As mentioned in a post here earlier this week, I was invited to talk about podcasting — and specifically, my experiences in helping to organize the first-ever PodCamp last September — last night on John C. Havens’ new series on TalkeShoe.

First, the good:
* I was nervous going into the event, but that nervousness went away after just a couple of minutes. After all, I was able to gab away about podcasting, a subject I’m unquestionably passionate about!

* John, who also blogs and podcasts at the About.com Guide to Podcasting, was an excellent host. He made sure that fellow guest Leesa Barnes and I each had plenty of “mic” — ehr, telephone — time, and he also worked in questions from the call-in audience with aplomb. The result was a wide-ranging discussion of unconferences, best practices for planning and organizing future PodCamps, and the creativity of the new-media community.

* It’s easy to subscribe to the show’s RSS feed, and the call was converted into an .mp3 and in my iTunes account when I woke up this morning. Excellent feature.

Now, the not-so-good:

TalkShoe. Quite simply, I couldn’t get the TalkShoe application to run on my Mac mini. While I was able to participate in the call without a problem — I only needed my telephone for that — I couldn’t view the associated text chat or see the names of anyone else connected to the call or listening online. A potentially rich interactive experience was reduced to a phone call.

Now I have both a PC and a Mac at home, but the Mac is in much better condition and was my computer of choice for the evening. But here’s what happened: first, TalkShoe wouldn’t load in Firefox (almost always my browser of choice). Strike two. Then, I was told TalkShoe doesn’t work with Firefox on the Mac (why not???) and to try Safari instead. No dice there, either. Strike three. In between I even tried restarting my computer. Eventually, I was stuck with an error message on my desktop, inside a pop-up window that wouldn’t close until I — again — restarted my computer.

So what was strike one? Back on September 22, I dialed into TalkShoe to listen to a call that Christopher Penn, host of the Financial Aid Podcast, had scheduled. Do you see where this is heading? The “conference bridge” failed, and there was no call.

I have no doubt that TalkShoe’s intentions are good. In fact, I’m forever grateful to the company for its generous $500 donation toward PodCamp. But for the forseeable future, I won’t be using — or considering — TalkShoe’s services.

My advice? If you want to host a call for multiple people with integrated text chat that you can turn into a podcast, go with Skypecasts. The couple I’ve been a part of have worked just fine.

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