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Image background removal is the process of isolating the subject or foreground of an image from its background, resulting in a transparent or solid-colored background. This technique is commonly used in graphic design, photography, and e-commerce to improve the visual appeal of an image and make it more suitable for a specific purpose.
There are several methods for removing the background from an image, including manual selection and deletion of the background, automated tools that use algorithms to identify the subject and separate it from the background, and advanced techniques such as deep learning that can accurately detect and extract the subject even in complex and challenging images.
Automatic image background removal is typically performed using machine learning algorithms that are trained to identify the subject or foreground of an image and separate it from its background. The process involves the following steps:
1. Preprocessing: The input image is preprocessed to improve its quality and prepare it for the background removal process. This may include resizing, color correction, and noise reduction.
2. Object detection: An object detection algorithm is used to identify the subject or foreground of the image. This may involve detecting edges, contours, and color differences between the subject and the background.
3. Segmentation: Once the subject is detected, a segmentation algorithm is used to separate it from the background. This can be done using various techniques such as thresholding, clustering, and graph-cut algorithms.
4. Refinement: The resulting segmentation is refined to improve the accuracy of the background removal. This may involve correcting errors, filling in gaps, and smoothing the edges of the subject.
5. Output: The final output is a transparent or solid-colored background image with the subject isolated from its original background.
Some of the popular algorithms used for automatic image background removal include DeepLab, U-Net, and Mask R-CNN. These algorithms use deep neural networks to learn the features of the subject and background, and can accurately segment and remove the background even in complex images with multiple objects and intricate backgrounds. Feel free to use our cutting-edge background removal technology here!
Audio enhancement in audio engineering refers to the process of improving the quality of a recording, often to make it sound clearer, fuller, or more balanced. This process can involve a range of techniques and tools, depending on the specific goals of the engineer. Some common techniques used in audio enhancement include:
1. Equalization(EQ): Adjusting the levels of different frequencies in a recording to make it sound more balanced.
2. Compression: Reducing the dynamic range of a recording to make it sound more consistent and polished.
3. Noise reduction: Removing unwanted background noise from a recording- these unwanted sounds can include hums, hisses, clicks, pops, and other ambient noises that are often captured during the recording process.
4. Reverb and spatial effects: Adding a sense of depth and space to a recording.
5. Volume leveling: Adjusting the overall volume of a recording to make it sound consistent and professional.
6. Pitch correction: Adjusting the pitch of vocals or other instruments to correct mistakes or improve their overall sound.
Audio enhancement can be applied to a wide range of audio recordings, from music production to podcasting to film and video sound tracks. The goal of audio enhancement is to make the final product sound as good as possible, while staying true to the original recording and the artistic vision of the creators.
The time required for audio enhancement can vary depending on the complexity of the project and the level of detail required to achieve the desired results. In general, audio enhancement can be a time-consuming process, especially if it involves manual adjustments by an audio engineer.
Manual audio enhancement often requires careful listening to the recording, identifying specific areas that need improvement, and applying a range of techniques and tools to achieve the desired results. This can be a time-intensive process, especially for recordings with a lot of background noise, inconsistencies in volume or frequency content, or other quality issues that need to be addressed.
The process of automatic audio enhancement typically involves using machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze the characteristics of a recording, such as its frequency content, dynamic range, and overall balance. Based on this analysis, the software can then make adjustments to the recording, such as applying EQ or compression, reducing background noise, and adjusting volume levels.
However, it's important to note that automatic audio enhancement tools have limitations and may not always produce the desired results, especially in cases where the recording quality is poor or the desired changes are more complex.
We at Castofly built the most advanced audio processing algorithms to automatically reduce background noise and hum, correct loudness, and balance dynamic talker all with just one click! Feel free to give it a try here!
Are you looking for holiday pictures to spice up your website? Or are you trying to illustrate an article without breaking the bank? Royalty-free images are the perfect solution.
Royalty-free images make it easy to stay within your budget while finding the perfect image for any project. Not only they are cost-effective, but you can also customize and modify them to fit your needs without having to worry about copyright issues. With royalty-free images, you won't have to worry about getting permission or paying royalties, so you can use the same image over and over again without any extra fees.
With a vast selection of images to choose from, you'll easily be able to find something to match your needs. So what are you waiting for? Find Royalty-free images here!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a sci-fi concept but a reality that can help you bring your projects to life faster than ever before! Generative AI can be used to automate the creative process and save time in the development of content. It can also provide insights into data that would otherwise be difficult to uncover.
Simply put, generative AI is Artificial Intelligence that can create new content. It uses natural language processing (NLP), machine learning and cognitive computing to create unique content from existing data. This technology has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with media and it's changing the way we tell stories; it's not just about creating shorter content faster anymore – you can now create unique content that stands out from the rest.
Generative AI can be used in creative ways to generate scripts, stories, music and art. It also offers a variety of tools for creating interactive experiences and using natural language processing to help you create engaging content. With automated video production, you can bring your script writing to life. You can quickly create storyboards and edit faster than ever before – no more waiting around for someone else to take the reins. With automated video production, you'll be the director of your own show in no time! Plus, it's a great way to make sure all your creative ideas get the attention they deserve.
By taking advantage of ChatGPT, DALL-E and Castolfy's generative Artificial Intelligence capabilities, you can create videos with ease. ChatGPT will help you quickly develop conversations between characters in your story. DALL-E can bring those scripts to life using NLP to understand them and generate high-quality images. Finally, Castolfy provides an automated editing tool to help you assemble your footage into a finished product; so you can focus on your vision and create the content you dream of, without spending hours on tedious editing.
Whether it's for business or pleasure, let ChatGPT, DALL-E and Castolfy make your video dreams come true. You'll be amazed by what you can create! Unleash the potential of AI-assisted video production today!
Manual audio transcription is time consuming and often tedious work. But if your purpose is to get the most accurate transcript possible, then it's time to break out the pen and paper! Sure, it might take longer than automatic transcription, but you'll be able to check every single word as you go along. So while manual audio transcription can be a drag, it's worth the effort when you need pinpoint accuracy.
But that doesn't mean machine learning and human collaboration can't coexist. Automated transcription has come a long way and is incredibly accurate, but there are still times when manual transcription is necessary to ensure maximum precision. By combining the power of AI with the eye (or ear) of the human transcriptor, productivity can be boosted and accuracy is guaranteed. It's a match made in productivity heaven.
At Castofly, productivity and accuracy are our top priorities. That's why we have built “Transcriber” to automatically convert audio files in English, Chinese, Spanish, and French to text and empower you to quickly edit any mistake. With speech-to-text accuracy of up to 95%, you can rest assured that your transcripts will be accurate and high-quality. Transcriber makes it easy to instantly transcribe audio into SRT files (time-stamped text), with its powerful machine learning algorithms that are designed to understand nuances in speech and language. Transcriber is the perfect companion for creatives who want to reach a bigger audience.
Subtitles open up your conversations for anyone around the world who may not be able to understand your language. Plus, if you're ever too busy to listen or just want to refer to key points later, you can easily search through your transcribed audio files. Transcribing and subtitling are great tools for making sure everyone can access conversations and discussions!
The SRT subtitle format is the most versatile and easy to use format for subtitles. It was created with both amateur and professional video makers in mind, making it great for many different applications. With simple text files that are easily readable by humans and machines alike, you can quickly create accurate subtitles that will make your video accessible to everyone.
No one ever said conversations had to be loud - make sure yours is heard by transcribing and creating subtitles. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain! So what are you waiting for? Transcribe your audio today and get ready for a bigger audience!
Offering content in multiple languages is like giving your audience a universal key to access it. It’s like making the world smaller and bringing all corners of the globe together. Each language holds its own set of flavors, culture and expressions that allow for greater diversity and understanding across international boundaries. Giving users the option to engage with content in their native tongue is like giving them a Polyglot passport to wander around the world on their own terms.
AI technology has made it easier than ever to localize content, so you can reach and engage more of your global audience. This can only be achieved by translating into multiple languages and matching a tone of voice that works best in each market. Language is a powerful tool and offering content in multiple languages can help increase brand loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, and boost ROI.
At the end of the day, there’s no denying that language is the lifeblood of global communication. Offering content in multiple languages not only shows your customers that you care about their culture and values, but also that you are willing to go the extra mile to make them feel at home. Polyglots have the upper hand when it comes to connecting with diverse audiences because they understand how different cultures communicate in English. Thanks to our AI-driven localization techniques, the polyglot-at-your-command tool helps brands create content that resonates with their customers on a global level. Feel free to give it a try here!
In conclusion, localization is more important than ever for brands looking to reach an international audience.
Yesterday OpenAI released ChatGPT.
It's a chat where you can ask AI to do whatever you want, and it will respond with text and ASCII images.
And since code in programming is basically a text, and it is well documented, the AI is very impressive at writing computer code.
In the example below, there is React JS component written by OpenAI, with detailed comments and explanations.
The ML algorithm was educated on the knowledge base from 2021, so it's not aware of any news, updates and technologies from 2022.
User testing, or UX/UI testing interviews.
This use-case could be useful if you are a tester, or you need to conduct user interviews to collect that info from your testers. The former requires writing bug reports, and classic screen recording might require uploading large video files, whereas the latter require to be online with the interviewees at the same time. Castofly solves these user-testing problems, allowing the tester to record and report everything in the video format right away, focusing on the software only, and sharing it with the UX/UI teams (and other stakeholders) for the testing via a simple text link. All asynchronously, with no need to have the interview facilitator online, and with no need to report your experience in a text format.
Testing and bug reporting without a video doubles the job required for testers to do, because they first need to test the software itself, and only then document it. Recording it as you test it saves time, because in this case the tester does the job only once - with Castofly recording their steps - and then simply shares the link. This link then can be documented and attached in the tickets of software teams to improve the bug, or UX/UI teams to improve the interface.
Who is it for?: Software testers, UX/UI designers.
Workflow:
Define what you want to test =>
Open Screen Template on Castofly =>
Select the window or tab with the software to be tested. For web apps that open external tabs, we recommend selecting the whole browser window to show navigation between tabs =>
Start by saying the date, current version you’re testing, and all other testing conditions (like device, browser, OS) =>
Record the main testing, both your screen and voice are being recorded, so comment what you think and show developers tools or console when find bugs =>
Wrap up when done =>
Share the video via Email or Copy link using the “Publish” button.
Example: https://tv.castofly.com/#/project/ddccb40c-0f64-4047-b88a-a38002ddc076
Create your first video UX/UI testing video: https://app.castofly.com
Below you can find a list of video reviews from the Launch Day that are already available. This page is being updated, so if you haven't found your product here yet- please check us later. Thanks!
Our pre-launch reviews for reference:
Videos are an essential part of any media communication these days. And depending on the purpose and place where videos are used, their formats may vary from 5 second funny videos to full-scale university courses. And the technical requirements for video production also vary depending on the type of the video. In this article we’ve tried to sum up our research on various use cases for videos and provide some reference numbers on how long it takes to produce a video for each use case.
Methodology used for this blog is more of a compilation of opinions rather than scientific research. The factors that we’ve taken into consideration are the learning curve and individual skill set differences. Learning curve is different for each video type production cycle, but it’s true that regardless of the field, on average beginners are 10-15 times slower than experienced users. Difference in individual skill sets defines both how quickly one learns how to produce a video, and also how much effort they put into production. For example, some movie directors are famous for their perfectionism, forcing their actors to do thousands of shots. Whereas other directors value “realism” of acting and welcome improvisation, with just a few shots taken to have more than one option for the editing stage. The same goes to modern video production for social media, product demos and YouTube, so if you're a beginner and want to use this article to estimate how much time do you need for a video - first try to ask yourself what type of video creator you are - a perfectionist or one who welcomes improvisation?
Stages of video production include everything from generating an idea, writing a script or a draft, in some cases - sketching scenes for shooting, setting up lighting and sound, shooting the video, editing, choosing music, titles, thumbnails, and finally - publishing.
Long story short, the most honest answer for ‘how long does it take to make this kind of video” is… “it depends”. But the numbers in this blog could be used as a healthy, realistic reference for time estimation, especially for beginners.
YouTube videos include various genres that are really different in both length, story and the complexity of actual shooting. Life vlog formats are easier to shoot but harder to edit, as you have to watch really long footage to find the most interesting parts and combine them into one story. On the other hand, shooting of scripted videos is directed by the script itself, but they require many shots and some acting talent, which may make the process of shooting longer (depending on one’s talent), but may save some time on the editing part as there is a story structure predefined by the script. On average, experienced YouTubers say that in the beginning that would take 3 hours of editing for a 3-5 minutes video. But after 5-10 videos, it takes 1,5-2x times of the footage length. Key factor for this much of an efficiency increase is that after repeating the process several times, each YouTuber finds their own format, creates templates and presets for editing, and starts writing scripts with understanding of their video production limitations. For example, they wouldn’t write any action scenes in the script once they know how hard it is to edit and deliver quality Video FX, so they write the script from the beginning, understanding what they can and cannot do.
So, a 1 hour long video could take 10 hours of editing for a beginner, and about 3 hours for a person who shot the video with full understanding of their format, cuts, and with some templates for editing that fit their format. Key word for YouTube and some other recurring types of videos is “Format”, as it defines a standard pathway for script writing, shooting, editing and what kind of video you want to see at the end of the process. But developing a format that fits you and your blog takes time, so don’t be shy to experiment with different formats during your first year as a video creator.
