2022 Texas Midterm Voting

The 2022 elections are well underway, but it’s not too late to formulate a plan and get out to vote, Texans! You have until November 4th to skip the long lines and vote early, otherwise you’ll need to vote on Election Day with is November 8th, 2022. Below are some helpful links and other information so you’re prepared to hit the polls!

Where Can I Vote?

Check your early voting and polling locations as well as other voter registration by checking the Texas Secretary of State’s website here and use the “Am I Registered?” tool. Keep in mind you’ll already have needed active voter registration or mailed in your new voter registration on or before October 11, 2022 in order to vote for this round of elections (Texas’s rules, not mine). It will also be pertinent to make sure you have a valid form of ID (once again, a TX government rule) before trying to vote. Luckily The Texas Tribune has a list of all the valid forms of identification accepted in order to vote in Texas for the midterms

What’s on my Ballot?

Usually your county’s government website will have a sample ballot for you to view so you can prepare before you actually head to the polls. You can also use non-profit organization online ballot lookup tools such as Vote411’s online tool or the handy tool found on Texas Tribune’s 2022 Voter Guide. Since ballots will vary based on what county or voting district to which you reside, you’ll need to provide the address where you’re registered to vote to get the most accurate information.

How can I be an Informed Voter?

Now that you know where your closes polling place is and what is on your ballot, how will know how you want to vote? This is a great question to ask, and thank you for wanting to be an informed voter! There are a couple different approaches I’ll detail out below - one general and one more targeted.

Learn About the Different Party Platforms

If you have no idea what party you align with (or maybe you’re just undecided), you may want to take a look at each party’s specific platform to see what values they hold and what their priorities are in the political arena. From my own Texas ballot I found four different parties: Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green. Find the link for each party’s platform below and see what you may share most with each.

• The Republican Party of Texas Platform

• The Texas Democratic Party Platform

• The Libertarian Party of Texas Platform

• The Green Party of Texas Platform

Once you have a general idea of how you may align with each party, we can look closer at the candidates on the ballot through voting guides.

Learn About the Candidates

There are a few different organizations in Texas that help create extensive voter guides and gather candidate to help make you as informed of a voter as possible. Here are a few tools and resources that I use whenever voting season approaches:

• League of Women Voters (LWV) of Texas - my go-to resource for my vote-planning. I feel this tool is most useful during primary season as that is where we can dig deep to find the candidate that best aligns with our values and views, but this can also be a helpful tool if you’re new to the voting process. Use the Vote411 tool under the “Find what is on your ballot!” section to generate an interactive sample ballot where you can compare candidates. LWV sends out questionnaires to each candidates to see how they’ll tackle political issues across Texas. You can compare candidate responses and select who best aligns with your views. At the end you can have your selections emailed to you so you can print out or save for later.

• The Texas Tribune’s Voter Guide - A leading favorite of mine as a transparent Texas news source, the Texas Tribune has a handy tool that shows you the map of each district in which you reside after providing your voter registration address and a list of candidates running for each seat. Although they don’t have as much information on each candidate as LWV, their historical district and voter breakdowns are useful to see the constituent makeup for each voting district.

• League of Women Voters & Vote411 Non-Partisan Voters Guide - that sums up this resource. The LWV and Vote411 team up to provide a non-partisan voters guide that lists all eligible candidates for each seat as well as their respective views and plans on what they will do in the position if elected.

VOTE!

By now you should have found your closest early voting location, researched what party you align with most, and determined what candidates for whom you plan to vote. Now just double check you have your valid form of ID and head to the polling place to make your voice heard!

PSA Texans: Register to Vote!

Whether it’s a district, county, state, or nationwide primary or general election, they always seem to creep up on me. As a result, I also end up anxious as to whether my voter registration is current. 18 states and Washington DC have same-day voter registration on election days, while 42 states (and Washington DC) have online voter registration available - a progressive move bringing power to citizens to help them exercise their constitutional right to choose their representation in our government.

