Yesterday I had one of the most exciting experiences I have had since starting podcasting 3+ years ago.

While driving around Melbourne, I participated in the 2Web Crew podcast with Duncan in SF, Bron in Perth and Laurel in Sydney. I had my Macbook open on the seat beside me, connected via 3G card, and my Snowball mic sitting in a cup holder.


Dangerous? Not really, it was all hands-free.

But… that isn’t the exciting part.

While we were recording the show, UncaDunc (Duncan’s new nickname) had set up Ustream to stream the chat live and we had some folks listening in. Now that is exciting but it isn’t the best bit. The best bit was how Big Mick Liubinskas set up a Tangler forum to follow the chat. This, in my opinion, takes podcasting to an entirely new level. We not only had listeners chatting with us (of course, I didn’t follow any of this until I parked at my destination), but they were dragging in YouTube videos that we were talking about, screen grabs of websites, posting up photos of themselves listening… I felt like I was in a room with a hundred people. It truly was exciting.

I’ve often talked about how I am keen to see podcasters find ways to innovate so podcasting becomes more than radio on an ipod and this combination of Ustream and Tangler is, i think, a huge leap forward. You can also embed the Ustream stream into Tangler (or your own website) so people don’t need to open up Ustream itself.

I tried to get this all working myself when I interviewed Wayne Turmel for G’Day World but it is kind of tricky to get working. Duncan helped me out later and I found these instructions for setting it up on a Mac. I haven’t found any yet for Windows but will keep an eye out.