Video Podcast is a specific genre in video blogging, because the story should be told orally for the most part, but the video should add some extra engagement and value for the viewer, without being the core part of the story. It requires more thoughtful scripting, unlike life vlogs, for example. Because in Video Podcast you can’t say “hey look how beautiful it is outside today”, you should describe your thoughts and emotions verbally. On average, video podcast production for lifestyle genres takes up to 15x times for shooting. For example, if someone wants to show how they live normally, in some story like “a week of a 25-years old game developer in Tokyo”, 10 minutes of the end video might require 100-150 minutes of shooting, and about 30 minutes for editing. Whereas video podcasts with the recording from the studio require only 2x times for reviewing the material with almost no editing, just to check the quality of the sound and picture (like Joe Rogan Podcast), and maybe adding some transition to give a break to the speakers and to add commercials.
Podcasts in story-rich formats require many days of writing for the script. For example, the True Crime genre requires up to 3 weeks for finding a story and writing a script, and 5 hours of shooting for a 30 minutes video. Plus, around 15 hours for editing. So, as said in the previous paragraph, your format and genre really define how much time you will need per one episode, so pick something that you’ll love working with and creating.
Instagram has 3 main types of videos: regular video uploads (including IGTV), reels and video stories. Regular video uploads are no different from YouTube or live vlog videos, just shorter, but it’s preferred to keep it around just a few minutes long. So, the time to shoot and edit them is usually around 15-30 minutes, unless a person really wants to make this post standout as an important video and not a regular social media post. Keep in mind that on Social media people expect more of a personal approach by bloggers and they expect low editing, real emotions, and videos that are not staged. Try to keep your regular videos more honest and sincere, which is the way most users appreciate regular postings.
But for Instagram Reels video, the format is the same as for the TikTok, and you have to follow certain standards in order to reach a broader audience. In many cases, bloggers just use the TikTok app for shooting and editing and even upload a TikTok with its watermarks directly to Instagram as a Reel video. So, we can combine TikTok and Reels and describe it as one format. These videos are short, usually 30 seconds long, and usually include some viral song or audio track in the background. That audio usually dictates the format of that specific video, as they all have the original TikTok with that audio that made it viral. So, it’s better to follow the original intent and style of humor, with some personal touch to it. Time wise, it usually takes less than an hour to shoot and edit the TikTok or Reels video. The 2 main genres that may require longer are Dancing and Humor. The first takes extra time for choreography, which is not something that we can directly count as a time for production, but still it makes a TikTok production longer. And the latter requires time for scripting of the jokes to make it original and funny. This is also not directly the video production time, but requires time. Shooting itself takes less than an hour because the jokes videos are usually 15-30 seconds long. Despite the tight time limits, some TikTokers and Instagrammers take it seriously and creative, making over 30 different cuts and scenes in the video that is under 1 minutes long. The more scenes you have in a short video, the more time it takes, but considering that the end video is under one minute, it won’t take hours for editing.
The last type of Instagram videos - Video Stories - could be a pre-edited and uploaded video, especially for Travel Bloggers. But many people just record their stories directly from the Instagram App with no editing, but maybe with addition of filters, some simple emojis, GIF animations, location and time. It takes roughly 2x the time of the video length and can’t be really considered as a “video production”, but they are posted very often compared with “production level” videos, so we couldn’t skip them. Video Stories are essential for retention and engagement of your audios, Reels and TikTok help you reach broader audience thanks to video promotion algorithms, and regular video posts can be used as “store” for some thoughtful of important pieces of your content and you could refer people back to that “serious” video post in future.
Video Courses and Tutorials can be done in 2 popular formats - lecture style to explain some abstract concepts, and walkthroughs of some kind of a process, like a software tutorial. Lecture style, like Khan Academy style, usually requires a graphics drawing tablet to draw and explain the subject as if it was on a whiteboard. It is focused on the expertise of the lecturer and editing can be done by a TA or some kind of an editing assistant, and the length of the video and structure of it are centered around the structure of a lecture. The time for editing is at least 2x times of the original video, because of the requirement to make sure that nothing is missing in the video and all the explanations make sense. The editing itself is usually easy and requires simple cuts and text captions, maybe some visuals and a lot of attention to details.
Software walkthroughs are also usually shot in just a few tries given the person is the expert in the software that they showcase. If the content creator is a true expert who is confident in his skills with the software that he demonstrates, tutorials can even be held in a live stream format.
For pre-recorder tutorials, the whole goal of editing is focused on removing the “filler” parts to save the time of the end user watching the video course, without losing the important parts of the tutorial. The main factor in this kind of a video is not exactly editing, but the quality of sound and picture, because it’s really important to see every detail on the screen. And, of course, the expertise of the speaker. That’s why highlighting effects that help focus on specific parts of the software’s Interface are important for this kind of video editing. And because these courses can be up to 10-15 hours long, covering various topics and containing many chapters, editing is also very time consuming - up to 40-60 hours if there are many details that need to be highlighted and require attention.
To sum up, in this article we’ve learned that the general idea is that the length for shooting and editing is a function of the length of the final video that you want. The number of shots and time for editing also depends on the complexity of the project and skills of the creator, but overall it takes 2-3x times to produce the video for experienced creators working in genres listed in this blog. And beginners are 10-15 times slower than experienced people, so keep that in mind when planning your first videos. Here at Castofly Technologies we are building solutions for particular use cases and trying to automate processes and routines that can be automated, so stay tuned to see what we are working on.
In one of our previous articles we’ve shared tips for beginner podcasters. We have spoken with many podcasters, small to big, and discovered that once you’ve set up everything to start the podcast and have content to deliver, the next big problem to solve is - promotion.
In this blog we have collected 7 most important questions that, if addressed properly, will give your podcast a boost in a short time. But keep in mind that not all of these pieces of advice are one-time actions - some of them should be treated as processes and you should automate as many steps as you can. If you’re ready, let’s discuss these 7 tips for promoting your podcast quickly.
When you start your podcast, you should choose a podcast hosting platform. Usually your main podcasting host provides you with services like storing your podcast on their servers, making it available for users to listen to, gives you RSS feed and, in some cases, creates a Home Web Page for you podcast - a public web page which contains your podcast logo, description, and episodes.
But your host is not the only platform that your potential audience is using when listening to podcasts. And you should be available everywhere, because you have to follow your listeners in their habits, because you want to become part of their normal routine and not force them to change their habits - this won’t work anyway. And the solution for these is easy thanks to the RSS feed that your host provides you. The best practice is to use one hosting with one RSS feed as your single point of uploading and updating all of your episodes, and provide the link to the same RSS feed to all the other platforms: Spotify, Google, Apple, Podbean, Stitcher etc. You will need to register at each of these platforms, there are plenty of instructions on the internet for any platform - you just have to search for the interface for podcast owners, not listeners. For example, on Spotify it’s podcasters Spotify dot com, for Google - it’s podcast manager google dot com, etc.
You need to set up each platform only once, and they will start collecting updates from your main hosting service provider on a regular basis, usually a few times a week. So, if you don’t see your podcast on these platforms right away, or it doesn’t update your most recent episode - don’t panic, fetching updates can take up to 3-4 days, sometimes longer, so just don’t expect immediate updates. Also, while setting up your podcast on every platform, make sure to select the right age restriction for explicit content and understand their rules for copyrighted content, such as audio effects and music, as this may prevent your podcast distribution in future. So, if you’ve chosen that your podcast is for all age groups, make sure that your future episodes will follow this rule strictly. Otherwise, pick an explicit content checkbox right from the beginning.
Even though your podcasting host might provide you with a public version of your podcast’s home page, consider creating your own website with your podcast’s unique domain name. This will benefit you by giving you a chance to post other content, such as blogs, video and photo materials, transcriptions of your podcasts in a text format and so on. Moreover, having your own website with content that is updated regularly will help you gain traction via search engine results - so make sure that you follow SEO best practices while writing your text content. Try to provide something unique on your website and refer to it in your podcasts often. For example, you can tell in your episode that you’ll provide some valuable piece of info on your website, something like checklists or pdfs. On the other hand, use your site’s organic traffic to grow your podcast audience by directing them to the episode that they are likely to listen to.
It’s easy just to mention that for any promotion everyone needs to be active on social media, but to be more precise - you have to understand where your listeners live and how to communicate with them properly. Given that your podcast is the main medium for communication, try not to replace it with social media communication - you’d rather want them to get some value on the social media as a teaser, and get intrigued by how much more value they can get by listening to your podcast. So, the better approach would be to use social media and podcasts in combination, so that they add value to each other. Keep in mind that different media mean different formats of communication and have different internal promotion algorithms, so avoid using “one fits all” approach. And the behavior of your audience also depends on where they find you. For example, you can leverage text posts on career related topics on LinkedIn to reach one part of your audience, and on Instagram you can post a reel video that can go viral. The former and the latter can be seen by the same person twice, but the formality, emotional side and messaging should be completely different, fitting the context of the given social media. This approach will not only help you represent your podcasting brand from different perspectives, without repetition, but also would trigger recommendation algorithms.To sum up, just be mindful of the differences and find the format of communication that fits all social media that you are using to promote your podcasting show.
Talking about algorithms, Spotify is one of the most innovative, audio-first tech platforms out there. They understand the big problem of podcast promotion and now are experimenting with Podcast Trailers format for podcast recommendation algorithms. They use what’s called ‘BART’ algorithm for music recommendation, but the problem is that a song or music track can be measured by machine learning algorithm - it’s a sequence of frequencies, amplitudes and rhythms - and computer, or AI, can find patterns that are common for specific genres and it can sort the music without the need to understand the meaning of the song. And this is being used to recommend common style music and learn which recommendation users like, and which don’t work. So, this is how the algorithm is learning for music. But for podcasts you really need to understand what the podcasting show as a whole is about, not only any single episode. And to solve this problem, Spotify, Anchor and some other platforms provide what’s called a podcast trailer - a short, usually under 60 seconds, elevator pitch to tell your potential future listeners what this podcast is about. Try to sum up your personality and interest that you want to discuss in your podcast in under 60 seconds - the shorter, the better. And Spotify will take this trailer audio and try to recommend it as they do with music - if your potential listeners like the trailer, they might visit your podcast and become your new listener. So, be emotional, clear and concise in your trailer. Try to catch people’s attention and intrigue them, so that they feel that they might be missing something if they don’t check your full podcast.
Just like with your website, make sure that you fill in all the possible fields on your podcast hosting provider and all the platforms where your podcast is being distributed. Many of them, such as google and apple podcasts, are being indexed by search engines, so it is important to have your unique, not copy-pasted text in all the fields. And make sure that you don’t put the same info in all the fields - really put your time into it and don’t copy yourself. These fields include podcast title, description, links to social media and website, episode description and titles - each field matters. Try finding what’s called a semantic core, or simply your own keywords that you want to associate with, and stick to these keywords in every episode's title and description. The more you mention the same semantic core, the more visible your podcast will become for all the search engines and podcasting platform search algorithms.
Titles of each episode should be not only descriptive, but also intriguing. They should make listeners curious to click and listen to it, with hopes of finding something that will entertain them, help them learn or find some other value. Keep in mind that you can’t use clickbait names like many YouTube videos have because your titles will also help people navigate in your previous content - in audio format, unlike in videos, it’s hard to see what’s “inside” the episode. So, please be honest with your audience in choosing titles for episodes, but it’s totally fine if you are naming your episode in a form of provoking question or as a hook to grab their attention.
When registering your podcast on different platforms, you may be asked how often you plan to post new episodes. It’s not mandatory to follow the schedule, this information could be used by a platform to allocate enough resources for checking for your new episodes (everyday, weekly, biweekly etc.). Nevertheless, having a predictable and regular schedule will help you and your audience to manage time. For you as a podcast producer it will help in allocation enough time for scripting, recording and editing your podcast materials. For your audience - it will help to find a time and a place to listen to new episodes. So, be predictable and follow the schedule. Very soon you’ll notice that releasing new podcast episodes at a certain time will become a normal part of your routine, and you won’t have any problems with sticking to a schedule once you’ve developed a habit. But before it becomes a natural part of you, remember to update your podcast in a timely manner.
To sum up, there is no “one fits all” solution when it comes to Podcast Promotion, but rather a combination of small steps that provide minimal gains. But combined together, those minimal gains work in synergy and can quadruple your audience. Some tips about podcast promotion in this blog trigger your end user’s psychology, like Intriguing Episode Titles, others focus primarily on technical aspects of various algorithms, such as SEO, frequency of posting, and podcast trailers. But it’s highly recommended to read through these tips and implement each of them, because we’ve only included tips that are essential for any podcasting show. We’ve discovered these small lifehacks while working on our podcast and talking to many podcasters in the field, and these were the tips that we heard very often. So please save your time on hesitation and help your podcasting platforms distribute your podcast to a broader audience by implementing these simple tricks. Meanwhile, we at Castofly Technologies will keep working with experts in the podcasting field, honing our own expertise, and sharing it with you - so stay tuned!
On Monday, August 29th, the launch of the first rocket in the Artemis Lunar program was postponed due to a problem with one of the engines. The next window for Launch is scheduled for tomorrow, September 2nd, and in this article we wanted to highlight the most interesting things about the Artemis I space program.
The main goal of the Artemis Lunar program is to send people to the Moon, build a long-term station and gain scientific data and engineering know-hows to build a solid basis for future space exploration programs, specifically for Mars exploration. The Artemis I will also deploy 10 different CubeSats (mini satellites) to conduct various experiments and demos in space.