Texas unfortunately is neither of those.

The only way to register to vote within Texas requires you to send a physical registration application in a stamped envelope to your local county’s Registrar’s office. Even if you’ve registered before, your voter registration can still expire after a period of time, and the resources the Texas government provides doesn’t make it straightforward to tell whether your voter registration is current.

For example, when using Texas’s “Am I Registered?” online search tool and type in my TDL (Texas Driver’s License) and Date of Birth, I’m presented with information such as the date I originally registered (back in 2020), the date my registration is “Valid from" (whatever that means), and whether my registration is “ACTIVE” - to which the tool states my registration is of “ACTIVE” status. The tool does not provide a section stating when my voter registration may expire, which I remember reading on my last physical voter registration certificate as December 31, 2021. So now I’m left with conflicting information and I am unsure as to whether I will be turned away at the polling booth should I do nothing.

To make me question myself even more, the “Am I Registered?” tool even has a disclaimer at the bottom:

Note: 'Am I Registered?' provides a web-based search of data extracted from Texas’s statewide voter registration database. It is NOT the official record of your registration, which is retained by the voter registration office in the county of your residence.

As such I’m ultimately left with needing to send in yet another registration application. Better safe than sorry.

WHAT TO DO

I recommend (re)registering if you have any doubts on the current status of your voter registration. To do so, visit the VoteTexas.gov website. From there you’ll have three choices about registration:

1. Fill out the SOS Online Voter Registration Application and then print, sign, and mail the application to your county’s Registrar.

2. Request a printed application to have mailed to you. NOTE: this method is not advised if you’re looking to register within a week or two of the 30-day deadline.

3. Contact your Texas county’s Registrar’s office to complete the voter registration process.

The easiest option for me is the first one, and after answering a few questions I’m given a form to fill out with my necessary information to register. See example of the form web page below:

Screenshot of the Texas SOS Online Voter Registration Application form

For my case, I chose “Replacement” under Application Type because I no longer have my voter registration certificate since it was shown to have expired at the end of last year. However, if this is your first time registering you will select “New” and if you’re changing your voter registration information due to a change in home address or a name change, you would select the “Change” option and fill out the form accordingly.

After filling out all required fields and clicking “Submit” you’ll be presented with a formatted Texas Voting Registration application but you are NOT done yet. You will still need to print out this application, place the application in a stamped envelope, and address that envelope to your county’s Registrars office shown on the application. As long as it's in the mail before the 30-day deadline you should receive your new or updated voter registration certificate in the mail before the time election day or early voting begins.

Make a Linktree Or Beacons Page with Squarespace

Are you looking for a way to funnel users to your newest content, latest product, or new project? Do you need simple but adaptive landing page to drive web traffic from your presence on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook? Don't want to deal with the hassle of updating your links on each social media page every time you have a new resource to share or campaign to promote? Having a single, one-stop web page where visitors can land to find everything they may need know about you can be handy to use across social media websites.

Businesses, influencers, entrepreneurs, activists, hobbyists and other individuals may use a service like Linktree or Beacons where they can dump a list of links onto one page and then just share their Linktree or Beacons profile. Even though there's a free tier for each of these services, you will need to subscribe to one of their paid tiers to have additional features such as more robust customization, additional pages, or access to in-depth analytics on how your links are performing and where your visitors are going.

If you already pay for hosting of your own website - like I do through Squarespace - why pay more money for something when you can quickly set up through the WYSIWYG editor for no additional monthly fee? By the end of this article, you'll have an adaptive web page with the same functionality of a Linktree page that will not only come in at no additional cost, but you'll also have access to all the analytics for the traffic you drive as well!

Follow the steps below to build your own Linktree clone. Please note: I am using Squarespace 7.0 or higher with the Bedford family of templates for these steps.

Making the Page

1) Log in to your Squarespace dashboard and click the "Pages" section.

We’ll only be working in the Pages section.

