Don't be a Scrooge - Chime In on Friday December 22nd at 21:00 EST / (Saturday 02:00 GMT)

When TalkShoe was launched, many of us thought about lots of applications for the service: Connecting people with like interests, Live Interactive Podcasts, Experts answering questions, Radio talkshows with lots of people in the discussion, Online book clubs, Multi-person conversations, Podcasting for newbies, and more.

But no one here thought of a use that we learned about today, which is not only unique, but really really cool and just in time to get those of you out there of the Christian faith into the Christmas spirit. So unless you are Ebenezer Scrooge, check this out...

Freelance writer, L.A. Podcaster and TalkShoe host
Douglas Welch is hosting on his WelchWrite Specials Talkcast a LIVE reading of Dickens - A Christmas Carol. Welch invites call-in listeners from around the country and world to join him and read a section of this Christmas classic aloud LIVE! Douglas will be using Dicken's own condensed verison of the story that Charles Dickens used during his own LIVE readings.

Really cool Douglas! Have fun this Friday and beware of the
Ghost of Christmas Past.

Douglas Welch's other Podcasts on TalkShoe are
TechnologyIQ with Douglas E. Welch & Career Opportunities Live.

TalkShoe Swarmed by DiggNation

On Sunday, Dec 3rd Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur did their latest live net @ nite show with guest Kevin Rose of Digg. The show was the largest live show on TalkShoe to date. Over 930 people participated, which was a 10x growth over the largest show a month ago, and a 2x growth over net @ nite’s previous record. TalkShoe has also seen its web traffic grow by 10x over the past month.

net @ nite show with guest Kevin Rose
930 Total live participants:
608 Streamers (listen-only)
322 Active talkers and chatters
80 Talkers (phone, Skype, VoIP)

The show began at 8:00 pm and continued for an hour, and the recording started at 9:00 pm. At 9:25 pm, people who were in listen-only streaming mode (not dialed in via telephone) experienced a drop in their audio for the remainder of the show. People on the phones were not affected at all, and the chat room was always available. (Note: you can listen to a recording of the net @ nite show on TalkShoe anytime.)

Our engineering team isolated the root of the problem to a network interface card in the audio streaming server at the ISP. The problem was diagnosed and resolved, and shows after net @ nite experienced no problems. Please see previous TalkShoe Traffic and Performance post below for more details.

We sincerely apologize for this problem and will continually improve the performance of our system.

TalkShoe Traffic and Performance

Over the past 6 weeks, the usage of TalkShoe has grown by leaps and bounds. Over the past month alone, TalkShoe has seen both its web traffic and live show participants grow by a factor of 10x. On Sunday, Dec. 3rd, we had the largest live Talkcast show with 930 participants, which was a 2x increase over the previous record. It is safe to say this was the largest interactive podcast ever.

Some users have experienced performance issues with the TalkShoe website, and the live software interface.

Here’s the scoop:
- Bandwidth for traffic & web audio streaming is more than sufficient, and our ISP partner has more where that came from.
- Tomcat, Apache and database access servers are being added along with clustering software.
- The linux operating system is being upgraded.
- The TalkShoe application and database software are being continually optimized.

We’re racing to improve performance and provide a high level of service. Onward and upward.