Artemis is an umbrella brand for NASA’s Moon program. It will include multiple smaller missions, like Artemis I, which will first include crewed flybys near the Moon, with the final goal of the first human landing on Earth’s satellite in over 50 years. If successful, NASA plans to send people to the Moon every year until 2030, to build a new international space station on the orbit of the Moon and a first lunar base on the South Pole of the Moon. This will allow training of both Astronaut crews and ground personnel to develop skills, technologies and engineering solutions that will support NASA’s long-haul target of sending people to Mars in the 2040s.
The Artemis I mission is the first test flight for both the new SLS rocket launch system and the Orion spaceship. We can’t overestimate the importance of testing all rocket and spacecraft’s systems before actually sending people in the Artemis II mission in 2024, which will rely on all the technologies tested during the Artemis I mission.
Artemis I will last 42 days. It should send the Orion spacecraft toward lunar orbit, just 62 miles away from the lunar surface, where Orion will spend about 6 days. Orion will also carry mannequins that will simulate bodies of three astronauts and will collect the data required to ensure physiological safety of the future missions crews.
And in the end, the Artemis I mission will test the most important stage of the flight - re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and landing near Baja California or somewhere close in the Pacific Ocean. This will be the first real test for the Orion’s external shields and that is the most important part - to ensure that people will be returned safely after future missions.
Artemis II is scheduled for 2024 and will include a crew that will perform a lunar flyby without landing on the surface. Artemis III mission will be the first mission with human landing on the Moon in over 50 years - scheduled for 2025 if Artemis I and Artemis II are successful. The Artemis IV will also be a crewed mission that will be sent to infrastructure that NASA plans to build during the Artemis and other space programs. Further missions and their details will be revealed in near future and they highly depend on the success of the first stages of the program.
To sum up, the Artemis lunar program, like the James Webb Space Telescope, is a very important milestone in space exploration that broadens humanity’s knowledge about Space. We will keep you updated on big science news like this, because Space exploration is one of the key drivers for science and technology. And many things that we use on a daily basis, from non-stick cookware like Teflon to telecommunication gadgets, were originally invented for Space Programs and eventually were repurposed for basic human needs on Earth.
At 10:30 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 12th, the deepest images of our universe ever taken will be released. Don’t forget to set reminders for this historical event!
To watch NASA's video stream and the first JWST images live, you can use these links:
Live stream on NASA's YouTube channel
Watch the first released images
Use this link to download it afterwards
Here is the teaser photo of what has already been published from the JWST so far:
This is the deepest image of the infrared universe that we have ever taken (so far). It’s just a teaser image where we can see a few bright stars with 6 ray shaped refractions and thousands and thousands of galaxies on the background. It was made by Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) – developed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and designed to find and lock onto cosmic targets. It’s just a monochromatic image for now, and on Tuesday we’ll see it in full colour.
These are the photo targets that will be released in high quality on Tuesday. Photographs in this blog post are from Hubble Telescope / NASA's website and they are provided just to get a clue on what it could look like:
Carina Nebula - one of the largest and brightest nebula in the entire sky.
WASP-96b - gas giant 1,150 light-years away from Earth. We'll get the exoplanet’s spectroscopy data.
Southern Ring Nebula - expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star (a.k.a planetary nebula), 2,000 light-years from Earth.
Stephan’s Quintet - 290 million light-years away, in the constellation of Pegasus.
SMACS 0723 - deep field view of distant and faint galaxies in the Universe.
Share this link with your friends if you don't want them to miss the images of the farthest objects that human kind has ever made!
If you’re trying to start your podcast - no matter if it’s for business, work or as a hobby - this article will guide you through the very first steps that you should think of when starting your first podcast.
First and foremost, the future podcaster should understand what will be the main big idea behind all of the episodes. It could be centered around a specific cultural niche, such as music, or maybe a career path like industry specific podcasts. Many podcasters also prefer to stay away from limiting themselves to a niche topic and build the podcasting brand around the personality of the podcast host. It could be the best approach for people who have many different fields of interest. Regardless of the niche and concept, it should be about something that the author is passionate about - and it’s totally OK if the podcast concept, format, or even the whole title changes throughout the development of the series.
Format is more of a structure, a pattern that each episode tends to follow. It could be a short intro, followed by the current news review, and then with a discussion on a more fundamental, time-less topic. Or it could be a series of dialogues with different guests during the episode. No matter what format you choose, having one always helps to avoid the ‘lack of inspiration’ when you need to start working on the next episode, having a format or a check-list of essential ‘todos’ will help you start working. You can refer to ‘formats’ in TV shows on your google searches to understand the power and efficiency of having a well-thought format, and remember that format can also be changed many times as you grow - so don’t worry about making mistakes, you can always improve from one episode to another.
Currently podcasters have too many platforms for posting, but for many authors publishing on various platforms doesn’t require much time. You may feel overwhelmed in the beginning, because each platform requires registration and podcast info in a specific format, but overall it’s a one-time on-boarding process, and repetitive publishing doesn’t take much time. Plus, many platforms support automated updates from your podcast’s RSS feed, which is the next good thing to have.
RSS feeds are simple tools to track for updates of web content. Many podcasting platforms will ask you to add a link to the RSS feed of your podcasting title. Some have it as an option, some platforms require RSS prior to registration, so you’ll find the info about specific RSS throughout the process of trying various platforms to host your podcast. Basically, RSS feed is a web feed that allows users and apps to access updates to web-sites in a standardized format that computers understand. Having a podcast feed will allow you to update and add your new episode in one place, and podcasting platforms that support RSS feed feature will automatically update your content, adding a new episode.
Unlike the format, the naming of the podcasting title shouldn’t vary too often so you have to be really careful when choosing a name for your podcast. Choose it as wisely as you would choose a name for your child, because it is your creation and the right name will help users associate the podcast with your personality. Having a podcast name aligned with your company or personal branding is important, but it also should make sense in relation to the podcast format and concept. For example, dutch musician Armin van Buuren has been hosting a podcast (and a radio show) called “A State of Trance”, because he is a musician in the genre of “Trance Music”, but not only in this genre. This podcast started as a radio show which he hosted since 2001, and then transformed into dual radio and podcasting format. “A State of Trance” was actually the platform that propelled Armin van Buuren to the heights of music Olympus, making him famous first as a host, and only then as a stand alone musical brand. This radio / podcast show has also played a substantial role in the growth of popularity of the Trance music genre as a whole, so think of a proper naming in the very beginning, because you never know how far you’re going to make it with your podcasting career.
For the content plan, it’s better to stick with the regular publishing in the pace that is realistic to you. For content-heavy podcasts, it could be once a month, for some ‘lighter’ shows it could be once or twice a week. Just make sure that it fits your schedule and you can keep the podcast up and running for a long run - it’s a marathon, not a sprint, keep in mind that most podcasts never make it to over a 1 year mark. And if you don’t want to start just to give up in 6-12 months, have a clear and realistic content plan and stick to it. Also, thinking about all the topics that you want to discuss in your podcast before starting it could help you: from favourite books and movies to personal experience and career advice - just right down all the ideas that are worth sharing with the world and add them to your podcasting schedule.
There are some podcast hosts who are talented and knowledgeable enough to keep the audio hooked performing solo, but for most people it usually requires working in a pair or inviting guests. Guests could be subject specific experts or other podcasters, but either way they should be interesting to listen to. There are many people who are super knowledgeable but very boring to listen to, just remember that you are making a show that should entertain - even if you are performing in an educational genre, still it should be interesting because your audience has (almost) only audio to follow the content of the podcast. So, you better make sure they don’t fall asleep!
Having guests with good presentation skills can not only help you entertain your listeners but also learn from their style and adopt some tricks they use to keep the audience interested. Inviting guests who have their own podcasts is twice as helpful, because you are going to share followers with each other and get more visibility. For the same reasons it is important to be open and appear as a guest on other podcasts. Networking is important.
The question of equipment, mics and editing quality are important, but not as important as previous parts that we’ve discussed so far. The reason is that if the podcasting title, theme, and a host are interesting enough, the imperfect quality of your cell phone recording from a quiet room will be acceptable, at least for the first few episodes. Once you get more experience and see that there is feedback, that you have gained some audience, it could be a good time to increase investments in your setup. But make sure that your time and money investments are proportional to the growth of your podcast and are reasonable, because just buying the most expensive microphone and sound equipment alone won’t make you the best podcaster in the field. But at a certain point it becomes a necessity, so make sure that you know how to decrease the noise both at the recording and editing phase, and some light background music doesn’t hurt.
This seems to be the toughest part for most podcasters because they are usually not marketing specialists. But you absolutely have to be active on social media, at least the most popular in your niche, and you should be thinking about community building for your fans. One episode doesn’t make a story, what’s more important is the connection between the episode and communication with your audience, and often their feedback is helpful and worth paying attention to. For social media, short highlights of your podcasts, usually in a video format, are super helpful - and you can use Podofly to create such short video highlights without any effort.
For promotion, it’s better to start with organic growth, but appearing on similar shows in the field or inviting the experts and micro influencers to your podcast could be a good starting point. Paid ads are usually used after you start earning money with your podcast. But if you can afford paying for promotion, for example it’s a business owned podcast and you have a marketing budget for that, it can definitely help you grow faster.
Monetization is one of the most crucial concerns for fast growing podcasts, because once you catch the wave, you want to capitalize on that growth and re-invest in your podcast. It is also important for those who already make some money on their podcast and want to start working on it full-time. For beginners, it’s not essential, but it’s always good to think about potential ways to monetize in the future - it can even change the concept or niche that you choose.
Typical sources of monetization are partner fees that platforms pay directly, as a share of the ad revenue that your podcast generates for them. It could also be direct sponsorship by brands who want to use your podcast as an ad platform. Another popular way is community support through platforms like Patreon or direct donations, and for most podcasters it's the combination of all of the above. It is very similar to how video bloggers make money, with only difference in having multiple platforms where you publish a podcast. World's leading companies are already working on solving the advertisement analytics and monetization problem, so one day they all will come to some kind of a consensus on how to measure and evaluate the cost for this type of ads, which will define your revenue.
Podcasting, as we wrote in one of our previous articles, is a genre that was originally formed from a mix of radio broadcasts with the iPod device. Nowadays, the format of podcasting not only lives by itself, not limited to any device or platform, but also extends it further from the audio-only format with many platforms testing a combination of videos and podcasts. In this blog post, we want to review two key players in this field - YouTube and Spotify.
Spotify - the biggest music streaming platform - wasn’t the first in podcasting, it actually picked up the hype of the format just a couple of years ago. But the reason why Spotify succeeded in the genre of Podcasts is because of their popularity and profitability. They can afford spending millions of dollars on exclusive contracts with podcasting titles and studios, and they are increasingly investing in the fields that are related to podcasting - from companies for podcasting analytics to monetization and production.
Also, their ‘exclusives’ program offers hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum to the top podcast producers in the world, which forces their audience to switch to Spotify and either listen to their favourite podcasts for free with ads, or pay a fairly reasonable subscription fee. Either way, Spotify ends up increasing the user base and revenue. Their biggest investment on the Podcasting arena is Joe Rogan with his ‘The Joe Rogan experience’ podcast that moved completely from YouTube, where he used to have tens of millions views per episode, to Spotify which increased Spotify’s user base significantly. So, Spotify directly competes with YouTube for content creators.
On the other hand, YouTube, being originally a video hosting, didn’t really restrict people on various formats - the main rule is to make content that follows common sense and doesn’t break any rules, including copyright. That’s why during the early days of YouTube they didn’t have official music videos and were striking unofficial videos due to copyright. But things started changing in the 2010s with music labels like Vevo starting to understand the growth of the YouTube user base for music artists, with Justin Bieber and PSY’s music videos gaining billions and billions of views worldwide. That was the start of YouTube’s attempt to try and turn to a subscription business model, though it didn’t change the market and things stood relatively unchanged - the vast majority of YouTube users still prefers the free access with ads.
But this trend - from video to audio first content - has continued to grow. As every strong trend, this wasn’t an artificially promoted construct, but rather market and people finding the more natural and comfortable ways of using YouTube. Music and Talk Show genres have become the most popular genre in number of content creators and, subsequently, audience. It is true that the most viral videos require to be valuable as videos first, but the ease of production of talk shows allows creators to make thousands of talking to the camera video blogs, which have covered almost every area that you could imagine - from gossip and relationship advice to sports podcasts and true crime genre.
That is the common place where the two worlds collide - video-first and audio-first. The truth is that they actually do work well together, but the video for a good podcast should not specifically be a good video. I mean, the quality requirement is still there, but the story should be told in such a manner that if a person doesn’t watch the visual part, the story is still not missed. So it still should be an audio-first story, with a solid and structured text or a talented speaker behind it.
Video part should be a layer on top of the verbally spoken story, the layer that adds more emotions, gestures, and human face to it, but it shouldn’t be required to understand the whole picture. Ideally, it could be a video of the podcast host talking with the microphone or a guest, or a face-to-face interview, which is one of the most popular formats for this kind of a talk show.
YouTube obviously still has a bigger audience and chances are that it’ll never lose it, but Spotify seems to be more profitable in this field. And the truth is that most podcasters nowadays have YouTube channels, and YouTube vloggers tend to record podcasts from time to time - but they all understand the difference in production requirements, editing and overall story-telling format between the two.
One thing that a podcaster should understand before entering the video realm is that it’s a whole new layer of production that still requires its specific approach, and investments of time and effort. That is why live streamers from Twitch can be very successful podcaster in many cases, but not many podcaster can become successful streamers - live streaming requires both ability to work with visual and oral part of the story telling, so one can’t think that just because we turned his camera on he’ll get new audience.
To sum up, we think that both audio and video are important, and it’s a question of either / or - they both are required as tools to deliver the message more efficiently. But each has its own rules, and audio is significantly easier to record, edit, produce and publish, and it also has a huge audience of people who like to listen while doing something that requires their eyes to focus on something else - like driving, doing sports or chores.
