Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 5, 2006

Potion Factory is pleased to announce the release of Podcast Maker version 1.2, a tool that takes the geekery out of publishing a professional podcast. Designed to be easy to use, and yet powerful, Podcast Maker is a compelling alternative to the poorly regarded iWeb when it comes to podcasting.

With an understated Mac simplicity, Podcast Maker handles all the essential steps of publishing a professional podcast. It creates a fully iTunes and RSS 2.0 compliant podcast feed; it embeds id3 and atom metadata tags into media files for such things as album art; it uploads only the necessary files to an ftp, sftp, or a .Mac account; and then it pings servers such as those at Apples iTunes Music Store to publicize the update. All of these steps, if done separately require at least 5 separate apps and 30 minutes out of a busy schedule. Podcast Maker cuts that down to 1 app and 3 minutes.

Furthermore, Podcast Maker creates enhanced podcasts. An enhanced podcast, introduced by Apple with iTunes 4.9, contains chapters that make navigating through long podcasts bearable. Additionally chapters can contain images and links that the audience can interact with, creating a much more pleasant experience. A good example of an enhanced podcast is Adam Christiansons MacCast. Podcast Maker is the only program in existence that can edit existing enhanced podcasts, making it a perfect companion to the new GarageBand 3.

All of these features are important, but the must-see feature of Podcast Maker, according to many of its users, is its user interface. The innovative design has all the advantages of an easy to use wizard, but not its major disadvantage: the blister on your index finger you get from clicking repeatedly. The interface guides the user what to do next, but does it in a way that doesnt treat the user as a sea urchin.

Although never previously publicized, Podcast Maker has already received some honors and high acclaims. Within a day of a quiet launch, Podcast Maker was featured at Apples Mac OS X Downloads page as the main item, beating popular programs such as Mozilla Firefox in the number of downloadsa testament to the peoples need for an easy to use podcasting tool. In October of 2005, it has received a perfect 10 out of 10 rating from Macsimum News, and most recently, it has repeated this rare feat with a 5 out of 5 mice rating at Macworld.

According to the research firm eMarketer, podcasting has seen meteoric growth last year, and in just 4 years from now, the size of the podcast audience is projected to be somewhere between 20 to 80 million people. In iTunes, there are now so many podcasts that if you try to browse them all, you crash iTunes. Call it narrowcasting, citizen journalism, or whatever you like, but it is obvious that podcasting is here to stay in a big way. Podcast Maker lowers the entry barrier so that regular folks can join the revolution.

A fully functional 30-day trial is available at the Potion Factory website, http://www.potionfactory.com. Podcast Maker sells for $ 29.95 and can be purchased securely at the same website.

A video tutorial that shows how to publish a podcast from start to finish in less than 3 minutes is also available at the website.

For more information:

http://www.potionfactory.com

ABOUT POTION FACTORY: Potion Factory, founded in 2005, is a partnership between Jin Kim and Andy Kim, two switchers who fell in love with the Mac OS X so much that they decided to make a business out of writing software for it. Since then Potion Factory has dedicated itself to developing simple and elegant software that only %5 of all computer users would understand.

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