2) On the left side, scroll down to the "Not Linked" section and click the plus sign to add a new unlinked web page

3) Under the Layout section, click "About" and then select the "Vertical" option. This will start out with a simple centered layout that gives an image block, a text block, social media block, and some spacers for visual placement. You can start with just a blank template page and build you own if you wish, but I found that using the Vertical About layout template was quickest for me to get a Linktree clone up and running.

Click the plus sign “+” then the “About” layout option for quick setup.

Choose the “Vertical” option - it will show up best for mobile users after setup.

4) Name the new page on the left side panel to something unique/descriptive so you'll know what the page is for (I used "philslinks" for this example).

Give your new page a name.

5) Hover you mouse over the page on the left side and click the settings cog. On the Page Settings screen that pops up, give your new webpage a short, memorable but unique URL slug or just leave it as the default of whatever you named your page in Step 4. Click "Close" for the Page Settings menu

We’ll need to adjust a setting for the page.

Change the URL slug if you wish and click “Close”

6) Now's the time to build out your web page! Hover your mouse over the right pane and click the "Edit" button to enter into the Page Editor.

Click “Edit” to get started building your own Linktree

7) Here you can start customizing your page to your liking. I have the basic areas outlined in the template below. I recommend leaving the default spacers and uploading a custom image (your profile picture, your business logo, etc.) for the Image Block.

Layout described in Step 7.

8) After uploading your custom image, I suggest going into the settings for the Image Block and turning off the caption in the Content tab and changing the shape from Original to Shape (default is a circle) in the Design tab. You can also play around with animations if you wish in the Design tab as well, but leaving everything else as the default is fine.

9) Scrolling down you will see a default text block sandwiched between two Spacer Blocks centered on the page. I suggest deleting these, moving the Social Media block to be just below your custom image, and adding a Text Block and however many Button Blocks you wish to use for links.

Delete these three blocks: the top Spacer Block, the Text Block, and the bottom Spacer Block.

Move the Social Block to be below your Image Block, add a Text Block and Button Blocks

10) The buttons can be edited to display custom text and a custom link that, when clicked, will take the visitor to the specified URL.

Customize your Button Blocks

11) When done editing your buttons and getting your website the way you want, click "Save" to exit out the Page Editor and you're done!

That’s it!

Great job! You've just set up your own personal Linktree. All that's needed to do now is copy your new page's URL and paste it into your social media profiles. Whenever you want to add a new link in the future, you will only need to add a new button in the Page Editor from the Squarespace dashboard on a computer or through the Squarespace app of your iOS or Android device.

There's much more you can do to customize your page to make it look flashier, but that involves advanced topics like modifying the CSS of your website among other things that are beyond the scope of this tutorial. That I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. For now, farewell and happy linking!

Questions To Consider When Starting A Podcast

Photo by Alan Levine

If you’re thinking about starting a podcast there are a few things you may want to consider before jumping right in: How much time and money are you willing to invest? Will your podcast only have one host (usually yourself), co-hosts, or a round table/group discussion format? Are you editing the podcast yourself? What service will be hosting your podcast’s audio files? Do not let these questions discourage you. These are questions I had to ask myself when helping my pastor start the MURP podcast, and the answers to these questions will affect the approach in making your own podcast. Here I’ll help break down what you may want to consider in preparing to go on your own podcasting journey.

How Much Money (And Time) Are You Willing to Invest?

Anyone can start a podcast and at any price point, from free to thousands of dollars. One of the first questions you should consider before starting is: how much do you want to budget for starting and maintaining your podcast? Some things to consider that will cost money are equipment costs (like a microphone to record your voice, a computer, etc.), the cost of hosting a website and the audio files for your podcast, and the cost of audio editing software.