Here at Castofly Technologies we are working hard to understand the difference between the audio and the video parts of content creation. And we are focused on providing the best user experience to work with audios and videos in the simplest, intuitive and effortless way possible.
In the second week of May 2022, there was a massive crash on the crypto market. Many reasons have led to that and it was forecasted by many indicators, but no one really understood the full scale of the upcoming crash. There were many reasons, but the core of all was the vulnerability of algorithmic stable coins to high volatility during the bear market, combined with a high correlation with the Stock market. Let’s dive into the explanation of each part of this crash and how things developed in the last few days.
If you remember the early era of crypto adoption, they were promoted as an alternative to a traditional banking system, fiat money and financial institutions. Bitcoin and other early cryptos were supposed to reduce risks of inflation thanks to their limited coin supply, to reduce transaction cost and most importantly - to guarantee anonymity of transactions. Because of these factors BTC and other cryptos were hated by the traditional financial sector - it was positioned and thought of as their competitor. But it changed in the Bitcoin bubble of 2017-18. The whales - investment banks and other financial institutions - have turned their faces to BTC. And in recent years we’ve seen the massive adoption of cryptos by many major banks first, and then by non-financial corporations, such as Tesla, PayPal and many others.
And the crypto market that was meant to be an alternative to a traditional centralized financial system, has eventually become a part of it. It all started by shifting the trades from peer-to-peer transactions to “centralized” exchanges, where big fund management institutions could possibly trade and provide their liquidity. Many people now don’t even have any crypto wallets other than the ones on the crypto exchanges, which is a complete opposite of the early concept. And quickly these major banks have become the key players on the market, the whales of the market. Since their professional risk management experience and trading algorithms were extremely efficient on traditional markets, they became successful players against the general public in the field of cryptos as well. There are huge suspicions that they were always the whales of the crypto market, since the very beginning, but after 2018-19 they at least started making it publicly.
This led to an increasing correlation with main stock market indexes and broader adoption of cryptos by fund managers. Cryptos were becoming less and less an alternative to traditional finance, but more of a risk-on, more volatile add-on to traditional markets. It was also boosted by the inclusion of BTC, ETH and other major cryptos into trading apps that allowed the general public to buy cryptos from the same app that they used to buy their favourite stocks. Unfortunately, this brought not only the new liquidity to the crypto market, but also the same crowd behaviour and therefore the same price action. So, Bitcoin and cryptos have stopped being a hedge against the stock market, because the correlation with the stock market indexes was extremely high. Cryptos became rather a tool for risk-takers, but the timing of bull and bear markets has become almost the same for cryptos and stock markets.
The Fed's (US Federal reserve banks system) interest rate has become a big external factor, too, because it defines the amount of “free” money that investors can pour into any market, including cryptos. On the other hand, stablecoins became a serious bottleneck for the whole crypto market, because they are the foundation of price evaluation and a medium between cash and cryptos. All the prices are measured not against USD, but against USD’s crypto counterparts, such as USDT, BUSD, USDC etc. Some stablecoins were a big threat to the market, and it was recently mentioned that this or that stablecoin has had problems with their reserves, but previously it all worked out in the end somehow - up until this week.
Stablecoins are cryptos that are designed to have a stable price in relation to their outstanding “basis” (USD for example). There are stable coins that mirror national currencies, like USDT and USDX, and the same was the UST - which was the US dollar stable coin called Terra - a project of Terraform Labs.
Terra protocol was the basis of Terra - Luna Ecosystem, and they had over 100 projects built on Terra. These included Anchor Protocol, Terraswap, INK protocol and many others. Terra stablecoins - the UST - were the “cash” of their system, and LUNA was the decentralized reserve asset of the ecosystem. According to the Terra Money white paper, they wanted to achieve price-stability via an elastic money supply, enabled by stabled mining incentives.
Their plan to expand adoption was to reward users saving money in their protocol with insane return rates of almost 20% on deposits. When their reserve assets were growing with the crypto bull market, it was easy to pay these rewards, and to increase the reserve fund to weather the expected future bear market. All the adopters knew that it was kind of a Ponzi Scheme that was destined to fail if Bitcoin and Cryptos would fall significantly in a short amount of time, but they put their bet on a quick growth of user base in order to leverage the network effect and make the ecosystem self-sufficient - and stable.
But since April 2022, because of the harsh drop in the BTC, it was already known that Anchor Protocol has had a huge problem with their balance - they were spending 2x more money on rewards than they were making, losing over $5 million per day. The plan to save the Terra ecosystem was to hope that the market will bounce back quickly enough. Plus they wanted to use the reserves to keep paying promised rewards, and this plan could have worked out as it did a few times in the past for many other projects.
In the past 3 weeks the Nasdaq index has lost over 20% and the S&P 500 has lost about 15%. This has triggered the wave of liquidations and overall risk aversion in the market. Due to high correlation, BTC has lost 40%, ETH lost 46%, BNB lost around 40%. Anchor Protocol has lost over 50% during that time.
On the 7th of May UST - Terra USD stablecoin - dropped to 0.98 cents per dollar. But the next day, on the 8th of May, the situation seemed to normalize with UST getting back up to $0.99 which is quite healthy.
Everything seemed to be OK, before UST had plunged again to $0.95 on the 9th of May. The same day one of the Terraform Labs founders, Do Kwon, deployed over 42,530 BTC to stabilize UST.
But this desperate attempt to win back trust of traders didn’t help Anchor and UST survive. On the 10th of May it touched 0.60 cents per dollar, and despite bouncing back to 0.88 afterwards, the trust to the stablecoin and thus the whole ecosystem was completely lost. All the traders and investors started a bank run on the LUNA - TERRA ecosystem, trying to save what was left of their deposits, and it led to the inevitable death of UST.
Just take a look at these charts - LUNA, UST and ANC are literally dead as of may 12th, 2022. And there is no chance of them getting back up. It is something that we haven’t seen in a while and it puts even further pressure on overall crypto market valuation, despite it was forecasted by many.
Just imagine - on the 4th of May 2022 Luna’s market capitalization was $29.9 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. But now, on the 12th of May, it’s only $541 million - over 99% drop!
And finally, at 9.14 am PST on the 12th of May, 2022, Terra publicly announced that “The Terra blockchain was officially halted”.
Back in January 2022 Rune Christensen, cofounder of MakerDAO (peer-to-peer decentralized autonomous organization built on Ethereum network to allow people lend and borrow cryptocurrencies) warned the market about UST. Interestingly enough, Do Kwon, cofounder of Terra - Luna Ecosystem, has rejected these warnings and just joked back offensively at this tweet. And Do Kwon was supported more than Rune in this thread.
But Rune’s argumentation turned out to be true in the end, and Do Kwon who was supported back in January is now known as a Black Kwon in the crypto community - in reference to a Black Swan event. Black Swans are events which are highly unlikely, but thus extremely dangerous events for financial markets. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the author of the Black Swan concept has already stated that this BTC drop is NOT a Black Swan Event, so most likely it’ll be remembered as a Black Kwon event. More than that, according to Coindesk’s article by Sam Kessler and Danny Nelson, Do Kwon’s ex-Terraform Labs colleagues say that he (Do Kwon) was behind another failed algorithmic stablecoin in the past - Basis Cash. Further investigation is required and we’ll be waiting for more news on Do Kwon’s role in this meltdown on the crypto market.
Unfortunately for the whole crypto market, the UST crash has caused the broader lack of trust to all the stablecoins, undermining the whole industry. Even the “trustworthy” stablecoins with solid reserves face higher pressure and lack of trust, and it affects more and more cryptos. Below we provide an estimated balance sheet of some DeFi and TradFi players posted by Sébastien Derivaux on Twitter on the 25th of April, 2022.
Here you can see that Terra has had only BTC and negative equity as assets, meaning that they owed more than what the asset is worth due to high return on deposits. In other words, their UST coins were simple IOUs backed by the growth of BTC and promises of high returns on Terra deposits. And this scheme was working when the BTC was growing insanely. But as every Ponzi Scheme, Terra’s scheme worked for some time - until it eventually didn’t.
But the bright side that the picture above highlights is there are many other trustworthy projects out there, and for the intelligent investor these meltdowns could be a good learning point and opportunity to strategize their future in the market.
Here at Podofly we don’t give any financial advice, but rather observe the market with a precise focus on the Tech part, specifically with a focus on a practical application of some of the Web 3.0 inventions.. But we couldn’t leave this crypto crash of May 2022 unnoticed, the likes of which haven’t been seen since 2018. We hope that this crisis will help the crypto community get even more mature, will teach investors to make thorough research and support projects with solid rational and technical basis, which will eventually lead to the dominance of better Tech. Blockchain, NFT, DeFi and other Web 3.0 technologies have a huge potential to make the world a better place to live and the whole of humanity can benefit from it, but there is still a long path ahead. We will see many ups and downs before we reach the peak of prosperity and stability in the field of cryptos, but as we discussed in our blog post about the Web 3.0 concept, only the useful Tech will survive and will become a new standard of the Internet in the end.
Distance, or remote, education is not news, as the whole world has had to adapt to it in 2020.
But the switch of available technical solutions didn’t appear immediately, and both students and teachers had to struggle in the beginning. In this article we wanted to show a short overview of tools that can help tutors and students in a distance learning environment.
Online tools for distance education can be separated into a few different categories. Though most of them try to combine different functionalities, we’ll try to divide distance learning tools into the following categories by their core, unique functionality:
This category can be referred to as more of a self-study or self-learning tool, though they are used by many tutor-guided education institutions because some of the topics are covered brilliantly on some platforms. So, why waste time trying to explain some concepts if someone has already done it in an easy to understand manner, in many cases for free? It’s important to note that none of these sources alone can provide complete knowledge, and the best way is to combine online learning tools with other sources that your tutor advises.
Udemy is a paid platform where tutors can sell their subject-focused video courses. Some tutors combine their lessons into bigger packages that are suggested to be learned together, but in most cases they provide stand-alone products that can be a good add-on to other sources of education. Despite being a paid platform, most students buy single courses during promo sales for a fraction of a price, and most courses guarantee life-long access to materials.
So, students can buy any course of their choice and study in a self-paced manner, without worrying about the end of subscription period or deadline of the access to the course. One of the big pros of this platform is the quality of the course - because tutors get paid based on the sales volume, they do really care about the quality of their lessons and its rating on the platform, so most of the Udemy courses are really worth it. But we want to warn you that it takes time for a course to get a decent amount of positive votes, so usually these top-voted courses have a higher chance of being outdated by the time you learn them. So, be sure to check the publishing date and check if there were major updates on the tech or subject that you are interested in learning after the course release date.
Khan Academy is an urban legend, a top-notch learning resource which is free for students and teachers. It provides video lessons on STEM, language and life skill subjects that provide a step by step, easy to understand approach. So, if you think that your school hasn’t provided you the best understanding of math, science or any other subject and you feel that you’ll benefit from learning it thoroughly - Khan Academy could be a perfect place to start. Platform accepts donations, because it’s a non-profit organization, so if you enjoy it - make sure to pay back once you have enough resources to do so. Aslo, it could be valuable to check Salman Khan’s - Khan Academy’s founder - talk on Ted Talks conference about video education as a whole.
This category doesn’t require a detailed description, as many schools and universities choose some of these systems according to their internal software integration policies and students don’t have much of a choice. But we need to mention top platforms because all of these (and not only these) softwares provide the basis of remote education, and without programs like these all the remote learners and workers would have tougher work and learning experience :)
Canva is a graphic design platform that is used for social media designs, presentations, posters and other visual content. Every visual asset is modular and you can work efficiently in a team of designers. It includes templates that you can use for your content, and you can create your own templates for future reusability.
Prezi is a presentation software that puts a huge emphasis on engaging and impactful presentation. It is achieved through very creative animations and transition from slide to slide that won’t let any of your viewers not engage in your content. You can use one of their numerous templates, or create your own template on Prezi. But the suggestion is to you different templates for each presentation, because it allows you to surprise people every time they watch your presentations.
Podofly is our audio-driven software to create presentations based on your audio recording. You can either record your audio directly on Podofly or upload your pre-recorded file, and add audio effects to the background if you want to. Then Podofly’s AI driven algorithm will transcribe your audio into a text format so that you can navigate through different parts of your story without a need to guess on which second of the audio recording you said what - our transcription’s algorithm will highlight what might be a keyword for you.
After adding your audio, the system will transcribe your audio into a text form, but we do also have a text-to-speech function. So, if you are more of a writer, you can still make your text audible by using text-to-speech, and with a few visuals you can easily turn your text into videos.
This can be used for school presentations, and for teaching in classes as well. In the remote job environment, any of these tools can be used in various ways, so feel free to play with each of them and you’ll find the best combination of software for your day-to-day remote education or self-studying.
The best thing is that most of these services support SSO (single sign on) for authentication, so you can only use one account by, for example, google, and won’t need to remember different logins and passwords for different platforms. And since there is no “one program fits all” software out there, you will have to use a combination of different tools. Just give it a try and we hope that you’ll find some of these remote education tools useful.
With the increase in popularity of crypto, blockchain and NFT, we hear more often about Web3 and the future of the internet. But does it actually mean - Web 3.0 - and what was before that? Let’s dive into it in this short yet technical review of the future of the Internet.
Before explaining what Web 3.0 is, we need to first understand Web 2.0 and Web 1.0. All three are just concepts, idea, that are used to describe and generalize the approach of how the internet is built and what conventions are achieved in a way that developers build websites.
