to_s
puts Time.now - time

I have executed the script three times for each Ruby implementation. It looks to me that CRuby and JRuby are similar in speed, and IronRuby is way slower.

Environment

Tests were run in VMware Fusion 2.0.6 virtual machine, 512 MB RAM, Microsoft Windows Sever 2003 R2 (Standard Edition, Service pack 2).
Host machine is MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.6.2, 4 GB RAM.

>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]

>jruby -v
jruby 1.4.0 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 174) (2009-11-02 69fbfa3) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.6.0_10) [x86-java]

>ir -v
IronRuby 0.9.3.0 on .NET 2.0.0.0

Mail version 1.3.4 on all platforms.

Watir team had a little chat and we decided it would be a good idea to grow. So, one of the first duties I had as community manager was to promote two community members to support sheriffs.

I am glad I can announce that Tiffany Fodor and Wesley Chen have accepted to be added to Watir community team with title of support sheriff.

Tiffany answers a lot of questions and Wesley is helping us moderate the group. I hope both of them will continue with business as usual.

If you have a nice word for them, now is the time.

Podcast is a file with audio or video content, distributed over the internet. The name comes from iPod and broadcast.

Podcast is a radio show recorded as an audio file, usually mp3. If you record a speech or a presentation (on a conference for example), that is a podcast too. It is really popular to record a conversation among two or more people about a topic. It is also a podcast. If people are not collocated, you can record the conversation using Skype or similar software. If you have something to say, record yourself talking. That is a podcast too.

Of course, if you have the equipment, the will and really really really lot of time, besides the audio, you can also record video. Video recording and editing is a lot more complicated and time consuming when compared to audio, and I will focus only on audio podcasts.

Where do they live?

An example would be handy right about now. If you have Apple iTunes (available for Windows and Mac OS X), run it and click iTunes Store on the left hand side. At the top of the screen that opens, you will see Podcasts, with several options, audio, video and list of podcast categories.

Choose a category among arts, business, education, health, music, technology… Since you are reading this blog, I guess you are into technology. After you choose a category, at the top there will be options for all podcasts, only video or audio. You can narrow down the choice using the menu at the bottom left with subcategories (gadgets, podcasting, software how-to, tech news). There are also several featured providers, like TWiT TV (highly recommended). In the middle of the screen there is Featured section, and at the top right there is See All.

Click it and you will see a list of podcasts. You can choose a podcast and see a list of shows and download an episode. Subscribe does just that. It is free for all podcasts that I have seen. Subscribing is the best way to get all new episodes of a podcast that you like, without having to check if there is something new. Every time there is a new episode, iTunes will automatically download it. There is an option in iTunes settings to check for new episodes every hour, day or week, or to disable it, if you wish.

iTunes Store has search and you can find a podcast that way too.

If you know there is a podcast, but you can not find it in iTunes Store, you can subscribe to feed directly with Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast.

If you do not see podcasts in iTunes Store, check if you are in United States store (there is a flag in the bottom right part of the screen, click it). Unfortunately, some stores, including Croatia, do not have podcasts.

Listen

© Matthieu Riegler, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons

Podcast is just an audio (or video) file, so you can play it on any device that can play such files: computer, CD/DVD/Blu-ray device, mobile phone, digital camera… The podcasts (especially audio) are the best when played on portable media players, like Apple iPod. I listen to podcasts almost every time when my brain is free but my hands or legs are busy. For example, when working around the house, walking, running, riding a bike or driving a car…

You can copy files downloaded with iTunes (or acquired some other way) to your portable media player. Copying podcasts from iTunes to iPod is really easy. Follow the instructions that came with the device.

Record

Of course, like every true geek, it is not enough just to enjoy a technology, you have to try it yourself. How to create a podcast? There is a few things you should know, but it is not complicated procedure.

For audio recording, regarding hardware, you need a computer with microphone. Lots of laptops have one built in. You can record audio with another device, and then transfer it to the computer. If your computer does not have build in microphone, you can use any microphone that you already own and that you can plug in audio card of your computer. Make sure you plug it in microphone jack, it is similar to headphones jack. If you do not have a microphone, there are cheap ones available. Headphones with microphone for internet telephony will work just fine too. Microphones can connect to the computer with USB too.

If you want to record video, you need a camera. There are cheap web cameras available. Some laptops have them build in. Any camera will do for now.