You can start a podcast at very little cost upfront. In fact, if you want to go for the least amount of money possible, you can start a podcast for free using a service like Anchor. With only your smartphone you can record, edit, and publish your podcast all through Anchor at no cost. However, the trade off will be sacrificing quality for saving money. Your podcast may not sound that great using just your smartphone’s microphone and the limited editing capabilities of Anchor’s built-in editor. You may also be giving up creative equity to Anchor since Anchor provides its services to users for free, meaning Anchor itself needs to generate revenue some other way in order to pay for all that free hosting. This may include putting ads before or within your podcast that you may not want. I will revisit tight/small budget podcast options in another blog post, but for now I’m going to assume you have some amount of money to use towards your podcast endeavor.

Solo Podcast

If your podcast will involve only you talking into a microphone, a simple cardioid microphone like Audio-Technica’s ATR2100 USB Mic or one of the more popular Blue Yeti USB Microphones may be the best fit for your format. When I started out my podcasting journey I used the Blue Snowball which was around $50-$60 at the time before graduating to the current setup that I have today.

Two Or More

Recording multiple people in the same room for a podcast will require more hardware, and not only just more microphones. Keep in mind that you will need a the appropriate hardware for each person you want to record, such as a microphone, microphone stand, pop-filter, and cabling (like XLR cables). Recording two or more people on a computer will require something called an audio interface that can translate the analog audio signals from your microphones into digital audio signals for the computer to process. There are many options to choose with an audio interface, and the price goes up with the number of XLR (microphone) connections you want to use for the number of speakers you plan to have. I decided on the Scarlett 2i2 by Focusrite when I started to record the Skeleton Barcode podcast years ago. It supports up to two XLR inputs with the ability to control the gain (basically volume) of each microphone. I still use the Scarlett 2i2 to this day, although I do have my eye on a more robust interface that supports more microphone inputs - the Tascam US-4x4. For microphones I decided on two Audio-Technica AT2020s to provide a richer sound. I also got an adjustable microphone stand and a pop filter for each.

This entire initial setup (audio interface, microphones, stands, pop filters, cables) costs about $450 after taxes, and that was only for a two-person podcast! Don’t let this be sticker price shock for you. Keep in mind: this equipment is an investment. Even though the initial cost may seem steep, you can see years of use out of this equipment with appropriate care.

Speaker & Audience Format

My most recent challenge in recording audio is for Messiah’s Upper Room Podcast, which I’ve been working on for about a year at the time of this posting. I needed to find a way to capture audio of a main speaker a classroom of about 100 attendees. After some research I chose the Tascam DR-40 Digital Recorder since it has two condenser microphones on the top for picking up comments and questions from the large class. It also has two XLR connections at the bottom so I can connect directly to the pastor’s wireless microphone that he uses with the PA system. It’s battery operated, so it is a portable all-in-one recording device, and uses an SD card so we can easily transfer the recordings to a computer for editing. This choice was due to budgetary restrictions, but if I am able to upgrade in the future I will want to go with the Zoom H6 Six-Track Portable Recorder for more robust recording capabilities where I can record up to 6 different people in high quality and adjust/mix their individual levels on the device itself.

In this environment, you may want to consider using multiple room mics strategically placed throughout the room to pick up comments, or have dedicated wireless microphones and runners that can hand the microphone to a person in the audience that wants to ask the question, but these scenarios can quickly rack up equipment costs, especially for wireless systems. I stepped back and examined what may be the best fit for our church’s current scenario and the goals of what we want to accomplish. I also weighed what audio source is the most important, which would definitely be the pastor’s, so ensuring he has a direct line into the recorder was an absolute requirement.

Editing Software

If you’re planning to record and edit the podcast all yourself, you will want to consider the not only the investment of money, but also the investment in time to learn the audio editing software (if you have no prior experience recording/editing podcasts) and the time to actually edit and produce the podcast. Audacity is a popular free, open-source software solution with a large community of help and support on how to start using it for various audio editing needs. There is also no shortage of online tutorial videos you can use to help teach the basics of editing audio and improving the overall sound of your recordings to make them sound better before publishing your podcast episode online. I recommend you begin editing with Audacity, especially if making a podcast is just a hobby at this time.