Web 1.0 was the beginning of the internet era, it lasted from the very beginning of the internet in the early 1990s until approximately 2004.
It was called just a web, and it primarily consisted of read-only pages. Because the internet was a development of an inter-university libraries network, it represented mostly plain HTML documents, such as articles, newspapers and books. Of course, they were inter-connected via hyperlinks, making it a true web of information. But for 99% of users it was a read-only experience, without possibly interacting - similar to how we use Wikipedia these days.
Since 2004 and to present days, the current Internet can be referred to as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a concept that represents the internet that has added interaction between users, primarily via platforms as a medium. It was the invention of Facebook, Youtube and other social media that allowed people to create their own content and post it on the internet, comment on it and interact with other users. This stage has made the internet look as it is today, allowing people to leverage on functionalities built by IT corporations without a need to know how to build websites. This concept is extremely efficient in enabling people to interact with each other, share thoughts, ideas and just content for fun - which led to a significant growth of the user base of the Internet.
This stage coincided with the invention and development of mobile internet networks of new generations (3G and up), the invention of smartphones (first iPhone release in 2008 was an industry changer, even though smartphones and handheld computers existed before), and the mass adoption of the internet. Growth of the mobile segment is a separate story, but the adoption of mobile smartphones has led to the era of mobile apps, which are also a big part of Web 2.0 success. The growth of user base and monopolization of the market by a few corporations, such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter, has led to a centralization of user’s data and abuse of privacy. All these corporations collect users’ personal data to analyze and predict their behaviour and sell this data (or provide access) to advertisers so that they can benefit from targeted ads. It puts a user in a vulnerable position, because user agreements are too long and complex for an average user and the temptation to use services such as Instagram or Google is too big to be concerned about privacy, though it’s unethical and can lead to severe social and political implications.
That is why after the Trump election in 2016 there were many public trials of CEOs of the biggest IT giants, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, CEOs of Google and other social media. Also, the legislation in the EU protecting user data has led to many companies complying with the newly introduced laws and led to billions of dollars paid in fines for breaking these rules in the past. That is why today many IT corporations have to implement internal rules that are more strict than national laws, because corporations policy should be in compliance with the regulations of every jurisdiction that they are operating in. Sometimes it even leads to localized versions of apps and services specifically for some locations, such as limited movie and game libraries available in the Middle East - either due to copyright licensing or due to local restriction on what is considered explicit or prohibited content.
All these problems are specific to Web 2.0 concept, where data and services is centralized, and with the growth of the word community of internet users, we reached to a point where we either need governments and corporations to strictly regulate what we are allowed to do on the web, or allow the spread of socially harmful content and hateful content. And in most cases corporations prefer to allow governments to set the rules, putting their user base vulnerable - other than selling user data to advertisers, corporations allow police and secret services gain access to user data based on prosecutor’s or judge’s decision, in many cases even for data of innocent suspects. This data includes direct messages, geo location data, search history etc. This brings us to a demand for a decentralized, free concept of the internet, where users are owners of their own personal data and where users can decide if they want to sell access to this data or not - which is represented by a concept of Web 3.0.
Now when we are familiar with the history of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 we can move further to the next blog post describing what are the essential aspects of Web 3.0. Long story short, it requires a substantial level of decentralization, like in torrent networks. It also has a higher level of anonymity, is built on crypto / blockchain tech, and gives wide opportunities of using tokenomics, decentralized finance (DeFi or De-Fi), and generally more of an idea right now rather than actual technical recommendation. The drawback of the Web 3.0 that is being criticized right now that storing information on decentralized network will require information to be duplicated multiple times across the network which causes the lower level of security and reliability - because even if current way to store data in giant data centre is a centralized approach, it still provides security, accessibility, reliability and cost efficiency. So, centralization is not alway a bad thing, and decentralization can also be built in an inefficient and vulnerable way.
To sum up, there are many things to discuss in the Web 3.0 concept, and chances are that in won’t even make it to the widely adopted revolution and will exist as some local ideas with occasional implementation - but even if it doesn’t make it to the conventional, global standard of internet, it is being implemented right now across many services to some extent. So, it is worth learning what tech we have right now to support the implementation of Web 3.0, and it is definitely worth learning it because most of the Web 2.0 companies can benefit from implementation of some of the blockchain / Web 3.0 technologies, even without switching to the Web 3.0 architecture. Stay tuned to read our future blog posts on topics of Web 3.0, NFTs, de-fi and decentralized internet :)
Hubspot is a software company that specializes in CRM, sales and marketing solutions.
It offers a wide range of marketing and enterprise solutions using a freemium model, allowing users to use limited functionalities for free and upgrade to paid versions and services when there is a need for it. This model made the company really successful and they’ve been expanding their business to many different areas, including podcasting.
At a certain point of a user base growth and an emerging need to invest in other industries to diversify, Hubspot announced in Spring 2021 the launch of their podcast network. The mission of Hubspot Podcast Network is to identify and support new podcast projects and help grow and thrive via access to Hubspot’s wide customer base and partners in the software and digital marketing industry. Hubspot has highlighted that the median podcast gets only 29 listens, and only the top 1% makes it to over 4,000 listens. Hubspot Podcast Networks' idea was to help podcasters with potential reach their target audience and become commercially sound, by investing their resources in them and helping them grow.
Earlier in 2022 Hubspot had announced the logical development and value-add program to their podcast network - Hubspot Creators program. Hubspot Creators is a business accelerator-like program which identifies not only podcasts with high potential, but more importantly - podcasting teams that are capable of delivering high-quality products consistently, are able to communicate with business partners and build a stable, profitable business model. Those teams are hand picked by Hubspot experts and receive not only financial aid, but also mentorship on marketing, business, production and networking. Hubspot puts a big emphasis on all these aspects, especially on collaboration opportunities inside the Hubspot podcast network.
This makes this program different from the likes of YouTube’s partner program or Twitch, because Hubspot not only provides creators with money and opportunity to earn income, but also by collecting and nurturing best teams and sharing success-stories and know-how with new cohorts of future podcasting stars. Moreover, Hubspot is working with 3rd party service providers to make sure that their podcast creators get access to the best solutions in the industry, understanding that different podcasting teams might require different sets of solutions.
The podcasting market was valued at 11.46 billion USD in 2020, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 31.1% from 2021 to 2028, according to Grand View Research. The growth of this industry ensures that more and more tech giants joining the game, such as Hubspot and Spotify, will definitely see new software solutions and game changing technologies emerge within the near future. Here at Podofly we closely monitor the podcasting market and the software solutions to ensure that we offer unique, best in class and useful functionality to anyone who works on audio and video content creation, so try Podofly today and share your feedback with us.
Spotify is a global leading music streaming platform. Spotify is one of the largest streaming service providers with over 422 million monthly active users (MAU), with 182 million paying subscribers as of March 2022. The platform is accessible in 183 markets worldwide, and has over 82 million tracks, including over 4 million podcast titles.
As many people know, yet some might not remember that, but podcasts as a genre originally derived from Apple’s ecosystem back in the old era of the very first iPods. iPod as an innovation was a huge leap forward from older MP3 (or even CD) music players. iPods were the first devices to offer users digital stereo sound and a massive magnetic hard drive. “Say hello to iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket” was one of the first iPod promo slogans, pointing out that the memory capacity was the game changer for how people consumed audio content.
The word ‘podcast’ originated from a combination of words ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’, simply describing the audio genre of radio shows that were recorded and published on iTunes - the media platform for iPods. Podcasting genre was a combination of radio and talk shows, but with the growth of iPod user base, which was expanding exponentially, more and more podcast creators started producing their podcasts specifically as podcasts and not as a bi-product of live broadcasts. This led to the first generation of podcasters, most of whom have had relations to the actual Radio broadcasting industry or had access to the industry-grade audio recording equipment. But with the growth of the podcasting market and other streaming platforms, individual audio recording equipment and accessories became more and more affordable to the general audience, leading to the rapid growth of the community of independent podcast creators.
Thanks to the invention of podcasting and early adoption of this format, Apple started growing their podcasting community. Apple were monopolists in the podcasting market for quite a long time. But today, there are many other successful streaming platforms and the competition in the market is higher than ever, and consequently this competition applies to the podcasting industry. Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher and Audible are the biggest players on the market. And since most podcasters, except for the biggest ones with direct contracts with platforms, were available on many services, these platforms offered more or less the same mix of authors and podcast titles. So, the competition at this stage was focused on the ease of use and technical characteristics of each platform - if they are available on all operating systems and device types, if they are well integrated with other services, and their pricing policy.
Each company has its own policy and strategy for the qualities above, but the pricing and mix of content became the most important variables in the equation of this competition. So, once Spotify had grown big enough, was making billions in revenue and went public through the direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018, the company turned its face to the podcasting market. They started experimenting with exclusives strategy, ‘buying’ podcast projects and turning them into Spotify Exclusive podcasts with high-paying contracts. The list of the most famous acquisitions includes Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Kim Kardashian, Barack and Michelle Obama and the bizarre $200 million deal with Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience). And Spotify continues the exclusives spree, adding more and more podcasts and creating their own originals.
In 2020 Spotify launched video podcasts for the first time for select podcast creators. They kept slowly expanding access to this feature to a broader number of creators throughout the past 2 years, and they have added even more creators and countries just a few weeks ago. The last expansion of the video podcast support was backed by the announcement of a new partnership between Spotify Anchor and Riverside.fm - the platform for recording audio and video podcasts. The launch was announced on the 21st of April, 2022. This integration enables the Anchor creators to record and post video podcasts on Spotify by clicking on the Riverside icon from the Anchor interface.
Though the full benefit of enabling video feature in podcasts is not clear yet, because it’s probably more focused on additional video-ads implementation rather than user satisfaction, we need to observe the development of video podcasting to see if it’s going to be a success or failure. At the first glance, implementation of video feature might seem to ruin the original idea of podcasts being focused on audio, though it may be a smart move. The truth is that most video talk shows, such as live streams on platforms like Twitch or talk shows on YouTube, are usually played in the background, while people are busy with some other activities. So, Spotify’s video podcasting actually can possibly compete with talk shows on YouTube and Twitch, because the quality of video is not in the center of user’s attention on any platform for this genre.Either way, it’s getting obvious that video and audio production hand in hand, and you can try our Podofly to add visuals to your audio recordings and them into video content. Just follow the link below, hit the record button and start telling your story - Podofly will take you from there and show you how to use all the features it has to offer.
In this blog post we want to briefly review how Twitter was evolving as a social media and as a Tech company, trying to uncover what young tech companies can learn from it.
Originally emerged from a podcasting venture in 2004, Twttr was a service that allowed users to send 140 characters long updates - exactly the size of a SMS text message - to their friends. That’s where the original 140 character tweet length came from, and Twitter for a very long time had a free SMS notification system. You could subscribe to as many users as you wanted to get the SMS of their every tweet update sent directly to your cell phone, and it was a huge factor to make sure that users don’t miss the most important updates. Nowadays it sounds odd, but It was an important feature back in 2005-2010th, when mobile data was expensive and internet-connected devices were not as common as today. It was especially important for the developing countries where the internet coverage growth was lagging compared to developed countries. This feature played a huge role in Twitter’s future social impact with many revolutions orchestrated worldwide via use of Twitter and other social media which allowed crowds to get messages in real-time and self-organize rapidly.
Even after adding image and video support, Twitter still remained a text centered social media. Text messages, especially the short ones, can be easily and rapidly distributed among an enormous number of users. This potential to spread messages virally, as a wildfire, made Twitter able to keep track of (and even set some) new trends that spread widely across communities. Twitter has found its niche among other social media. Unlike Instagram, who are focused on pictures, or YouTube with videos, or Facebook focused on connecting users with their real-life peers - Twitter allowed users to become influencers in their field of interest or expertise, to become a self-made media so to speak.
Twitter was so huge compared to other networks that it even played a key role in early adoption of Instagram. During the very first days when Instagram became available to the public, Instagram was mainly considered as yet another hosting for images that you could add to tweets - providing a short nice URL beginning with intagr.am. The reason was that Twitter didn’t allow you to attach images directly through their UI, but required users to put a direct link to the image hosting, and the URL length was considered a part of your 140 limit in the beginning. So, while Instagram didn’t initially have the user base that Twitter had, it made more sense to share pictures of food and cats on Twitter and use Instagram as a hosting for images. So, Twitter has powered the growth of a new generation of social media like Instagram, yet it failed to capitalize on the trend that it nurtured, as it failed to do so many times in future.
Twitter’s potential to catch the attention of the masses and allow them to self-organize rapidly was the root of both success and obstacle of the social media company. Being a political catalyst for many mass protest movements in many countries, Twitter played a huge role in some revolutions in Northern Africa, and even in fairly recent social unrest events in the US. The problem has almost become unbearable during the 2016 US presidential election campaign, in 2018 midterm elections and even the 2021 Capitol attack. Public criticism of recommendation algorithms, shadow ban policy targeted on people with specific political views and opinions has become a major concern for most of the mainstream social media, and Twitter wasn’t exempt. Every attempt to silence some part of the audience has led to discussion about freedom of speech and censorship, including the ban of the former president of the US Donald Trump from the platform in 2021.
Even though the platform isn’t a public place such as city hall or an open forum, and they can set whatever the rules they want as long as they comply with law, some people demand it to be more free. But there is also another big part of the audience that agrees with the need to ban what they consider as hate speech, provocations, lies and simply - spam. Ability to verify real people and their real opinions, and to distinguish them from bots that are used to promote agenda or spam of any sort, is still a major technical task that Elon Musk hopes to solve using his AI technology.