Regarding software, for audio recording and editing I would recommend Audacity. It is open source. If you do not know what that is, for now it is enough that you know it is free. Audacity is available for all popular operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Let’s start recording. For the beginning, the simplest case. Record yourself.

You do not need to know a lot about audio recording. Choose quietest room, close all windows and doors, turn of telephone. Plug in microphone into the computer, if you are not using build it one. Install Audacity and run it. Click the big red Record button and start talking. If everything is find, after you play what you have just recorded, the sound will be loud and clear enough without a lot of noise. If you hear yourself and you are satisfied with the quality, the biggest part of the recording is done.

Most podcasts that I listen to are 30-60 minutes long, but there are really short ones (about 5 minutes) and really long ones (over 2 hours). For this time I would recommend to record just a few seconds, not more than a few minutes.

If you can hear yourself, but it is not loud enough, play with sound settings of operating system and Audacity. Turn up microphone volume. Turn speakers volume up, maybe the audio is recorded fine, but the reproduction is too quiet.

If you do not hear anything, Audacity probably is not recording from the microphone. Check the settings if input device is set to microphone.

Edit

In most cases, after the recording you do not have to edit the podcast a lot. You can even publish it just as it is recorded. I always at least listen to every podcast before I publish it. I mostly record conversations over Skype and more often that not the delay between question and answer is a few seconds longer that with in person conversation. That is really noticeable if the other person is on another continent. I cut such long pauses. Cutting is the action that you will be performing most of the time. If you say something stupid, cough, telephone rings or if you record a sound that you do not want in the podcast, find it and delete it. If you do not like a part of podcast, you can delete a few minutes. There is no limit. You can delete it all.

Every time you start recording, Audacity makes a new audio trac. Visually, it looks like a new track. Similar example is image editing, where you can have several layers in an image. When editing audio, you can combine several tracks. For example, one track is you speaking, one is music for the beginning and one is music for the end. You can import music with File > Import > Audio.

Podcasts usually have music at the beginning and at the end. Some podcasts have music in the background all the time, but I do not like that. It is really a bad idea if you do not have audio editing experience, because music can be too loud. I think the speech is the most important thing in a podcast.

Please be careful while choosing the music. You can not publish music just like that. As a rule of thumb, you can not publish any music that you have bought. The exception is podsafe music, mostly independent artist that let you publish their music with little or no fee.

If you play an instrument or if you sing, you can record yourself and use it in a podcast. Maybe you know somebody that has a band and you can help a friend to get audience.

When Audacity is started, Selection Tool is active. You can select part of track and edit it, mostly just cut it out. Time Shift Tool is also useful. It moves a track forward or backward in time. If you have tree tracks, like in previous example (speech, music for the beginning and the end), click Time Shift Tool and move music to the beginning and the end, and speech to the middle.

Make sure music is not much louder that speech. If you turn up the volume to hear the speech, when you are in a loud place (traffic for example), when the speech ends and loud music starts to play at the end of the podcast, it can be really upleasant.

If you have recorded more than fits a screen, use zoom options (View > Zoom In/Normal/Out).

Listen to everything you have recorded, and when you like what you hear, make sure you save it.

Audacity saves files in aup format, optimal for editing. It consists of a lot of small files that take a lot of space and can not be reproduced on devices that do not have Audacity installed. We will convert the file to popular mp3 format, but for now we will save it as wav (Windows) or aiff (Mac OS X) file. We are using that format because I want to show you another very useful free tool: The Levelator. In short, it adjustes audio levels (and accepts only wav or aiff files). It is very useful if there are more then one person recorded, and they are not equally far away from the microphone (and hence recorded with different loudness). Or, there are more that one microphone that are not the same (like when you record a conversation over Skype). It is also really uncomfortable for the listener if the sound has to be set to loud so one of the people is loud enough, but then somebody else is painfully loud. The Levelator solves the problem, as far as it can. Nothing can fix bad audio file. It is important to record as good as possible.

Levelator is trivial to use. Run it and drag wav or aiff file to it’s window. It automatically starts working and creates a file with almost the same name, except for the added output.

Wav and aiff files are not compressed and hence are large. They should be compressed, usually to mp3 file. Open newly created file with output in name in Audacity. Go to File > Export and choose mp3. The first time you do that you will have to install mp3 support for Audacity. Follow the instructions. While exporting to mp3 choose Options and select 64 kbps quality. It has proven to be the optimal quality for audio that consists mostly of speech.

