If any listeners use the Facebook social networking site, I have now created a “Fans of Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast” group which you are welcome to join.  I have no idea, really, what we will do with the group and whether or not we’ll even use it for anything at all.  Largely, I suppose, that depends upon how many people join the group.  It’s all just part of our continued experimentation with “social media”… and anyone who wants to join in the experimentation is welcome to do so.

Sometime this morning between about 7 and 8am Eastern US time, this podcast crossed a major milestone…. the 100,000th download occurred!   

Now in the world of "mainstream" media this is a trival number that would hardly merit attention.  But in the new and emerging medium of podcasting, I, for one, will celebrate that milestone… especially for something that is admittedly as niche of a topic as "VoIP security"!

To look at it another way, we’ve put out 74 shows since we started about 1.5 years ago.  That works out to an average of 1,351 downloads per show… for a show that averages 45 minutes in length!   

That there are that many folks interested in our show and topic continues to be a very humbling fact.  It’s an honor for us… and a responsibility that we don’t take lightly.  We know that just as easily as you have subscribed and downloaded our show, you have an amazing amount of choices out there and you can just as easily go elsewhere. 

Both Jonathan and I THANK YOU for your continued support and participation!  We have been delighted by the community of listeners and contributors that has grown up around the show and we do look forward to the continued growth of that community and to reaching many more milestones in the months and years ahead.  Thank you all.

Read on if you have interest in statistics…

---

Addendum for stats geeks (like me):  You will notice in the image above that I have included the "raw requests".  These stats come from our hosting provider, LibSyn,
and reflect the fact that a certain percentage of downloads start but
then don’t complete or, I guess, make duplicate requests.  It could be
due to connectivity issues… software errors… or other reasons.
It’s interesting to me that it’s about 11% of requests that LibSyn
filters out.

I also find it interesting to see the division
between podcatchers and direct web downloads – and the slight skew
toward web downloads.  "Podcatchers" are where the listener has
subscribed through the show’s RSS feed.  The web downloads are direct
from the site, either by download or by the embedded Flash media
player.  Given the increasing ease-of-use of podcatchers like iTunes,
Juice and others, I find it intriguing that there are slightly more
direct downloads than subscription downloads (52% download versus 48%
podcatcher).

I’d be curious to know if this distribution is
similar for other podcasts as well or if it reflects some of the other
marketing we do.  We post notices about new shows to the Voice of VOIPSA weblog, which also winds up on the front page of the VOIPSA web site.  Additionally, and I think this may be a larger reason, we post to the VOIPSEC
mailing list, which has something like 3,000+ subscribers.  We’ve heard
of a lot of people finding the show through VOIPSEC.  I’ve also
discovered over time that there are a lot of folks who, after learning
of the show, go back and listen to a lot of the back episodes.  We know
also that the fact that we post detailed show notes does have an impact
because web searches will return our podcast episode pages for common
searches on VoIP security terms and also VoIP companies.   

Actually,
in looking at the stats for individual recent episodes, the
distribution there is more like I would expect – about 60-70%
podcatcher and the remainder direct downloads.  So perhaps the overall
tilt toward downloads really does reflect people exploring the back
catalog through downloads, either as new subscribers or through finding
it via search.

Thoughts from any other stats geeks or podcasters?

If you downloaded Blue Box #56 and wound up with a PDF file, here’s why – as I noted in an "UPDATE" section at the top of the show notes to Blue Box #56, I inadvertently deleted the "enclosure" link attribute that clues podcatchers in to which media file to download.   Without an enclosure link attribute, podcatchers seem to download the last "media" file.  Normally, this might not have been a problem as we usually just link to other web pages, but because we linked later to the SAGE Journal PDF file, that file was chosen as the one to download.  (Although it still boggles my mind a bit that podcatchers couldn’t be designed to download only MP3 files or others from a range of audio/video formats.

I’ve fixed the link and podcatcher downloads are now working, but if you wound up with a PDF file instead, you’ll unfortunately need to download the audio file directly from the Blue Box #56 show notes.

In browsing Digg.com this morning, I noticed that Blue Box is listed in the Digg podcast directory, but it only has a very few “Diggs” (4 before I added my own).  If any of you are Digg users and would be so inclined to go to that page and “digg” the podcast (the count at the top for the overall podcast versus the individual episodes), we’d appreciate the votes.  If enough listeners do this, it might move Blue Box up some of the lists of podcasts (note the “Up and Coming Podcasts” sidebar) and attract additional listeners that way.  Comments are also of course welcome.  Many thanks to the folks who have already “dugg” Blue Box and are responsible for it being there in the first place.  Thanks!