Amid all those ups and downs, Twitter’s share price and market cap was impacted to some extent. But because Twitter wasn’t the main and only “star” in these scandals and accompanied the likes of Facebook and Google, Twitter’s market price was highly correlated with NASDAQ market index.
In the mid 2010s it became obvious that Twitter couldn’t offer any breakthrough innovations, such as Snapchat or TikTok offered to the major public. Facebook and Youtube were successful in copying most of the innovative engagement techniques set to keep their audience from fleeing to new emerging social media. One of key examples of “stealing” the engaging mechanics were “stories” that were copied by almost every social media, including WhatsApp and LinkedIn, followed by the TikTok’s viral format copied by YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. But Twitter didn’t keep up, because they weren’t as flexible or because it was their intention to keep their core functionality unchanged. Either way, their activity dropped from a peak of nearly 660 million tweets per day to 300-500 millions, yet still Twitter remains the top source of regular news consumption among US adults - 55% in 2021.
Twitter as a company lacked the ability to grow as rapidly as newer companies, but it wasn’t suffering. It could afford staying as is - a commonly used media platform for some specific news topics, such as crypto and sports, with viral performances of famous influencers that occurred from time to time, including Elon Musk himself. Twitter just wasn’t one of the hottest companies anymore, though it still had its own charm, significant audience and sound business model - but without any visible potential for further expansion or innovation.
So, every time one of the most influential Twitter users, Elon Musk, used his Twitter account to engage his audience in extravagant discussions, from admitting that half of his tweets “were made on a porcelain throne” to crypto hypes such as DOGE, it had a very positive effect on Twitter’s traction. And this activity of Elon was topped by the recent acquisition of 10.3% of TWTR shares. It was then followed by a bid to buy out the whole company and seems to be a blessing to all the investors. It was also a good bargain for Musk himself, because he bought Twitter for almost half the price from its recent peak.
The fact that Twitter’s board has accepted Musk’s offer in just 2 weeks revealed that probably current TWTR shareholders didn’t see much of a potential or strategy to keep up the growth and meet expectations of the market. Elon, on the other hand, being the richest person in the world, says that he is not concerned about the profits. He can afford to be simply interested in revealing the full societal potential of Twitter and use it to promote the freedom of speech - for the sake of democracy and civilization. Long story short, Twitter buyout by Elon Musk is one of the most inspiring examples of a fruitful exit from the investment amid the uncertain future prospects of a Tech Company.
Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout shows that, regardless of controversy and company’s ups and downs, if the product itself has its inner value the company and stakeholders are destined to reach some kind of a success - even when there are no signs of better times ahead.
The fact that Twitter has always had an amazing team of developers with top notch work ethics has ensured the high quality of Twitter as an IT product, which attracted tech savvy users such as Elon Musk. So, if you as a tech company are focused on building a great IT product, and keep focusing on the user satisfaction, you'll find your way to success. At the end of the day, one of your future investors could be someone who just simply enjoys using your product today, so keep up the great work of continuous delivery of great products.
Last week Elon Musk announced that he is determined to make Twitter (TWTR) private. Founder of Tesla (TSLA), SpaseX, the Boring Company, SolarCity and many other companies, who is currently the richest man in the world, has already acquired 10.3% of TWTR, and now he is set to buy 100% of the social media company.
Speaking on the 14th of April at TED Conference in Vancouver, Elon Musk has spoken about Twitter and concepts of freedom of speech that are very important to him as he is known to be a huge freedom of speech advocate.
Prior to the purchase of a stake at Twitter, Elon Musk has been known as one of the most controversial influencers on social media, famous with his tweets that led to volatility of TSLA stocks and stock market indexes, and viral political statements. For example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin “to single combat” with stakes being Ukraine.
Another example of his viral influence on the internet was his support of cryptocurrency space. Elon Musk is known for buying Bitcoin (BTC) at the price of $69,420 and making BTC one of the reserve assets of TSLA, which they then questioned because of Bitcoin’s carbon footprint. He is also known for the support of DOGE coin and his controversial thoughts on the way Twitter allows NFT users to show off their non-fungible tokens on the social media, claiming it first as “annoying”, but then explaining that he has no problems with Twitter allowing users to do that, but rather him getting annoyed by spammers and bots of NFT space.
Speaking about NFTs and Twitter, Musk’s takeover of the TWTR ownership can possibly direct the company to adopt and use NFTs and crypto in a quicker fashion. So far, Twitter has been the “heart and soul” of the crypto community, including NFT creators and traders, but the platform has failed to monetize on it in spite of being the center of networking for traders spending billions on NFTs. The only way Twitter currently monetizes on NFTs is a $2.99 monthly Twitter Blue subscription that gives users a little hexagon to put their NFT.
Most likely - not, at least that’s not his main goal. Speaking at the TED 2022 conference in Vancouver, Canada, Musk has said that this move is not about “making money”, but about securing the platform that will be trusted by many and inclusive for all, providing an open forum and guaranteeing freedom of speech. He believes that these are the core values that are required for future survival and further development of democracy and human civilization as a whole.
In a few weeks we should see if Twitter will even accept Elon Musk’s generous $43 billion offer, with $46.5 bn already available for the deal facilitation. Based on TWTR board’s decision, Musk will make his move - he said in his official letter that is required for compliance with SEC rules, that he is not playing “back and forth game” and his offer is final, and that based on their decision he might reconsider his current ownership in Twitter.
Interestingly enough, parts of his quotes in this letter were transcribed from his voice messages that he sent to his officials, reports say. This shows us an example where speech to text and speech recognition AI might come handy. Was Musk’s team using his OpenAI for it or did they do it the old-school way, manually transcribing his voice messages? Chances are that it could be a combination of both, especially if the voice messages were long enough and full of “uhm”s and pause, requiring an editor’s supervision.
We will follow this story about Musk and Twitter, so please stay tuned and share your thoughts with us on possible societal consequences of this move of the richest person in the world. You can reach us on LinkedIn, Instagram and if you are a busy person like Elon Musk, you can use our platform Podofly to record your thoughts as a voice message directly in Podofly, or drag and drop your pre-recorded audio file. Our AI powered speech recognition algorithms will transcribe it into text that you can easily edit and copy - paste to post anywhere.
In this article, we want to share with you four easy ways to save resources of our Mother Earth..
One of the widely used metrics of the human's impact on ecology is Carbon Footprint. And Earth Day is probably the best day to think about your personal Carbon Footprint and how you can contribute to saving our Mother Earth.
Carbon footprint is the amount of CO2 that we cause and produce, either by directly burning consumables such as oil, gas, propane or coal, or by, indirectly getting involved in the overall emission when we are not using transportation and not burning anything, but when we consume products that require a lot of carbon emissions during their production cycle.
So, for example, if a person doesn't drive a car and doesn't fly too often or use any transportation overall, and rides the bike instead, this person is still contributing to carbon emissions.
Each person does that and it's totally normal, because we need to consume in order to survive and live happy lives, like in the example of the person above - they need a bike that causes some carbon emission during manufacturing stage and transportation to the store where it was sold. Not to mention tires and other parts that need to be renewed from time to time.
But it is normal to consume and cause some emission on our planet Earth, animals and plants also produce some kind of pollution. The key is to keep below a certain level which our Mother Earth can handle and keep sustainable ecology for everyone to live in, and below are a few lifehacks that anyone can afford and add to their daily habits.
Almost anything that we consume, from clothes to food, requires some energy to produce or transport. One can safely assume that in the modern economy of Planet Earth, almost any product is a derivative from oil. So, in order to keep emissions lower, we need to think in a lean way, avoiding overconsumption where possible.
So the question is not about getting rid of all consumption, which is technically impossible and wouldn't make any sense. The goal and the meaning of Mother Earth Day is to get back in balance with nature and get rid of all the redundant consumption.
One way of achieving this is asking yourself before making any purchase these questions:
- do I really need, for example, a new pair of shoes if I already have old shoes which still look good or are good for hiking / sports / whatever the occasion you need it for?
- was this item produced locally, causing less emissions for transportation?
- is there a substitution for this product from the second-hand market?
- is this device / car / whatever energy efficient?
These questions would help you save not only the energy and resources of our Earth, but also save money in your pocket! Buying less stuff or consuming it less often will help you decrease your spending, your carbon footprint, and save space for storage.
During our day activities we need a lot of electricity consumption. But you probably didn't know if you're using an electric dryer to dry your clothes that you could save 20% of electricity if you used this lifehack. The trick is to put one or two dry towels in the dryer each time you use it. That helps you reduce the time that is needed to dry things and decreases your energy consumption significantly to up to like 20 or 30% economy on electricity bills.
Another small and easy life hack is to unplug all your devices that you're not using during your nighttime, which basically helps you save money while you sleep. TV, kitchen appliances like microwaves that you don't really need to be plugged in while you sleep still consume energy even in idle mode. It might not seem like a big number for one day or one night of use, but it can lead to significant energy consumption annually and year over year. So, if you don't need it, why waste energy, resources of our Planet Earth and your money?
One of the most important things about these habits, such as unplugging devices each night, is that when you do these every day and think about ecological problems of our only home - Planet Earth - you actually develop your habits and remind yourself to keep a high level of awareness. Small rituals like this help you remember about these important issues and implement it to the way you live.
This becomes a philosophy and way of living. It shouldn't cause any damage to your lifestyle.
It is essential for people to feel happy while implementing these new habits, otherwise they wouldn't last and it won't be a sustainable solution. So, make changes slowly if you need time, but always remember that decreasing our pollution even by 10% makes it easier for our planet Earth to restore itself, providing a healthier environment for all of us who are blessed to call Earth home.
Freeing up life from redundant things gives us more space to live and enjoy lives. Like having more space in your house gives you a mental advantage, having more space on your devices gives you more room for creativity!
Keep in mind that almost 80% of email-traffic is spam emails or subscriptions that people don't read, according to the research by McAfee published in 2009. Around 62 trillion spam emails were sent annually according to the research, and it requires 33 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) of energy each year, causing about 20 million tonnes of C02 emissions.
So, spending a few evenings to unsubscribe from all email lists / spams that you don't read could lead to huge energy savings and help our Earth to restore.
Another big issue is memory allocation. Storage of any information requires production of physical storage, even if you are using cloud services - your information is stored physically somewhere! According to Moore's law, around every 18 months humanity doubles the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (or microchip). This leads to an increase of our computing and storage resources, but this law has one harmful side effect. When people have more memory and computing power, they pollute it with information garbage. And everyone can confirm that regardless of how much memory you have on your device, at a certain point you'll need more.
So, being aware of this law and about the fact that cloud storage and internet traffic usage lead to an increase in Carbon footprint is essential to start saving energy on our IT front. Unsubscribe from spam emails, try to save your device's and cloud storage's memory by using modern tools and apps that help get rid of screenshots, duplicate files. Also, just use your camera to capture only the important moments, and when possible - switch to lower quality resolution or audio format.
If you are an audio / video content creator, pay attention to new technologies that use more efficient algorithms in working with audio and video files, which leads to faster processing, rendering, and in the end you get files that weigh significantly less than older version counterparts. Here at Castofly we are working on developing algorithms that are contributing to making video and audio content production more sustainable, leading to saving memory and processing power usage.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a revolutionary digital advertising and rewards platform from the inventor of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla Firefox, Brendan Eich. The Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an Ethereum-based token integrated into the Brave web browser.
As many internet users avoid online advertising on the internet, Brave has developed a new, blockchain-based system to block ads, keep your personal data private, and give rewards for your attention.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) can be exchanged between the three parts of the equation between publishers, advertisers and users to improves the efficiency of digital advertising.
In other words, the whole concept of BAT is to take money out of the pockets of advertisers to the website users who suffer through those advertisements while allows advertisers to improve their efficiency on advertising expenses as they have better access to performance metrics.
When you choose to view ads on the Brave browser (a web browser that’s similar to Google Chrome.), you will be compensated for watching ads with BAT Tokens.
This video is created by CASTOFLY
Brave is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile that blocks ads and trackers by default. Like other browsers, it is free to download and use, and lets users navigate websites, run web apps, and display online content. Brave is Integrated with Cryptocurrency world and the BAT platform unlike Bitcoin, ETH or other cryptocurrencies, is a utility token. The token is a tool to measure, reward, track and sell the user’s attention.
As you start to use the browser, you’ll get free tokens each month; as part of the tokens, the developers hold on to the User Growth Center to help engage new users. When you open the browser for the first time, you’ll see an option called Brave Rewards on the right side of the Settings bar to activate the option to receive awards for watching ads.
once you do it, just like Google Chrome, it is only a matter of using the browser normally; With 3x faster page load times by blocking ads that track you, 33% less memory usage and up to one hour more battery life. And since Brave is powered by the same engine as Google Chrome, You can also import your bookmarks from Edge, Chrome, Firefox or a HTML file.
As a content creator, you can monetize a variety of content through BAT publisher program. You can monetize your video or YouTube channel, You can monetize your text based blog as well simply by adding the meta tag into the blog. All it takes is one-time account verification, which works the same way openID verifies your credentials.
After verification, you have to make sure people who make use of the Brave browser can reach your content. Creators who want to monetize their content without worrying about adblockers should definitely make use of the BAT publisher program in order to monetize their hard work.
Being a YouTube creator may seem easy and fun, but behind every famous YouTuber is a long journey of struggle to keep their audience engaged through video ideas. To become a successful YouTuber, you need to post consistently and make great content.
If you’re looking to get started with YouTube but find yourself struggling with making content and coming up with video ideas, we’ve rounded up 10 YouTube video ideas to help you get inspired.