My audio editor of choice is Reaper which has a free trial and, if you like the software enough, a non-commercial license is at the inexpensive, one-time price of $60. Reaper is more than an audio editor, and is a full-featured Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that provides advanced functionality like automated actions, audio manipulation features like effects chains, and plugin support for third-party audio tools at a fraction of the price as other professional-grade DAWs like Pro Tools, Logic Pro X, or the monthly cost of Adobe Audition. Any of these tools will come with their own learning curve, but if you maintain the mindset that this purchase is an investment in your podcasting future the early difficulties of learning new software will outweigh the future benefits and sound of your podcasts for years to come.

Cost of Hosting

You will also want to consider the costs for hosting your podcast and website including the registration fees for a custom domain name (like philkasper.net) which for a .com or .net domain can range between $10-$16/yr. You will also want to consider what service to use that will host your website and where you can guide people towards. One inexpensive option, and also the most popular, is Wordpress. The MURP Podcast uses Wordpress to host the website content for $8/mo. However, this does not include the cost of hosting the audio files for MURP episodes, so I needed to use a separate service, in this case SimpleCast to host my audio files. There are other podcast hosting services such as libsyn that will host only podcast files. Some hosting services offer hosting for both a website and podcasts like Squarespace, blubrry, and SimpleCast.

Choosing which hosting combination will be up to you, but I suggest you expect to pay at least $20 per month to host both a website and podcast files on the Internet when starting out.

Choosing a Website/Podcast Host

You can start a podcast without a website, but I do not recommend it. I suggest that people to register their own custom domain and choose a hosting platform to have their own website in order to stake a claim on a piece of land known as the Internet, regardless of whether they plan to start a podcast. If anything, they will be able to have their own central hub that they control to present themselves to others. Having just a Facebook page or Medium account where you blog regularly can potentially corner a person as they rely on that one single service to stay around, unchanged, in perpetuity. The platform itself can change the rules on how content is displayed or monetized at any time. People who may not want to be bothered with the hassle or expense of owning and maintaining their website, I recommend they create an about.me page at the very least.

When starting a podcast, you will need a website and a place online where you can host your podcast’s audio files and a central area on the Internet where you may point people towards in order to learn more about your podcast. As mentioned earlier, some services provide hosting of your website while other services provide hosting and distribution for your podcast’s audio files. Still some others provide both. What will work best for you will depend on cost and preference. Below I outline a few different solution combinations.

All-In-One: Podcast & Website Hosting

Using an all-in-one solution can bring ease and simplicity into the podcasting equation, especially if you’re doing everything for a podcast yourself. Here are a few different solutions you may want to consider that provide both hosting of your website and your podcast files:

• Squarespace - This is my go-to website host of choice because of its easy to use, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface that can be used for beginners because you can simple start with a design template and drag-and-drop website elements to tweak the design how you like. Professionals web designers don’t have to feel limited as you can include custom coding into a Squarespace site as well. Squarespace also has a healthy amount of helpful documentation to help show you how to use Squarespace features, how to set up a podcast on your website, and message boards in case additional support is needed. The website you’re reading this on is a Squarespace site, and I’m planning to launch my next personal podcast on this platform. Even though I don’t use it for podcasting (yet), I do recommend Squarespace to at least host your website because it’s just so easy to use. If you’re interested in looking into Squarespace, they provide a two-week free trial, afterward tiered hosting plans start at $144/yr or $16/mo. All hosting plans include unlimited data storage and bandwidth, however, which is an enticing option for someone looking for a single-host solution.

• Blubrry - originally made popular because of its powerful plugin for Wordpress sites, Blubrry now provides hosting of podcasts and will also host your own Wordpress-based site as an added option. Unfortunately I can’t speak much to how the service performs as I have not personally used them, but I do know that using just a basic podcast hosting plan & a managed Wordpress site with a custom domain name will start about $32/month.

