MsKitka.com

Yesterday I posted the teaser for Galacticast (web site coming soon) and all I can say is wow… It’s only been 24 hours, but the response we’ve gotten so far has been amazing.

In case you haven’t seen the teaser yet, the new show will take the style and heart of old b-movies and mix in some present-day comedy. I was interviewed about the change from Kitkast to Galacticast yesterday at Loaded Pun in case you’re interested.

We have already received some e-mails from people interested in being field correspondents and I couldn’t have found a better crowd. If you too are interested in being a correspondent, please send us an e-mail at galacticast at gmail.com

Although the show will be launched in the next couple of weeks, you may pre-subscribe to the Galacticast feeds as follows:

Quicktime: http://feeds.feedburner.com/galacticast
Windows Media: http://feeds.feedburner.com/galacticast-wmv

N.B.: GALACTICAST feeds are currently diverted to KITKAST content. Once the first episode is ready to be published, the feed will be liberated. Please note that the first week of GALACTICAST programming will be aired on the KITKAST feed, so you will have a grace period to decide whether you would like to subscribe.

Up until yesterday morning when I posted Day One of a seven day vlog series in honour of Videoblogging Week 2006, I hadn’t posted any new content for over three weeks. One would assume that my stats had started waning due to a lack of new content, but my statistics had surprisingly showed the contrary effect.

I honestly don’t know what happened last week… perhaps someone like Adam Curry mentioned me on his show again or something… but what I do know is that although Kitkast is on haitus, I have the largest volume of traffic I have had since mid-October 2005 and the largest number of subscribers that I’ve ever had.

All this traffic couldn’t come at a better time…

On the last day of Videoblogging Week (i.e. Sunday, April 9th, 2006), I will post a video with a preview to my new show. This is where I will announce the type of content, the format and the name of the new show and air some teaser clips in the hopes that my current audience will subscribe and follow me to my next project.

I was considering making an interactive link during the preview so that anyone can click on the screen to subscribe in iTunes (92% of my audience subscribes in iTunes), but I found out that although the fancy schmancy links work when embedded on web sites, iTunes has blocked the interactive links on their own system. As a result, it seems I’ll just have to tell the audience to “watch out for it in iTunes” or “do a search for it in iTunes”, etc.

Big Brother Steve Jobs is watching you.

From my experience over the past 6 months I have not only learned a lot about making films, but I have also learned a lot about film-makers. In the past few weeks since posting the season finale of Kitkast I’ve been getting to know other vloggers and there are a few interesting things that I have discovered:

1. Rocketboom correspondents are the nicest vloggers out there - In fact, the reason why they’re probably corresponding for the hit daily vlog is because of their friendly nature.
2. Vloggers are cat people - Josh Leo proves this time and time again with his videoblog Vlog Cats. The site offers adorable video clips of the little critters reposted from other famous bloggers including Ryanne, Andy Carvin and Amanda Congdon. In addition to Vlog Cats, I have found that most vloggers that I’ve recently added to my Flickr contacts list have posted pictures of their cats… hence my theory that vloggers are cat people!
3. When you love what you do, you’ll do it for anyone - There seems to be an increase in the interest to assist each other in creating vlogs. Recently there has been a lot of talk about this on the videoblogging group and I, personally, have joined up to help with three projects (2 down, 1 to go).

One thing that Zod and I have learned in the past few months is that although it’s possible to make a videoblog in a small space, it’s not desireable. We’ve also been putting off getting a kitten (something I’ve always dreamed of finding in my Christmas stocking) due to a lack of space in our appartment. Well, hopefully all of this will change in the near future. This week we found a 2 bedroom appartment in our building with a HUGE living room large enough to house all of the equipment we’ve invested in over the past few months… so if all goes well with our rental application, we should have the desired space for videoblogging and raising a kitten by May 1st.

I’ll be crossing my fingers that all goes as planned…

Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d check my stats for Kitkast today. Since the last episode I posted was on March 11th I’ve been expecting the subscriber numbers, audience and downloads to start decreasing while the show is on haitus. What I found was quite the opposite.

When Kitkast #1.20 was posted, the first week brought in the usual number of viewers. Then, the next week the numbers remained the same, as if I had posted yet another episode. Now, over two weeks after posting the season finale, the statistics have spiked up even higher than ever before! Although my average daily subscribers for Kitkast was about 3000 (12,000 weekly), my daily subscribers have recently spiked up to over 4200. This is remarkable considering I’ve been spending the last two weeks playing Katamari Damacy on the PS2…

After learning about the spike in stats, I decided to check out the Top 100 Podcasts lists in iTunes from all over the world (as I’ve done before, see this post). I was surprised and pleased to find Kitkast ranked in the top 100 podcasts of different countries as follows:

Austria - 19
Belgium - 23
Canada - 29
Denmark - 43
Finland - 35
France - 36
Germany - 13 (Danke schön!)
Ireland - 64
Italy - 43
Luxembourg - 25
Netherlands - 25
Portugal - 26
Spain - 38
Sweden - 55*
Switzerland - 21

* Kitkast is ranked 55 in the top 100 podcasts of Sweden today, but there are about 20 podcasts from one Swedish radio station that take up most of the 1-54 spots. Considering the radio station gets free advertising in Sweden and I get none… I think this is a pretty damn good stat!

Compared to the last time I checked out the iTunes store last month, I’m pleased to find that Kitkast has finally made it into my own Canadian iTunes top podcasts. Even though I wrote on my About page that I’m based in Montreal, I have not had a lot of Canadian press. Now that my parents know about Kitkast and I’m starting to be more open about my identity for business purposes, I hope the Canadian media will start to make more stories about videoblogging.

Though I am truly pleased with all the traffic Kitkast is getting, I also hope that this new audience will be open to check out the new show when it launches in a couple of weeks.

There are many reasons why I haven’t been writing much recently here at MsKitka.com:

A couple of weeks ago (in early March) I was given the summer vacation schedule at work and was told to enter my vacation requests. Although it’s still a long way off, I know of a few plans… but I’m still far from confirming everything.

Here are a few trips that are mostly confirmed:

Other trips may include Toronto Trek in early July and the Portable Media Expo in late September. We shall see… when it comes down to it, I hope that this year includes some sun and fun just like our trip to LA and Surf City last year!