First impressions are everything, so why not make a video introducing yourself? Who are you, and what do you do? In a few words, explain why you are worth paying attention to. Let them know what makes you different from other people in your field. Give your audience a compelling reason to click the “Subscribe” button
“Vlog” stands for a video blog or video log and refers to a type of blog where most or all of the content is in a video format.
Although starting a vlog channel seems like a simple and easy task, there is a lot more to it. You need to Understand Your Audience and Find Your Niche. This can become passive income if you build up a connection with their audience.
87% of users said that YouTube is important for helping them figure out how to do things they haven’t done before. According to a Pew Research study, it’s no secret that a great video tutorial can easily take the place of boring instructions and help make getting started with a product more enjoyable. It is also an opportunity to create educational tutorials and to understand where students are in their learning.
YouTube Video challenges are fun and entertaining. Additionally, it can bring your audience closer to you. Often challenge videos often get more views and can increase the number of viewers and subscribers to the YouTube channel.
Here are some Funny YouTube challenges in 2021:
1. “Not My Hands” Challenge 2. “The Yoga” Challenge 3. “100 Layer” Challenge 4. “7 Seconds” Challenge 5. “Fun Accent” Challenge 6. “The Brain Freeze” Challenge 7. “Try not to Laugh” Challenge 8. “Water Bottle Flip” Challenge
An explainer video is used to highlight and introduce a product, service, or app. Explainer videos summarize the most important aspects of whatever you want to feature for maximum exposure.
Tutorial videos are one of the most popular methods of transferring knowledge on YouTube. They may be used as a tool to teach students about a topic and is an effective way of helping people learn. The topic possibilities are limitless and they are also popular with beauty and tech YouTubers.
Webinars can be a resource for businesses and educators to connect with their customers to educate and increase engagement. If you give an educational webinar or presentation, you can build authority around your brand and nurture relationships.
YouTube Product reviews are great for building trust with customers. They not only help you get more views and comments on the video but also increases conversions to potential buyers. Starting a product review channel or unboxing on YouTube is a great way to attract new audiences.
Unboxings are one of the top YouTube videos these days. Unboxing videos focus on unpacking the box of a specific product and showing the entirety of its contents.
Why is unboxing so popular?
Walter Isaacson from Apple’s packaging said:
“Steve [Jobs] and I spent a lot of time on the packaging. I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theatre, it can create a story.”
And that is the reason why unboxing videos are popular.
Whiteboard Video is an explainer video in which an author draws and records an illustrated story on the screen. It is an easy way to communicate and understand more complex information by using simple graphics. They are memorable and good for converting leads and promote a product.
These 10 video ideas are most suitable for all sorts of niches. You can take the general concepts and see how they could fit into your niche.
From creating drawings to YouTube videos, visual storytelling is a powerful way to share ideas, communicate, educate, and engage with your audience.
If you hear something today, you’d only retain about 10% of it in three days.
Visual storytelling is one of the most powerful tools content creators and marketers have. They tell stories using beautiful visuals, images, videos, and voices to fully engage viewers.
5 Simple Rules of Visual Storytelling
To create your story frame, you need to think about how the user will interact with your story and what platform you plan to post content on. For example, for storytelling on Instagram, you should combine inspiring images and videos with an enticing narrative that makes for more memorable visual storytelling.
Whereas, visual storytelling on YouTube can take the form of a longer video. Once you’ve identified your direction, it’s time to sketch out your ideas in storyboard form and develop your story. First, sketch out the actual subject of your story. Second, consider how you’re going to direct the viewer’s eye through the image elements so that your audience is guided along an intended path.
Try giving a lesson and educating through storytelling. Every marketing effort carries a message, that of your brand or business. Even in the educational process, storytelling is a powerful tool to grab the attention of students and engage them in the lesson. The human brain is a remarkable processor of stories, making them a great way to teach valuable life lessons. So if you want your followers to listen to your story, or capture your students’ attention, it’d be a good idea to teach something important they wouldn’t typically have learned from their everyday interactions.
This leaves your audience with a longer lasting impression of your brand. And as a teacher, you can ensure that any concept you teach will be remembered for years to come.
What could be better than engaging your audience—giving them an active role in the storytelling and making them part of the experience?
“Show, don’t tell” is a technique authors use to emphasize on showing the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author’s exposition, and description.
When you make your audience see rather than just hear, they create visuals in their mind and come to the conclusions you want them to.
For example, if you have a specific idea bubbling around in your head, try to think about the situation you want to depict. Then sketch the settings and characters. This is a great method of developing a story that also leaves certain things up to the reader’s interpretation, which is much more interesting than making everything explicit.
Context is the relationship between the storyteller and the audience. So context matters to help you build meaning, trust, and interest for the reader. Context adds specificity to your idea and directs the reader’s attention to a particular object. However, be careful as too much will get in the way of your message as you digress and too little makes your writing hard for the reader to understand.
So without a clear understanding of the context, you cannot fully comprehend the author’s value, nor the overall meaning of a story.
Details are important in a story, but you have to be objective enough to notice when you’re getting tangled up in the details and forget what the story is about. Don’t get caught up in details that don’t serve your story.
You may have heard of the Rule of Thirds, applied to the process of composing visual images such as designs, paintings, and photographs. The Rule of Thirds is a type of composition in which a screen is divided into thirds using lines, and the focus points that the eye is naturally attracted to, are placed at the intersection of those dividing lines. Also, if the philosophy of the Rule of Thirds is applied effectively in storytelling, it gives extra depth to the story you’re telling.
“People don’t buy products, but rather the stories these products represent. (From Storytelling: The Story Making Machine and Formatting Minds)
So if you’re wondering why you should care about visual storytelling, you should know that people don’t care about how good your product is, they connect with visual content and your story. In a world overflowing with data, marketers might fail to grab audiences’ attention. (maybe delete this sentence, I’m not really sure what it means)
Even if your first attempt at visual storytelling wasn’t that great, ask yourself whether your visual content follows all these rules and tells a good story to stand out among the sea of competitors.
If you’re a creative storyteller and a podcaster feeling overwhelmed about where to start, Podofly is an excellent tool that will help to improve your storytelling and enable you to easily and quickly create beautiful visual content for your audio.
Have you ever thought about starting a side hustle and building your self-employed income? Did you know that it’s possible to make extra money by making videos in your spare time? Knowing how to create videos and turn your content into cash can be hard to figure out. It feels like YouTube, with more than 2 billion active users, is the only option to make money as a video creator. However, the reality is that there are actually many sites that allow you to share videos online and earn money in various ways.
One of these ways is creating Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as a video creator. Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a unique collectible crypto asset that, as the owner of your digital art, you can gain by selling your work. As a video creator, there are a lot of benefits if you can mint and sell your artwork.
NFTs use blockchain technology to provide proof of ownership of a digital asset such as an image, audio clip or tweet. NFTs can be used to provide proof of any type of real or intangible item, including video, image, music, or a tweet.
In this blog, we want to show you how to create NFTs, what video monetization is, and methods you can choose from to turn your videos into profit.
A looping video clip sold for $26,128.
If you’re a creator and that comes as a shock, then you can now see new opportunities for monetizing your work and explore the world of crypto and NFTs.
NTFs (non-fungible tokens ) have become the digital buzzword of 2021, particularly in the art marketplace and creative communities.
The good news is that to generate and sell your own non-fungible tokens you don’t need to be an artist or a programmer.
To create and sell these new collectible crypto assets you can start creating digital assets from your cell phone or laptop.
Before starting, you need to select the content. NFTs can be used to represent digital arts including Video footage, Artwork, Gif, PNG, Audio clip or Video clip.
The next step would be choosing an NFT marketplace for the buying, selling, and trading of NFT tokens. Here are the top NFT marketplaces:
For example, in Rarible and OpenSea you just need to upload your photo, audio, or video file and fill in what percent royalty you want to charge for each sale.
Then you need to set up an Ethereum Wallet and connect your wallet to an NFT Marketplace. What you need to know is that creating an NFT costs you ether (a cryptocurrency like bitcoin) to create an NFT. So to make a profit, your NFTs typically need to sell for over $100.
Many people think they don’t know enough about a topic to teach it, but the truth is, you don’t have to be an expert to create and sell an online lesson. You simply need to start creating training videos related to your niche.
There is a wide variety of web tools out there that can help you create beautiful video lessons without the need for any advanced video software knowledge.
Castofly is an excellent tool that we recommend for teachers interested in creating engaging video lessons in minutes.
Your videos can sell for a great price. All you need to ensure is that the video style has a high demand and would be interesting enough to be bought. If your video is in a style nobody wants, there is less chance to turn a profit. One of the best ways to learn about marketing needs is by going through the database of stock footage and analyzing the visual traits of the videos that perform well.
Where to sell your stock video?
Also if you are a teacher, Teacherspayteachers (the world’s most popular online marketplace for original educational resources) is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell original educational materials.
Over the years, affiliate marketing has turned into a popular marketing tactic for businesses. Businesses pay commission to affiliates only when they drive the conversion businesses are looking for.
To do affiliate marketing you can create and share videos on YouTube. The video will include links that track purchases to products that you review. If someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you receive a small commission for the sale.
As long as you have an internet connection and computer, you’ll be able to run an affiliate business from anywhere and earn a passive income.
Whether you’re already a video creator or considering becoming a content creator and seeking some effective places to generate handsome revenues from your videos, don’t forget to focus on your video quality and its content — “content is the king“.
It’s also because The more quality videos you upload, the more views you’ll receive, and the more revenue you’ll be able to generate.
Dogecoin is one of the social media’s favourite topics currently. Due to Musk’s continuous tweets about Dogecoin, it’s been maintaining its spot as a trending topic for a while now.
(DOGE) is a $34 billion cryptocurrency that’s based on, and took its name from, the popular “Doge” meme. Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus created Dogecoin first as a joke in 2013.
Billy Markus, a programmer from Oregon came up with the concept for a kind of “joke” cryptocurrency that has a greater chance of gaining mainstream acceptance than Bitcoin.
Despite this unusual origin story, the ‘joke’ currency’s market cap has risen from more than $1 billion in early January to $47 billion in 2021 and has become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.
While many people have started investing in virtual money, some may wonder about Dogecoin vs Bitcoin and Etherum.
Ethereum is a platform that other cryptocurrencies use and are built upon, which has its currency called Ether. Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain system that features its cryptocurrency, Ether. ETH works as a platform for the execution of decentralized smart contracts and numerous other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin and Dogecoin, however, are two types of virtual money. Bitcoin has a limited number of tokens that can be mined and Dogecoin has no limit. As per Newsweek, there can only ever be a maximum of 21 million Bitcoins (estimated to be reached by 2040), and it becomes increasingly harder for investors to mine more tokens.
Like most investments, crypto assets come with a host of risks but also vast potential rewards. Dogecoin has the potential to be a lucrative short-term investment, but the long-term viability of the digital coin is debated among investment specialists.
Alex Joshi, a behavioural finance specialist at Barclays Private Bank, believes the coin is attracting a lot of attention because many see it as a “get rich quick” option.
Dogecoin does not have as much credibility as other cryptocurrencies, and like the GameStop saga, Dogecoin has seen its price increase dramatically, but the fundamentals have not changed.
The expert said: “DOGE’s rally is not sustainable since it’s not based on any fundamentals.
“We may well see the current trend continue for a bit longer, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see DOGE reach 80 cents or even a dollar, but eventually, it will come back down, and people will get burnt.”
There are several ways to buy Dogecoin. Dogecoin is available to buy, sell and trade on many cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, ndax, Coinsquare and OKEX , but one of the most commonly used crypto exchanges is Coinbase and Binance. To buy Dogecoin on these platforms, you will need to download a Dogecoin wallet on the currency’s official website.
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Step One: First of all, log in to your Binance account. Go through the sign-up process, and if you don’t have an account yet, do register on the site.
Step Two: Step Two: Once you’ve logged into the account, hover your mouse over the “Buy Crypto” button. Then, click on the simplest way to trade, “Credit/Debit Card” option.
Step Three: You’ll be redirected to a page where you should decide how much you want to spend in USD for your Binance DOGE purchase and press “Buy DOGE”.
Step Four: Once you’ve followed these steps, your DOGE will be available for trade or to send from your Binance wallet; hover your mouse over the “Wallet” tab and click “Fiat and Spot”, this will lead you to a screen where you’ll be able to find your DOGE. And that is it!
Explore different topics you might be interested in to start your podcast!
There are many popular podcast topics for young people and students to start. A few examples include starting a business, personal finance, cooking, health and fitness, and music. These are all great topics that can be interesting and engaging for young people and students.
If you're interested in starting a business, there are many great podcasts that can help you get started. For example, the "StartUp" podcast is a great resource for anyone looking to start their own business. The hosts of the show interview entrepreneurs who have started their own businesses, and they share their stories and advice. Another personal favorite is "My First Million" started by Sam Paar and Shaan Puri, where they also interview formidable business operations and individuals who have earned a significant amount of over 1 million in assets. They talk about their guest's journey, hardships, and unique businesses for their audience to learn.
If you're interested in personal finance, there are a number of great podcasts that can help you learn about money management and investing. For example, the "Money Girl" podcast is a great resource for anyone looking to learn about personal finance. The host of the show, Laura Adams, interviews financial experts and shares her tips and advice on money management and investing.
If you're interested in cooking, there are a number of great cooking podcasts that can help you learn new recipes and cooking techniques. For example, the "Cooking with Cait" podcast is a great resource for anyone looking to learn how to cook. The host of the show, Caitlin Shoemaker, interviews professional chefs and shares their recipes and cooking tips.
