Several weeks ago I was contacted by TacticalPay Radio. They asked very nicely; “Would I be willing to review their podcast?”
Of course I ignored it. I’m prickly like that.
In my defense, the message arrived while I was on the road so I didn’t even see it for several days. It was one of my many moments of being “the only blogger who’s off line”. (A blogger who’s off the ‘net about a quarter of the time. How does that even make sense?) Meanwhile my spam filters, which are perpetually set on “vaporize anything that moves”, shuffled the polite request to the fourth circle of my computer’s ample e-mail purgatory. Some weeks after the initial request I unearthed it and finally replied. “Are you serious or just trying to sell me aluminum siding?”
It’s a credit to their patience that they replied. “No, really. Please review our podcast. Can you do it by deadline X please?” I pondered the deadline, looked outside, and decided I’d rather hunt squirrels. “Nope. Screw your deadline. I have important things to do.” Am I not a marketing genius?
Yet they persisted and I grudgingly accepted that they were not a Nigerian prince and maybe, just maybe I ought to listen to their damn podcast. It wasn’t bad. I listened to a few more. Still not bad.
“OK fine, I’ll do it” I responded (after even more delay). Since it takes me two hundred words just to clear my throat I might make a few posts. (You want short concise posts? Try Twitter; you’ll get all the depth that 140 character slogans can manage. This blog is and always will be verbose. Which is to be expected from the kind of guy who uses words like “verbose”.)
TacticalPay Radio did indeed toss a haypenny in my Donate account. Which of course makes them awesome! (You’re all encouraged to be awesome too.)
Thus, this is funded content which I’m cleverly slipping in to my usual squirrels and homesteading. Also I think I’ll take a long delicious sip of Coke and post a photo of my new Dell Computer on the hood of my new Chevy SUV parked in front of my McMansion. (Ugh! I can’t even fake product placement. Oh well, you get the joke.) If you wish to assume I’m slobberlingly biased like a combination of the mainstream press and a heroin addict that’s OK but I’m not. I told the guy who asked for the review, “If you suck I’m gonna’ tear you a new one. You know that right?” They didn’t seem worried. Anyone who’ll solicit a review from me gets a shout out for having immense confidence in their product.
More to come…
In the meantime I encourage you to go here:
I went to check them out. It appears they are iTunes only at this time. I emailed them and chastised them for not being available for Android podcast apps. No really I didn’t chastise them, much.
Their service looks interesting as more payment processors are forbidding firearm transaction payments. They are definitely aiming for a market with a WHY.
iTunes? Yuck! I’m sorry about that. I listened to them through my browser on my Kindle (android). I thought it was easy and you didn’t need iTunes because I don’t have iTunes. Now I find out I was just lucky? I didn’t see that coming.
BTW, I can put my Kindle Fire in one side of my garage and my new bluetooth/portable speaker on the other side and it works slicker than snot. I hang the kindle up near the rafters to maximize my house’s weak wifi to the garage and the speaker lives on the bandsaw table with my beer. I could get used to (some parts of) modern electronics.
I too really like where they’re going with their business model. Episode 2 is an interview with their sponsor. It’s not riveting but I love the idea of banking that embraces the product in question instead of loathes it. We gotta’ quit playing on other people’s arenas and have our own.
I know I can go download it manually. I enjoy having all my podcasts in one podcatcher app. I used to do that with RSS aggregators, but that technology is so seldom used today as to be dead.