For folks wondering whatever happened to the ability to listen to Blue Box podcasts over the phone, the person running the service, "natas", let me know that he had a situation where the provider of the DID phone line stopped providing that service.  He’s got the server back up now with a new provider and a new phone number:

  +1-218-339-8544

Now that it’s back up, he’s going to be updating it with new shows as he only has up to Blue Box #40 in there right now.  So the question of the moment is… who will get done first?  Will natas update the server up through show #48?  Or will I post shows #49 and #50 to the blog?

Seriously, we do appreciate and thank natas for providing this service and we would still be curious to hear people’s feedback about whether or not this service is useful to them.  (It’s all part of the grand experiment here…)

If you are wondering why their haven’t been any Blue Box episodes since January 3rd, don’t panic, we haven’t "podfaded".  Shows 49 and 50 have both been recorded and are sitting in a certain producer’s queue for audio post-production and editing.  Unfortunately, that producer, who shall remain nameless but whose last name starts with a "Y", has been a wee bit buried and show #49 ran a bit longer and needs some more editing than many of our episodes.   But they will be out soon….  my apologies for the delay!

Greetings!  Welcome to our little corner of the online world where, from 2005-2008, once a week (roughly) we got together to have a conversation about Voice-over-IP (VoIP) security.  As you look down the page, you’ll see that we have two general types of shows. Our "main" shows are where we get together and discuss the latest VoIP security news, offer commentary on topical issues and play and respond to listener comments.  These shows have been numbered consecutively since our start in October 2005 and generally run about 45 minutes.  Our "Special Edition" podcasts (now designated with a "SE" in the show title) are typically special interviews we have done, presentations we have given or panels/presentations from conferences that we have been able to record.  They are quite diverse and so do vary widely in length.  As you’ll notice in our main shows, we’ve developed a wonderful community of listeners and always welcome comments, contributions or other feedback. Thank you for visiting and we hope you enjoy the shows.  Please do send us your thoughts and comments.

Thank you,
Dan York and Jonathan Zar

Where are all the shows that I kept talking about, eh?  Well…this week I had the lethal combination of getting rather sick and losing my voice (rather deadly for a podcaster!) and simultaneously having some large RFPs to which I had to contribute.  Taken together, these factors pretty much wiped out podcast production time this week.  Hang in there, though… LOTS of good stuff coming your way soon.

Signed,
Voiceless-in-Vermont

As you will hear in the soon-to-be-released show #41, listener "natas" has now made it possible for you to dial a phone number and listen to any of the Blue Box "main" shows over your phone (special edition shows coming at some point soon).  Simply dial:

+1-712-432-5355

and you will be prompted to enter in the number of the show you would like to listen to. You can press the "#" key to fast-forward, the "*" key to rewind, the "0" key to pause/resume and the "1" key to exit the episode and return to the main menu to listen to another episode.  Obviously, when you are done you can just hang up.

Given that this is an experiment, any comments people have on the usefulness (or not) of this service would be appreciated.  You can leave them here or send them in via email or audio.  If you do find the service useful, I would be curious as to why… where are you or what situation are you in where calling in to listen is easier than downloading the MP3 directly and listening?  I’d really like to know.  (natas indicates he is doing this for some other podcasts and is having people call in.)

Many thanks to natas for setting this up and I look forward to any feedback listeners have. 

P.S. For those interested, natas has a phone connection coming from a VoIP service provider into his Asterisk server where he as the IVR set up.  He has uploaded (with our permission) the show MP3s onto his Asterisk server and whichever one is requested is then played for the caller.

October 24th will mark one-year of doing this show and we’re planning to talk a bit about that anniversary: some of the things we’ve learned – both about VoIP security and also about podcasting – and see what other announcements we can come out with.

If you would like to contribute a comment or segment to that episode, we will most likely be recording that show on Friday, October 20th, so please send in via email or call in any contributions by the end of Thursday, October 19th.  If you want to call in or send in comments in advance but want us to hold them for that show, just say so at the beginning of the audio comment or in an email and we’ll hold them for that show.  Many thanks to all of you who have been listening to us over all this time!