If you're interested in health and fitness, there are a number of great health and fitness podcasts that can help you get started on your journey to better health. For example, the "Nerd Fitness" podcast is a great resource for anyone looking to get started on their health and fitness journey. The host of the show, Steve Kamb, interviews fitness experts and shares his tips and advice on getting healthy and fit.
If you're interested in music, there are a number of great music podcasts that can help you learn about new music and hear interviews with your favorite musicians. For example, the "All Songs Considered" podcast is a great resource for anyone looking to learn about new music. The hosts of the show, Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton, interview musicians about their latest albums and share their thoughts on new music.
These are just a few examples of popular podcast topics for young people and students. There are a number of other great podcasts on a variety of different topics that you can check out. So, if you're looking for a new podcast to listen to, be sure to explore the various podcast directories online. You're sure to find a podcast that's perfect for you.
Thank you for reading! I hope this article has helped you learn more about popular podcast topics for young people and students. Be sure to check out the various podcast directories online to find a podcast that's perfect for you. Have a great day!
Read to get a concise list of where and how to start!
I'm not here to persuade you into watching anime. If you've clicked on this story, there's a good chance you're already hooked. You might be interested in checking out some of these podcasts if you're in as deep as I am.
One of the main reasons I enjoy podcasts about anime is that they are produced by people who love anime. I'm just getting into podcasts recently, but I've been a fan of anime for years. It's always interesting to listen to a discussion about anime from people who are fans but aren't weird about it.
A lot of these podcasts are rewatch podcasts, which is to be expected with podcasts about media. I've added in some other types of anime podcasts to keep things interesting, such as improv. Some of these shows are clearly about the anime show itself, while others wear their anime influences on their sleeves.
There are a lot of podcasts out there, so it can be tough to find the right one for you. I've selected some of my favorite anime podcasts that I think every fan should check out at least once. These shows will introduce you to new anime, give you insights on classic titles, and have great discussions about the medium as a whole. Whether or not you're interested in starting your own podcast, these are all entertaining listens that any fan would enjoy.
If you're looking for a more general podcast about anime, check out The Anime Podcast of Some Sort. This weekly show covers new and old anime titles, with news, reviews, and interviews. If you're interested in hearing more Ghost in the Shell discussion, look no further than Anime Rewatch's retrospective on the 1995 classic film. Otaku no Podcast is a show by fans, for fans. This weekly podcast covers new and classic anime titles with news and reviews. The Japanimecast is another great resource for anime news and reviews. They even have an entire episode on the Netflix original film Death Note.
Anime World Order is perfect if you're looking for a comprehensive discussion about anime as a medium. From Akira to Zoids, they cover it all in detail. Finally, Toonami Faithful Podcast is great for long-time fans of the block who want to reminisce about the good old days. If you're looking for something different in your anime podcast diet, these are all great shows to check out!
This podcast is a great introduction to anime podcasts. It's hosted by two people who are new to anime, and they have a lot of different guests on the show. They don't focus solely on anime, but they cover a variety of topics related to it.
Their most recent episode was about Attack on Titan Season Two. The hosts give their spoiler-free impressions of the season and then discuss how it compares to the manga. They also discuss some of the controversy around Attack on Titan.
If you're interested in getting into podcasts and want to hear people discussing different aspects of anime, this is a great place to start.
I'm including this podcast because, while it isn't about anime, it is influenced by it. The hosts are all big fans of anime and manga, and they often talk about their love for it during the show.
If you want to hear people playing D&D and talking about their love for anime and manga, check out this podcast.
This podcast is hosted by two people who are passionate about both anime and journalism. They have a wide variety of guests on the show, all of whom are experts in their field.
If you're interested in hearing people discuss different aspects of anime, this is a great podcast for you.
This podcast is hosted by two people who watch a lot of anime and then talk about it. They don't have any guests on the show, but they do have a lot of fun discussing different aspects of anime.
This podcast is hosted by three people who are all big fans of One Piece. They have a variety of guests on the show, all of whom are experts in their field.
If you're interested in hearing people discuss different aspects of One Piece and other animes, this is a great podcast for you.
Hope you enjoy these podcasts! Good luck on your anime-podcast journey!
Read to learn why podcasts might be your fast-track to success.
Do you want to learn a new language but don't have enough time? Well, listen up! There's a new way to learn languages that don't require hours of studying every day. All you need is a willingness to listen and some headphones. Podcasts can help you learn a language fast by exposing you to the language in a natural way. In this blog post, we will discuss how podcasts can help you learn languages quickly and easily!
Since podcasts are typically informal, they can help you get used to the natural flow of the language. You'll also hear different accents and dialects, which will give you a better sense of how the language is really spoken. In addition, many podcasts include transcripts or subtitles so that you can follow along even if you don't understand everything that's being said. This makes it easier for you to look up unfamiliar words and phrases in a dictionary or online translation tool.
So, how long will it take you to become fluent in a new language using podcasts? It really depends on how much time you're willing to commit. If you listen to a one-hour podcast episode per day, it would take approximately 480 hours of listening to become proficient in the language. However, if you listened for two hours every day, you could become fluent in just 120 hours!
Podcasts are great for learning because they're portable and versatile and FREE! You can listen to them while driving, walking, working out, or doing any other activity that doesn't require your full attention. And since there are so many different podcasts available on all sorts of different topics, you can find one that's perfect for your needs. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced learner, there's a podcast out there for you!
So the next time you want to learn a new language, give podcasts a try. You may be surprised at how quickly and easily you can start understanding and speaking the language!
Find out which is best for you!
A 2019 Digital Insights survey found that 75% of healthcare professionals used their smartphones to listen to podcasts, which implies that they appreciate the convenience and speed of information delivery from digital podcasts.
However, it’s not all good news for medical podcasts. In the same study, only 11% said that they would recommend a podcast to a colleague, which could be interpreted in several ways.
One possibility is that while health care practitioners appreciate the content they’re getting from podcasts, they don’t necessarily find it to be share-worthy with their colleagues. Alternatively, it could be that health care practitioners are somewhat skeptical of the educational value of podcasts and prefer other sources of information.
All in all, it really varies depending on the podcast itself. Some may be more informational while others may be more educational. It ultimately depends on what you as the listener are looking to get out of the podcast. Some pros of Medical Podcasts include that they can be time efficient and easier to consume. Some drawbacks include the fact that they frequently need visual elements to comprehend. All in all, it really varies depending on the podcast itself and what you as the listener are looking to get out of the podcast. Whether you want something educational or informational will determine which type of medical podcast you decide to listen to.
Many medical podcasts are simply informational and don’t offer much in terms of educational value. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – after all, sometimes you just want to stay up-to-date on the latest news in your field without having to commit to a long article or video. However, if you’re looking for something more substantial that will actually help you improve your skills or knowledge, then an informational podcast might not be the best use of your time.
On the other hand, some medical podcasts are designed to be educational, offering listeners the opportunity to learn new things and expand their skills. These types of podcasts can be incredibly valuable for busy healthcare professionals who want to make the most of their commuting time or fit in some extra learning during a lunch break. However, they do require more concentration and focus than an informational podcast, so if you’re trying to listen while also doing something else, you might not get as much out of it.
So which type of medical podcast is right for you? It really depends on your needs and preferences. If you’re looking for a quick way to stay up-to-date on the latest news in your field, then an informational podcast is a good option. If you’re looking to learn more about a specific topic or improve your skills, then an educational podcast is the better choice. Whichever type of medical podcast you choose, make sure that you take the time to find ones that are high quality and relevant to your interests – after all, there’s no point in listening to a podcast if it doesn’t teach you anything new!
NFT is hitting the media and the general population in a sudden rush with OpenSea (one of the largest NFT trading platforms) having a trading volume of 3.5$ billion USD. The current trend of NFT seems to be largely revolving around different art forms and today we will be exploring video format and finding the top 5 most expensive NFT videos sold. (Feb 5th 2022)
Beeple has become a celebrity within the NFT space on Twitter and Instagram. His dedication to producing a single piece of art every day for several years has seemingly paid off.
Artist, Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, bought CROSSROAD for close to $67,000 USD in October 2020 from Beeple. After “hodling” for 5 months, Pablo resold the digital animated art for 6.6$ million USD. A mind-blowing sale that has shaken the NFT community.
Metarift by Pak - a well respected digital artist - sold “Metarift” for $906,709 USD. With a couple decades of crypto experience under his belt, Pak made it to the third on the list.
Based in Dubai, 3F Music, bought the classic 2010 video “Charlie Bit Me” for $760,999 in May 2021. The video is still on Youtube to this day!
NBA TopShot paved the way for NFT to become more popular in the start of 2021. As the leading sport NFT marketplace with over $750 million USD sales in 2021, LeBron James “Cosmic” Dunk sold for $387,600 in February 2021.
NFT’s have paved a way for digital content creators to earn a sustainable living. With video being a very niche part of the NFT space right now, it would be foolish not to take advantage. Making videos can be challenging but through Podofly, a web-based audio-driven video studio, you can save countless hours editing your video. Simply convert audio to video in simple steps, you can create your first video NFT in minutes!
Having a combination would greatly benefit your podcast. Having a strong either audio-only or video podcast may reduce your chances with your audience and those who listen to your podcast. Podofly is able to solve this issue with its automated audio to video process. You are able to upload your video to Podofly, which will in return pick up keywords and convert those into texts, gifs, or images. This would prevent your podcast from turning video-heavy but also save you countless hours attempting to edit the video.
A long-disputed question within the podcast community is that is a podcast still considered a podcast if it has a video format. According to Merriam-Webster, a podcast “is a program (as of music or talk) made available in digital format for automatic download over the Internet.”
Let’s break down the syntax of the sentence - music or talk. In pure definition, these are strictly in the form of audio. We can have live music and talks arrangements where you can observe the performers; however, music and talk refers to the audio that is produced by the artists. So far this seems like the first half of the definition still refers to the podcast as audio-only.
Once we dive into the second half of the sentence which refers to the digital format this changes factors to the definition. Mariam-Webster defines “digital” in digital format in very simple terms - “composed of data in the form of especially binary digits”. This gives the term digital multiple forms it can take as long as it's confined within the digital space.
A popular way to define a podcast is by its main form of delivery. However, RSS feeds - which consolidate information sources in one place and provides updates when a site adds new content - should also be explored. Numerous have argued that having an RSS feed and found on podcast apps would define your podcast as a podcast. If in addition, it's also found on Youtube or other video platforms it would still be quantified as a podcast.
Many in the podcast community within Reddit believe it is deemed a podcast as long as it can be enjoyed audio-only. “Talks” that present themselves as podcasts often include some jokes or descriptions that can only be understood if seen instead of heard. If the content is required to be seen and is predominantly video form, this is often widely understood to be a video rather than classified as a podcast.
It would make sense for podcasts to initiate as audio-only before implementing a video format that would complement but not steal the show. Podofly’s new software gives podcasters a chance to automatically convert your audio to video format by taking keywords and transcribing them into texts, images, or gifs.
We are going to explore ways to improve your podcast quality significantly. We want those who just started or are already long-time podcasters to have the highest quality of content for their listeners. So read below and elevate your podcasting game to the next level!
We will be listing the common methods that your podcast is able to make income through your podcast and brand. Before we get onto the list, one must know making money doing podcasts is a long and treacherous journey. You must be mentally ready to not make income for a while. A good first step would be creating an active community, a loyal fan base and strong brand awareness. We highly recommend engaging with your audience outside of your podcast. Now let's go through the list of money makers for your podcast!
Finding a sponsor within your relevant niche will help you create many opportunities in generating income. Sponsorships will pay you depending on your Clicks Per Mille (Mille is thousand in Latin). Pricing the ad can depend on where you place it within your podcast. Many times you can charge more for mid-rolls as the audience is already captivated versus pre-roll and post-roll.
Addressing the elephant in the room, having a small audience would make it more difficult to land a sponsorship as opposed to having a developed community.
If you believe you can provide high quality and unique content that your audience wants, you can place a price tag on it. These content can range from downloadable content, bonus or early access episodes and more. Other times, many fans would be willing to donate to their favorite content creator to keep receiving more content. The most common method is through Patreon but other options like Paypal, Stripe or GoFundMe are also great.
Affiliate sales involve selling products or services but through a link. When your listeners click the link and purchase the product or service, you earn a commission from the sale.
Try to promote products and services that you believe in and reflect your brand. This would build trust and credibility with your listeners.
Websites like Youtube pay their creators through ads throughout the video. However, your podcast is audio-only and makes it difficult for you to garner ads. Softwares like Podofly (product under Castofly) will automatically convert your podcast audio into a video with visuals that range from text, images and gifs. This frees up the workload of video editing while also helping you provide passive income.
There are countless ways to generate income from your podcast. Sometimes it will just happen unexpectedly, so try your best and enjoy the journey of creating your podcast.
Ever wanted to expand your income channels with your audio-only podcast? Read below for ways you can turn your podcast into videos and earn money through Youtube, DailyMotion and more.
The first step would be turning your podcast audio into a video. Editing a video for a podcast is extremely time consuming. Podofly (product under Castofly) offers a service that automatically converts your audio into a video with visuals that range from texts to pictures and gifs. This would change your concept of your podcast and help generate extra revenue without much effort.
The next step would be publishing your content on countless video platforms. Below is a list of platforms that would give you an edge where you should consider publishing your automatically generated audio-converted video.
• Daily Motion
• YouTube
• Video on demand
• Twitter Amplify
• Facebook
• Amazon video direct
• Envul
• The Vault
Above are just a few examples to start with. Always learn to diversify your stream of income from many sources.