In Episode #034 of Podcasters’ Emporium – released this week – we talked about the new Google+ featuring Google Hangouts and we used the service to collaborate on the episode.

After listening to the show, do you think you’d use Google Hangout for your podcast? If yes, what will you be using it for.

If not, I’d be interested to know your reasons.

Overall what do you think of the new Google+?

You can listen to Episode 34 here: Listen Now

Up until now me and my co-hosts have been podcasting without video (mobile-mobile for the conversation and local recording that later is mixed). Google+ Hangouts will probably be in the next iteration of our set up, as a complement. To be able to see each other will make interaction and flow in the conversation easier.
We will probably not do what Linux Outlaws does, and start recording our Hangout. Audio is enough, for us, right now. In the future, who knows.

Mobile to mobile recording sounds like a tough gig! It will be interesting to hear an episode when you get to the Hangout stage! :)

Interesting stuff, guys. I thought the Google Hangout worked well on Podcasters’ Emporium. There was a tiny bit of ‘Hey look what this button does’ but it did not detract from the episode which was, after all, about podcasting with Hangout.

Once we are comfortable with the tool I imagine it will be a viable alternative to Skype. At the moment, I’m OK with Skype as quality has always been OK for me but then again I’ve only done a few recordings! One thing though, I would be interested in the amount of bandwidth required for video and audio in Hangout as I have always deliberately switched off all video (and everything else) to preserve as much bandwith as possible for audio.

We recently did a 90 minute recording session using a Google+ Hangout. We were doing a “round table” discussion and since we are trying to use Skype as little as possible so we thought we’d give it a shot. Wow! It was really amazing. Even though the people we spoke with had basic headset type mics (and one even used his internal mic on his laptop) the sound quality was still pretty good and much better than I was expecting. The interface is simple to use and I really like how it doesn’t mess with my settings the way Skype does.

The only complaint I had was that the people on the other end could not hear when I played a sound bite on my computer. For example, I wanted to play an interview we did with a football coach and get everyone’s opinion on it. We couldn’t do this because when I played it they couldn’t hear it on their end.

Other than that it all went perfectly. I’m actually excited to try it again.

That is really cool, and I’m glad it worked for you. We do have a similar issue about playing sound bites… I guess there must be a solution to it but I’m not sure what.

In Vista onwards – I think – there’s an option to choose the audio output per program. If you’re using Vista then there could be an option to change the output to your mixer instead of to another audio device in your computer.

This is only hypothesis – but it might be worth investigating down that line.

PS. In our last episode of PE we reverted to Skype – not for any particular reason – just force of habit.