Did you see the return of Terminator: Sara Connor Chronicles last night? The Terminator franchise is back in the pop culture.

And while the Skynet might be a little bit away, it’s predacesor in KPE is alive and kicking. Next week, while Karl is doing his presentation with Dave in Chicago, same other Karl is doing a live podcast with his genetic duplicate about zero downtime migrations during business hours.

(ask about the cloning how-to)

OWN Partner Call 4 with Matt Makowicz served as a bit of a wrap to the festivities in Houston. If you haven’t heard any of the OWN Partner Call podcasts so far you might want to start with this one as it gives a nice sum up of the change in tone and attitude at WPC this year.

Huge thanks to Matt, Dean, Vijay, Scott and Mark for helping me bring you some of the WPC atmosphere at the convenience of your desk. Most people miss conferences and there is always that lingering question of “just what did I miss out on?” - I hope this helped fill some of the void. I got a lot of thank you emails, one very moving email from someone struggling in a tough market and downsizing that couldn’t afford to be there.. all I can say is thank you for tuning in and thank you for doing business with OWN.

Oh, and here is the RSS feed for your iPod. Submitted it to iTunes but that takes a little while.

Gmail really needs a massive reply feature - let me can some text and send it to everyone that asked the same question.

I want you to know that I have heard the grumbling over the lack of RSS feeds for the OWN Partner Call and I intend to do something about it tomorrow. Yes, I know that if it doesn’t sync to your iPod it may as well not exist. I will fix it tomorrow.

I have one more call in the queue with Matt Makowicz who makes a pretty good case for why you’ve heard and seen far less “rah-rah” from the Microsoft WPC than usual. After that one is out, the RSS feed will come.

The OWN Partner Call has done so many fantastic things for OWN in the first three days that it has been alive and I hope that I can continue to use it to promote the people we work with because they are just fantastic.

Take it with a grain of inspiration if you are trying to do something nice for someone else too. The OWN Partner Call started as a last minute mass-mail to eight of my friends (who also happen to do business with OWN) asking them if they wouldn’t mind helping me let my partners know what Microsoft is up to. Four phone calls and maybe two dozen emails later, close to ten thousand people got to hear what WPC was like for people that feed me. You can make a difference, if you try.

Again, thank you!

Dean Calvert and Vijay Riyait are folks you’ve heard about on this blog before, they were kind enough to explain what the PAL program is and how it works. They are also partners of mine in OWN so you know they aren’t pulling any punches.

Today they were nice enough to give me a ring live from the Microsoft WPC conference and explain the impact of the new announcements on their business. What did they think?

Click here to find out..

I’ve spent the past three days recording podcasts and really trying to build a professional system around it so that call quality is exceptional and consequently edits and delivery take a whole lot less effort. One of the most frustrating parts of podcasting is the setup. If you don’t try at all, it’s very easy. If you try, its complicated beyond belief and the costs are astronomical unless you are collecting trash from eBay.

So to help a bit with the frustration, here is my recording setup.

Core of the system is an Alesis MultiMix 8 USB mixer (sub $100) that allows for realtime mixing and volume adjustment. This is absolutely necessary as the podcasts can have multiple callers and some callers have a loud booming voice and others need an amplifier to even register a dB. The mixer bridges the VoIP interviewing system and the recording systems - laptop PC running Audigy (free) and an iRiver recorder ($20) with a line-in. Primary recording is to the laptop, the secondary output is just there as a backup “in case of Vista”

VoIP system is the other core of the podcast. It is based on Asterisk/Trixbox (Sorry Microsoft, I wanted to try ResponsePoint but seeing how I haven’t even read the manuals yet it didn’t fit into the schedule) with my cohost dialing in from his VoIP phone in the office (anonymous SIP call feature allows us to dump the call into an extension without actually establishing an extension for him on our side). For international callers we have an extension in the Asterisk box programmed in so they can use SJPhone or X-Ten lite softphones available for free - just need a headset. As a failover to that (blocked SIP calls or whatnot) there is a direct dialin number for the conference so it can be hit from a phone if the Internet connection goes down or via Skype if the recording is international.

I’m using a Samson C01U condenser mic and about $20 worth of foam padding from Home Depot. My office has wood floors, high ceilings, and nothing to absorb the echo so foam padding was a must. It rolls up quite nicely and stows away into a drawer.

The results… amazing. I only have one improvement coming up - I am sending people that will be making appearances SIP phones (Grandstream Budgetone 101). The voice quality is just spectacular when compared to POTS and the investment is $50 + shipping (3 day in USA is about $6)

Do Skype recordings still float? Not really. Yes, in 2005 when we started this, but in 2008 the expectations are for a far more professional production and frankly it shows when something is halfassed, which is why most the podcasts you see out there happen to have 6 listeners combined.

Anyhow, if your future calls for podcasting… hope this helps.

There are a lot of you out there reading this blog, downloading podcasts, videos, etc. Thank you for your support – I get dozens of messages each day with wonderful comments and praises. Thank you.

What I would like to know is… what would you like more of?

Pretty simple, leave the comment or hit the Contact page.

Got something to say?

This is the second SBS Show with Erick Simpson and combined with the first one perhaps the audio bible of managed services - how to offer them, how to sell them, how to provide them, how to manage it all. Must hear.

SBS Show Episode #26 – Managed Services Howto with Erick Simpson (final)

If you haven’t heard SBS Show #25 you might want to listen to the two of these at the same time.

I’m proud to announce that we’ve launched the first SBS Show newsletter. In the same spirit as the podcast, the newsletter is a non-commercial glue for the SBS community that we can share info thats relevant to us.

I’ve even spent some time to design the “fan club” concept that is similar to digg.com and the social way of voting for stories. Let’s be honest, we all find info every day that pretains to our business, but we’re all too busy to review every single thing. And we all can’t stay on top of a newsgroup thread with 500 posts – “so give me the skinny” becomes the way of life.

Please sign up for the SBS Show fan club, it’s free. Please download SBS Show Episode #25, with Erick Simpson, it’s awesome. And, thanks for all the support. Big thanks to Susanne Dansey and Dave Sobel, my cohosts, Susan Bradley my spiritual advisor, Tim Barrett the UG guy and our long lost friend, Chris Rue, may god bless his soul.

Yeah, yeah I know… Long time no SBS Show, the world is ending. Unfortunately for both me and my significantly-audiable-one, that work thing we do between the free stuff for “the community” has been getting in the way of fun stuff. We will have a very exciting two-part SBS Show out soon but we’re also working on the newsletter and a few other things that come out at the exact same time.. thus the delays. But I know you’d appreciate something in the meantime so here is a great show by our friend Eriq Neale:

Today’s episodes of eOnCall feature an interview with Sandi Hardmeier, IE MVP, about the IE7 release. If you haven’t had time to look at IE7 yet, or if you have clients who are wondering about IE7, this would be a good pair of episodes to catch. The broadcast airs today, and the archives will be available no later than tomorrow morning on the show web site, http://www.eoncall.com.