June 2006

Skypecasts in your language

By Dan Houghton on June 14, 2006 in Product.

Yesterday we launched localised Skypecasts. You can now browse the Skypecasts directory to see listings and help text in your language.

To change the listings so they only appear in your language, click on Options from the page listing Skypecasts On Now, Starting Soon, etc.
To change the language of the help text, click on your language in the footer, under "Skype in your country and language".
To create a Skypecast in your language, simply select it from the list on the Create a Skypecast page.

Your feedback on this feature would be much appreciated. Please try to create and view listings in the language (or languages!) that you speak.

Some improvements to localisation coming soon:

We'll be adding language autodetection soon, so Skypecasts shows listings in your language without you having to visit the Options page.
There are currently 2 weeks of Skypecasts already scheduled, that are not tagged by language. For example, a Japanese Skypecast created last week, will show up, even if you ask to only see "Swedish" ones. These will disappear in 2 weeks, once all the scheduled Skypecasts have taken place.

Visit the Skypecasts forums to leave feedback.

Just for the record

By Dan Houghton on June 7, 2006 in Tips.

There's some great live content here on Skypecasts, but once you miss it, it's gone... One very common request is the ability for the host to record their Skypecast, and distribute to their audience as an MP3 or podcast.

We've had some discussion on our forums on easy ways to record a Skypecast (or indeed, any Skype call), so that it can be uploaded to your website as an MP3 or podcast. Since Skypecasts does not yet have built in recording, I've summarised the third party software solutions below:

Audio Hijack Pro (Mac OS X) - Not specifically for Skype, but a general sound recording and editing tool. Here's a quote from our forum: "I use [Audio Hijack Pro] to record our podcast: http://fourguys.libsyn.com or on iTunes under "Four Guys Walk Into a Bar.... AHP lets you incorporate high- and low-pass filters to get rid of ambient noise and hiss. It lets you record in lossless so that you can edit and only downmix to mp3 when finished. It gives you filters to drop the volume automatically if the [Skypecast] is too loud, and (my favorite) it has a plugin that lets you "create" stereo from mono, which gives the sound a bit more depth. All of these are easy to set up and intuitive. It costs $35 but is worth every penny."
HotRecorder (Windows) - Free trial, or $19.95 to purchase. Another quote fro our forums: "I've had very good experience with using HotRecorder since it records the audio from Skype differently from every other app I've seen out there. I don't quite know how it works, but it only records audio from your microphone in one audio channel (say, the left side of a stereo track) and the audio ONLY FROM SKYPE in the other channel. Quite nifty when recording a conversation with IMs going and everything to have all that other audio not pick up in the recording. They have a free version that records to a proprietary format, but if you purchase it you can convert that proprietary file to WAV format for use in Audacity."
Pamela (Windows) - New in version 2.0 Professional or Business Edition (from $24.95) is the ability to record a Skypecast, or any Skype call. Pamela is a Skype Certified product.
PrettyMay (Windows) - New in version 1.0.2.0beta. Pretty May is currently free, according to their website. The developer says: "PrettyMay allows you to record skypecasts simply, and the audio will be saved as mp3 or wav format in separate track which you selected. You can also broadcast audio (mp3 or wav format) in Skypecasts."

If you've had any experiences with these, or other solutions, please let us know on the forum.

Just a reminder that if you do intend to record your Skypecast, it is a legal requirement for you to inform participants that they're being recorded. I suggest putting "(recorded)" at the end of the title of your listing, so it will be shown in the directory before people join, and also in the control window when they are speaking.