After your the first podcast is in mp3 file, you are done with editing. Listen to it and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Publish

Recorded podcast will not get you fame and fortune if it is located only on your computer. You must publish it on internet. If you speak HTML like you have lived there, skip this chapter. If you need help, continue reading.

I would recommend buying the cheapest shared hosting. You should also buy a domain. When buying hosting, ask if you can install WordPress. It has proven to be excellent for podcast site. Your hosting problaby has cPanel with Fantastico script for automatic WordPress installation. If not, it probably has something similar. Even installing WordPress by hand is not hard and it takes just a few minutes. Follow the instructions on WordPress site.

There is a plugin for WordPress made for podcasters: podPress. It has Flash player so your podcasts can be played directly from your site. It also has download statistics. Play with the settings.

Wordpress and it’s plugins are not in scope of this article, I leave it to the reader for the homework.

You should choose a license for the podcast. With the license you state the terms of distributing the podcast. For example, you can allow further distribution, it if is non commercial and if you are stated as the autor, and not the distributor. I recommend one of the Creative Commons licenses.

After you cheap shared hosting has no more space left (mp3 files take a lot of space, regardless of the compression), instead of buying more expensive plan, I would recommend Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Leave WordPress at shared hosting (you can not run it on S3) and move all mp3 files to S3. It offers very cheap file hosting. For example, $0.15 per GB per month. You see how cheap that is. You have to pay also for upload to S3 and download from it, but it is also very cheap.

The easiest way to manage files at S3 is with Firefox add-on S3Fox.

After you have set up the web site and created the first post with a podcast, you still do not have any listeners. You can use your usual way of getting audience. Post a link to the podcast site at your blog, or one of the social networking sites that you use, or at a forum that is related to the content of the podcast… You should submit the podcast to a podcast directory. The biggest one is iTunes Store.

Conclusion

Now you know what is podcast, how to find and listen to them, and how to record, edit and publish them. I hope this podcast will help spread the word, both how to listen and how to create them. If you want to find more information on podcasts, I am sure you will not have a lot of trouble with that.

A few days ago it was exactly 5 years since I started working as a software tester. I planned to publish this on the very date, but life happened.

What happened in the last five years? Am I smarter? Or just older? Let’s find out.

Personal

In the last five years I have upgraded LifeOS™ from 26.0 to 31.0, upgraded Girlfriend 5.0 application to Wife 4.0 and installed Son 1.5. I do not use DistanceRunning application so much any more, but I do my best. Drums 1.0 are lost somewhere and Guitar 1.0 is mainly collecting digital dust. No so sure about smarter, but definitely older.

Smarter vs. Older – 0:1

Professional

Five years ago I had a job I did not like. I thought software (programming to be precise) is so cool, and I wished I could develop it for a living. No luck back then.

I still think software is lots of fun, and I live in code as much as I can. But, now I think software testing is even cooler, and I know I was born to be a tester. Not only do I have a job I would do even if I did not have to work, but I get to work from home. A dream I had since I was just a little kid.

Smarter vs. Older – 1:1

Programming Languages

My BASIC, FORTRAN and PHP skills declined a bit in the last five years, but I am sure I would be up and running in minutes if I ever needed them. (Looks like I had a thing for UPPERCASE languages back then.)
I have picked up some Ruby and Watir in the last few years, and I even made it to the Watir core team! Not bad for a simple tester from Croatia, right?!

Smarter vs. Older – 2:1

Web

Five years ago, I had a crappy site with a crappy URL. (In Croatian only. Some stuff is missing because it is archive.org snapshot, but it did not look much better anyway.)
Today, I am all over the place. (I even have a place where I try to aggregate my web presence.) I have a great site with great URL. Five years ago podcasts just started to appear, now I have one.

Smarter vs. Older – 3:1

Watir

I already mentioned Watir, a tool that I use almost every day, and it makes my life much easier. Big portion of this site is dedicated to it. I like it so much I talk about it to anybody that would listen. I even flew across the ocean to meet with people that like Watir.

Conclusion

It really takes a lot of time to write a blog post. No wonder I do not write so much.

Let’s take a look at the final score:

Smarter vs. Older – 3:1

Looks like Smarter won. Maybe another jury would vote differently.

If you remember only one thing from this post, I hope it will be the title:

Test like you do not need the money.