• Simplecast - I only learned about this website recently through an article I read during the 2018 holiday season on TechCrunch and I’m still testing out. I only use it for hosting the Messiah’s Upper Room Podcast’s audio files, but Simplecast offers an option to include a simple blog-style website so you can also have a front-facing site to direct subscribers to when you post new episodes. The drawback here is that administration of the website appears limited in simple editing of a post’s content and is only limited to one web page meaning you may not be able to add supplemental pages that may contain more information on yourself or your podcast or make a page for users to interact with (such as creating a contact form or users the option to sign up for a newsletter). I moved to hosting MURP’s files to Simplecast from Amazon’s AWS s3 service because I needed better analytics around who is subscribing and listening to the podcast on a weekly basis. I’m still learning their interface and analytics, but for now it appears to provide the information I’m looking for. If you’re looking for a basic website option that’s already included with podcast hosting for a total of about $12/month this may be a solid option to consider if you’re on a budget.

Website Hosts

Keeping your website host different from you’re the service hosting your podcast files can be useful. For example, you can easily switch website hosts while keeping the backbone of your podcast distribution network intact, or change your podcast host while keeping your website the same. Here are a few different website hosts you may want to consider:

• Squarespace - Wait. Didn’t I just talk about Squarespace in the previous section? Yes, but Squarespace just makes it so easy to build a nice looking website from the get that I feel compelled to give them another mention here just for hosting a simple website. Squarespace is more a robust website host that offers standard podcast support rather than a robust podcast host that offers a standard website.

• Wordpress - This is probably the most popular website hosting and building platform on the Internet. You can actually start building a website at no cost with their Free tier and get familiar with Wordpress’s website building tools, but if you want access to more advanced features or more control over your website, hosting plans start at $60/yearThe free tier will give you 3GB of online storage space to host your website files such as graphics, documents, other content, etc. A breakdown of the differences between each pricing tier can be found Wordpress’s site here. It is possible to use Wordpress’s $60/year for the purposes of a podcast website. I use Wordpress to do just that for Messiah’s Upper Room Podcast, but I use Simplecast to host and distribute my podcast files, which brings the total hosting cost to $184/year for hosting the website and podcast after accounting for the $12 monthly cost for Simplecast.

• Wix - Wix is another name I’ve heard when talking with others wanting to build a website or start a podcast. I haven’t used the service myself, but from my research online they look like a direct competitor to Squarespace. Wix provides a WYSIWYG editor but allows supports custom coding for websites on their platform, so you’re not limited to only using Wix pre-defined templates. You can find different pricing plans on here on the Wix website. They have a free tier where you can try out the tools and host a website, but if you want a custom domain name and other features/benefits, you’ll need to buy into one of the premium plans.

Podcast Hosting

Now that you know about the different website hosting services you can use to host and build your podcast’s website, it’s time to look into a podcast host. You can’t have a podcast without somewhere for your podcast files to live. You need a way for people who find your podcast to easily subscribe and download the episodes you regularly release. When doing your own research on podcast hosting services, you may want to consider the hosting service’s method of uploading podcasts.

Some service plans allow for only a certain amount of data to be uploaded per month, like 250MB per month, which is plenty for someone to release a one-hour podcast each week. Some plans allow “overage data” which is a set monthly allowance in case you accidentally surpass your monthly because one of your episodes ran longer than expected and will bump you over your data limit. Usually this overage data can be 50-100MB each month and you won’t incur a fee for going over. However, any more than the overage limit and you’ll need to pay for extra capacity if you plan to continue producing more podcast content. Still some service plans consider the total audio length for episodes uploaded each month, such as 5 hours of audio per month, meaning each month you could upload five one-hour podcasts, 10 30-minute podcasts, etc. As long as you don’t go over the allotted time limit you may not incur additional fees. Below I highlight just a few services that offer hosting for podcast files:

• Libsyn - This is a service I used to distribute The Skeleton Barcode and still consider it a valid option when thinking about launching a new podcast. They’re one of the older, more established podcast hosting platforms which can give assurance to users that this isn’t a no-name hosting company. Their tiered service plans are based on how much audio data you upload per month. So, if your average podcast length is around 30-minutes encoded at 128kbps, that will come out to a file size around of almost 29MB. If you do one episode a week that turns out to be about 116MB per month, which Libsyn’s $15 Classic plan will more than cover - this can also give you some extra headroom for you to go for longer or more podcast episodes if needed.

