Podango will be launching soon and they will turn the world of podcasting on its ear. Yawn, heard that too many times before.

No but wait they're different. You'll be able to quit you day job. Not really, but they are promising $25 to $250K per year to be a Station Director. Wait, if you make $250K a year YOU CAN quit your day job unless you're Michael Dell or Alex Rodriguez.

So how do you earn these prodigious amounts of moolah? You call all of your cool podcaster friends and convince them to join your channel. More specifically you, "assemble and produce highly relevant, prioritized collections of podcasts that make up their station". Highly relevant to whom? And prioritized based on what?

It doesn't matter. Sign up today because this is the podcasting goldmine we've all been waiting for.

Evan Williams of Odeo (and formerly of Blogger) has published what he calls a Podcasting Site Roundup.

Evan's offering is an analysis of the status of a number of podcasting services based on their traffic as reported by Alexa.com.

Some interesting data here. It does not surprise me that Libsyn is on top. It also looks like a number of non-VC infused services are hanging in there with the folks who have gotten Silly-con Valley cash infusions.

Alex Castro of pluggd was the only person who responded to my earlier post detailing concerns about big tech and VC dollar infused companies squashing the independent spirit of Podcasting.

He suggested a Skype call to address my concerns. I followed up via email but so far have heard nothing back.

Frankly I didn't expect much of a response. I'm just a lone wolf doing my thing operating on a shoestring budget and a lot of passion. Then again there are thousands of folks just like me doing the same thing. If these tech firms would actively engage the group, treating them like the partners they are then who knows what they could accomplish.

That's just my opinion, for what it's worth.

How's this for a lucky charm? You can enter to win a free 7-Day trip to Ireland this fall.

Enter at www.shamrock.org/podcast. You and a friend could win a free, week long trip to Ireland where you'll record podcasts commemorating your experiences.

You don't need to be a podcaster either. The folks running the contest will provide all the necessary technical assistance to make it happen.

Hmmm, let's see now. A free trip. Real pints of Guinness. Beautiful countryside and wonderful people. I'm in. In fact, I've already submitted my entry.

Just booked my ticket today for the left coast so I can attend the Portable Media and Podcast Expo. If you're thinking about it I'd recommend taking action soon. The price on Continental from Newark to LAX jumped $50 since Friday. Of course, it could drop again after the Labor Day rush. Didn't want to take chances though.

Jet Blue out of JFK directly to Ontario, CA is $317 right now. It's probably the best way to go if you're on a budget. The convention center is about a 3 minute drive from the Ontario Airport and you can save a few bucks on a car rental by taking a hotel shuttle or cab.

I hear that the Marriott, which is the most convenient hotel, is booked. Check Marriott.com just in case that's not true. I had the foresight to reserve a room a couple of months ago so I'm covered. There is a Doubletree Hotel and a Sheration (site of last year's PodShow soiree) as well. Right now the Doubletree "best internet" rate is $109/night for a 2 Queen, Non-Smoking room arriving on 9/28 and departing on 10/1.

The Sheration has a "best rate" of $164 per night for the same period mentioned above.

So choose your poison and head on out. I think I'm skipping the paid sessions this year unless a kind benefactor will foot the bill. I really don't think I can learn much from the lineup. Not that there aren't smart people presenting. But the way they do things prevents real conversations from occuring. You get either presented to with time for a couple of questions at the end or you sit and watch five people have a boring conversation.

I may invite some people up to my room to record a real debate on podcasting. Is there really any debate on topics like music licensing? Get permission from the owner of the content, and that's it! But topics like how directories (mis)use our content aren't on the agenda but are very important.

Besides hearty debate I'll be going to network and check out the latest developments in the world of podcasting. Why are you going (or not)?

Word comes from my very confidential sources that PodShow is skipping the Portable Media and Podcast Expo this year. Remember that last year they did show up in Ontario but rather than gracing the actual Expo with their presence, the entire entourage remained sequestered nearby at the Sheraton hotel.

I'm sure that individual members of the PodShow gang will find their way to the Expo. After all, the podcasters know that they can't survive unless they work within the community. So maybe this only means that there will be no poolside soiree like last year.

What does this all mean? A top PodShow exec states that they're not taking part in the Expo. Yet some high profile PodShow podcasters will be happily attending the event. Do the folks who either signed the contract or collect a paycheck signed by Ron Bloom represent themselves or the interests of PodShow? If the answer is the latter then PodShow is indeed not skipping the expo. Or maybe PodShow is simply defined by it's leaders, Adam Curry and Ron Bloom.

Either way, I think that skipping the Expo is a poor strategic move for PodShow. If you want to be successful in a business that relies on community technology, you should also work within the community that is really making the technology go.

Of the 20000+ podcasts that are regularly producing episodes how many of those are owned or hosted by PodShow? A very small percentage. And what percentage of the knowledge of the podcasting industry does PodShow have under salary or contract? It's got to be miniscule.

Of course, if you're looking to distance yourself from the world podcasting community then skipping the Expo might not be a bad idea after all.

Remember KYOU Radio? Way back in 2005 they made a big splash by announcing that their San Francisco area AM radio station (they're 1550 on the AM dial if you're in that vicinity) would accept and play podcast submissions as the entire content for their station.

The move was a controversial one at the time. From the mainstream media perspective this was a huge move into the unknown. And you know that many pioneers get slain in wild. I also think that many podcasters (including myself) were wary of CBS wanting to control our content.

Back in December, the station manager over there reached out to me about uploading a few episodes of my Alley Cuts series. I was skeptical, but eager to create an alternative venue for the podcasts as I thought it could help the artists. I was also flattered to be asked to participate.

Since then I've uploaded a few dozen shows. To my surprise some folks out there are listening. I've been contacted by listeners of KYOU and fellow podcasters who have content on the station. I've also heard from artists telling me that they're getting invites to come out to play in San Francisco. So the experiment has been a success from my perspective.

So let me shorten this long story. I went to upload some new shows today and saw that KYOU has undergone a very nice redesign. In addition to their streaming radio channel they also now have certain content available as good old new fashioned podcasts. I do think they're onto something.

A couple of weeks back I lamented the fact that Juice Receiver seems to have become one of the last choices for new podcast listeners to subscribe. I decided to practice what I've preached and since then I've been utilizing Juice Receiver to subscribe to podcasts.

So far so good. I'm hoping that development continues so that the app can add some more features that make it easier to manage podcasts. It would be very nice if Juice could pull in the shownotes from the RSS feed and display them alongside each individual episode.

I also would like to see the directory included with the app go away. A number of the default directory links are dead. Or maybe keep the directory feature but let the user decide what OPML branches they want. So basically allowing a user to build their own directory that they could somehow publish on the web.