Silicon Valley Musings

From the lack of posts on my Weblog, you can tell I have been busy. Today we launched a new release of the PodTech.net Website.

PodTech.net has been redesigned around the four networks we announced back in the spring: PodTech News, Events, InfoTalk(tm), and Corporate. It is now possible to keep abreast of new posts in all the networks quickly and easily.

The redesign embodies PodTech’s mission to provide high quality, independent news and event coverage while at the same time producing and syndicating corporate sponsored podcasts.

Under the covers, the new design is based the latest version of Wordpress, a PHP-based open source “self-hosted blogging tool.” Wordpress is designed to be flexible and easily extended using its plugin architecture. We have built several plugins to streamline podcast syndication.

We worked very closely with a very talented Web design firm, Vestal Design. It is a classic “World is Flat” story. Vestal was highly recommended by a Persuasive Technology Lab member that I worked with on the BuddyBuzz project. Vestal and PodTech negotiated a contract and had been working together for a month before we ever met face to face. Vestal has staff in Palo Alto, Ithica, Boston, and Lima and uses collaborative tools like Basecamp to track projects and communicate progress to clients.

The internal feedback from sales and podcast producers has been great. We already have a laundry list of enhancement ideas. It’s going to be a busy summer.