  Libsyn also provides different levels of statistics. Statistics are handy to gain insight on your audience because you can see what episodes are more popular in terms of number of downloads an episode receives over time, what the most popular platforms are that your podcast is listened to on, and geographically where podcast downloads are coming from. When I used them for The Skeleton Barcode, I found that basic statistics were enough for me.

• Blubrry - Blubrry is a podcast host first and a website host second. Couple that with the fact Blubrry provides pricing that includes pricing hosting of only podcast files separate from hosting of a website, and you have an established podcast hosting platform that’s just as popular in the podcasting world as Wordpress is in the website building world.

• Simplecast - Dead. Simple. Podcast. Hosting. I’ve been using this service for a few weeks now and I enjoy the simple approach that’s true to their namesake. There’s only one plan that’s $12/month, their website interface is intuitive to use, and there are plenty of helpful articles on their support page if you get stuck somewhere and need a little help. They also have live chat in case you still need extra assistance. Statistics are included and their podcast metric-gathering is IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) 2.0 compliant, meaning if you ever want to help monetize your podcast through advertisements, your podcast statistics can provide useful and appropriate data to potential companies that want to advertise on your platform.

  I mentioned Simplecast previously in the all-in-one section, but, like with Blubrry, consider Simplecast as a podcast host with limited website hosting capabilities. What I didn’t mention earlier was that Simplecast’s hosting plan allows for unlimited storage for podcast episodes. The only limitation I see that’s put on podcast episodes is that the audio quality is limited to 128kbps, meaning if you upload an audio file over that rate, Simplecast will transcode it to be at the limited rate. This rate is more than enough for a spoken-word podcasts.

Life After Podcast

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, including podcasts. Something to consider if your podcast is ever to retire, will you continue hosting the audio files for people to still download and listen to even after you’ve stopped producing new episodes? Even though you may not continue to make new content for your retired podcast, those files will still need a place to live, whether it’s on one of the hosts above or if you move it to file server of your own. Either way there will be continue hosting costs well after your podcast ends that you may want to consider. If you don’t want to continue to pay for hosting, access to these files may go away, so you may want to make sure you have a backup before completely ending your podcast’s existence.

Final Notes

I’ve only touched on a few things to consider and the many different ways you can start a podcast. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to help where I can. Leave a comment down below or send me a message on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

There are so many ways to get started on a podcast, but don’t let that keep you from starting. If all you have at the time to start a podcast is just the microphone on your smartphone, then start there and move your way up. Don’t let these suggestions I outline give you paralysis by analysis.

Just go do.

How to Get 30GB of Free OneDrive Cloud Storage from Microsoft

UPDATE: From November 2015, Microsoft announced it will stop the Camera Roll Promotion along with the option of paid, unlimited OneDrive storage, Paul Thurrott notes on his blog. These changes started coming into effect early 2016 according to Microsoft's OneDrive FAQ found here.

Microsoft, in an effort to bolster their online suite of online productivity tools, gives anyone with a Windows Live account 15GB of OneDrive cloud storage for free. That's right: 15 Gigabytes of online storage for any files (documents, videos, pictures, etc.) for free. You can even double this amount of OneDrive online storage size to 30GB by using Microsoft’s “camera roll backup bonus” feature with your Apple, Android, or Windows smartphone or tablet. I'm here to show you how.

Claim your First 15GB of Storage

1.) The best part about this free OneDrive storage is you don't even need to own a copy of Windows to take advantage of it. All that is needed is a Windows Live account. You may already have an account if you have an Outlook.com or Xbox Live account. In the event you may not, you can make a free Windows Live account by going here and clicking either signup link on the page.

