Those Darn Cats Strike Again!

It’s come to my attention that there are a couple people out there who miss hearing Those Darn Cats on the MouseGuest Weekly podcast. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste, right?

So . . . Lisa and I happened to have a few unreleased TDC episodes sitting around on the shelf, and we’re planning to release them over the coming weeks. Lisa just posted the first one today, on the topic of where Disney should put its 12th theme park (not where they will, mind you . . . just where we think they should). You can download the MP3 directly, or use our RSS feed to subscribe, so you’ll automatically get the other episodes when they’re released.

We’re also still in the planning stages of something larger, so if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear from a Those Darn Cats podcast, please leave a comment here or drop me a note. Whatever we eventually put together, rest assured that it will be random, silly, irreverent, fashion-forward, and occasionally veer unpredictably into PG-13 territory.

Those Darn Cats Go Freelance

Being a part of the MouseGuest Weekly podcast has been fabulous! But the time has come for Those Darn Cats to move along. Lisa and I are not quite sure right now what comes next for us, or whether we’ll eventually come back to the show.

We’ve really enjoyed participating in the online Disney fan community this way, so we’ll be exploring various possibilities in podcasting. We might even start up our own show . . . which feels like a bizarre idea given how many fabulous Disney podcasts are already out there, but hey, if you’ve listened to any of our segments you know we’re pretty bizarre sometimes anyway, with our own particular blend of chaotic, feline, sometimes cranky, pixie dust. We’ve set up a new blog where we’ll announce any appearances we might eventually make on other Disney podcasts, and we may well also post a few Those Darn Cats segments that didn’t make it to the interweb yet.

I’d like to thank Eric (of MouseGuest) for giving us our first podcasting home (and our moniker), and Dan (of MouseGuest and Venis Productions) for the wonderful logo, as well as the banner image for our new blog. I’d also like to thank everybody who’s listened to Those Darn Cats, especially the kind and supportive members of the Those Darn Cats fan club!

If you’ve enjoyed our segments, I’m Kitty-chan, and you’ve been listening to Those Darn Cats. If not, my name is Stupid Judy, and this has been Universe of Energy. Over and out!

CatGuest Weekly Podcast

I am now truly a multi-media sensation, yay! Dan and Eric of MouseGuest Weekly Podcast have found themselves a bit overwhelmed by the day-to-day responsibilities of running a weekly podcast, a growing travel agency, and an expanding interactive web site. So, they’ve asked my BFF Lisa and I, aka Those Darn Cats, to take over hosting the MouseGuest Weekly Podcast for the time being.

So, don’t miss this week’s CatGuest Weekly (mp3), in which we discuss Walt Disney’s clear and unfortunate discomfort with the feline set.

Sambycat, are you pondering what I’m pondering? Today MouseGuest Weekly, tomorrow the world!

ID3 Tags: An Open Letter to Podcasters

If you’re not a podcaster, you have my total blessing to skip over this post, ‘cuz otherwise you’re gonna be way bored. But if you’re a podcaster in any genre, please read on, I’m talking to you! 🙂

I’ve been using an iPod Mini for a few years now, but recently made the transition to a Blackberry Pearl. Sure, it doesn’t have as snazzy an interface, but with a 6GB microSD card it actually has more storage capacity than my vintage Mini, plus now my media player and phone are converged into one device, which makes my life way easier (especially for travel . . . one less device and charger to care about!).

But see, here’s the thing. I’d gotten really spoiled by iTunes, which “knew” the difference between podcasts and plain old everyday MP3 files. (You’re a podcaster, so you know that technically they’re the same type of file, just typically being downloaded through a different delivery mechanism.) I guess iTunes knew this because the podcatcher was fully integrated, but now that I live in the world of plain-old-media-players I’ve got a separate podcatcher, and my Blackberry’s media player simply looks at the files using ID3 tags, sorting them accordingly. And since I listen to a truckload of podcasts in various genres, I’ve now developed a tiny little bit of opinion about ID3 tag usage. I can easily browse through my music library based on the ID3 tags for Genre, Artist, or Album. It’s not easy (and maybe not possible) for the media player to let me just browse through the file system, at least not on this particular version of Crlackberry software.

Now, what on earth does this mean? Well, the most important thing is that if you don’t use any ID3 tags at all, the only way I can find this week’s episode of your podcast is if I happen to know the file name (and of course, I usually don’t). If you’ve filled in Genre, Artist, or Album, I can find you way more easily. And if you use these tags consistently from week to week, I not only can find you this week, but can easily find you from week to week, since I know where to look. It would be really especially super awesome if there was some consistency among various podcasters (like, say, if they all used the Genre “podcast”), but I realize that would be asking for entirely too much.

I know a ton of podcast listeners use iTunes, so for them this isn’t much of an issue, but I also know that plenty of music players use ID3 tags, so there’s probably a good handful of us sorting through the files that way. So please, if you could take a few minutes to fill out those ID3 tags, it would make things a little easier on some of your listeners.

kthxbai!