Click on either of these links to create your free Windows Live account.

2.) You will be taken to a Windows Live account creation page. Fill out the form on this page to obtain a free account.

Note: during the signup process, you can create an Outlook.com email account or use an email account from a different service (such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail). This email will be your Windows Live account username that you will use to sign in to any Windows Live service. I prefer to use my personal email account for Windows Live so I don’t need to keep up with yet another email inbox! If you use a personal email account, you will need to verify you own the email account through a verification email Microsoft will send when you first log in to your Windows Live account.

3.) Once a Windows Live account is created, you will be able to view your OneDrive storage by signing in using your newly-created account at https://onedrive.live.com/. On the initial page after login, you’ll see that you have 15GB of OneDrive cloud storage available. We don’t want to stop there, however. I promised 30GB of OneDrive storage.

15GB of OneDrive cloud storage is currently available

Claim your Second 15GB of Storage (30GB Total)

4.) I mentioned we can double this amount to 30GB. In order to do that, we need to let OneDrive back up our camera roll on one of our mobile devices. This can be a smartphone or tablet, just as long as you can download the Microsoft OneDrive app to it. The links to the various OneDrive app downloads for the iOS AppStore, Android Play Store, and Windows Phone Store are below:

OneDrive - iOS AppStore
OneDrive - Android Play Store
OneDrive - Windows Phone Store

(Optional Step) You can also find these same links by clicking the “Get started” button on your OneDrive web page. Click on one of appstore boxes that apply to your mobile platform of choice.

Click the "Get Started" button to claim your extra 15GB of storage.

Click the download button for your mobile platform (Windows Phone, iOS, or Android).

5.) Once you download and install the OneDrive App, go ahead and open it on your device. For this example, I am using my iPad to continue the process. When the app is initially opened, you’ll be prompted to sign in to your Microsoft Live account.

6.) After you sign in using the app, a prompt will come up asking if you want to activate the Camera Backup feature and receive an extra 15GB of storage on your OneDrive account. Tap “Turn On” to activate this feature.

Tap "Turn On" to receive an extra 15GB of OneDrive cloud storage.

7.) Once the feature is activated, you will be able to see that your OneDrive cloud storage has jumped to 30GB by visiting the settings of the OneDrive app or refreshing your https://onedrive.live.com/ web page.

30GB of OneDrive cloud storage is now available.

30GB of OneDrive cloud storage is now available.

That’s it! You now have 30GB of online storage for free from Microsoft for just a few minutes of work.

Final Remarks

There are many cloud storage options out there, and this is just one of them. I find myself constantly informing people of these free options which is why I made this quick tutorial. I believe this article will be especially useful to iOS users. Apple provides a default of 5GB iCloud storage for free, but then requires a monthly subscription for anything over that amount. Every iOS user I’ve encountered (including myself) has hit the 5GB limit due to the number of apps, photos, and videos that are backed up. This article is to help lighten that burden.

What if you don’t want to backup your camera roll using OneDrive, but still want the storage? If you have multiple mobile devices (such as a smartphone and a tablet), turn on camera roll backup through the OneDrive app on the device you don’t often use to take pictures. For example, I have both an Android smartphone and an iPad. I almost exclusively use my Android phone to take pictures, and since I already use Google+/GoogleDrive to automatically backup all of my photos (I will have a separate how-to article on this later), I don’t need to have my photos backed up to OneDrive as well. I can use that OneDrive cloud storage for something else. In this case, I just sign in to my Windows Live account on my iPad and turn on camera roll backup, but decline to turn camera roll backup on through my phone. You will still get the bonus storage either way.

Have additional questions, comments, corrections, or suggestions? Let me know in the comments down below or on one of the various social media outlets I’m a part of. If you found this article useful and want to see more like it, please like and share using the buttons below to get the word out.

Until next time, take care!