As Huff Post’s Eat the Press reported yesterday, Rocketboom has a new host. Her name is Joanne Colan, and she replaces the recently-departed anchor (and by that I mean she left the show) Amanda Congdon. Andrew Baron, the podcast’s co-creator, found Joanne on Craigslist. Is there anything you can’t find on Craigslist?

In case you hadn’t heard, Amanda left Rocketboom to pursue acting offers. There’s a Wired News story on the split. Will Rocketboom ever reach the high water mark that was set by Andrew and Amanda? Only time will tell. Joanne’s resume includes stints on the Fine Living network and European MTV. She’s certainly more attractive (to my eyes) and less goofy than Amanda, but many people had grown attached to Amanda’s unique reporting style. So, there are no guarantees that Joanne is going to be a step up.

There are links to clips and photos of the new hostess on Podcasting News.

[pic courtesy of the Kiwi Bloke]

The German site Podcastlogo.com recently held a contest to see who could come up with the best design for a podcast logo. The winner is Peter Marquardt and this is his creation:

First of all, who knew there was a podcasting logo contest going on? And in Germany of all places? Second, we thought that podcasts already had a standardized logo associated with them — the little grey-and-white “Podcast” tag that’s a friendly, unobtrusively rectangular shape.

And third… that’s the best that anyone could come up with? An RSS feed logo wearing a pair of headphones? And hello! Those should be the ubiquitous white earbuds Feedy the Feed is wearing, not old-school enclosed cans. Podcasts are part of the whole “white wire world” culture, so we think it would only be appropriate. Or at least something nice and hip like Eggos or those noise-cancelling jobbers.

I propose a recount.

I was searching for mentions of Wired News and Webmonkey in various podcasts today, and I spent some time playing with all of the podcast search tools on the web. Here are some useful ones to check out.

Most of the podcast search tools develop their indexes by parsing the audio content of podcasts using speech-to-text software. They can create a text version of the podcast that’s much faster to search. Tricky words are usually double-checked.

Podzinger made waves a few months ago when it revolutionized audio searches. One extremely cool feature of Podzinger is that it maps the words to the correct place in the podcast, so you can start listening to the audio at the point where your search term appears.

BlinkX lets you search TV and video clips from most of the web’s video directories and videoblogs. They have an integrated player built into their page, and they offer free “one-click” downloads of videos so you can easily store them on your video iPod or video device.

But the one that takes the cake is definitely Podscope. They were the first major podcast search engine, launching around a year ago. Podscope has the best interface of any of these tools, and it makes downloading or subscribing to your targeted podcasts incredibly easy. Also, with searches for both audio and video podcasts and clips, Podscope is super-comprehensive. They call themselves the Google for podcasts, which is pretty close to true. At least it is until Google itself starts dishing out Podcast searches…

Here’s a site for anyone who’s considered podcasting but balked because of technical issues or lack of hardware. It’s called GCast, and it’s a free service that lets you record your podcast by calling a toll-free telephone number and speaking into a voicemail-style recording tool. They also offer free hosting, browser-based mixing tools, and podcast-safe music downloads. Another cool feature is GCast’s embeddable player, which is featured on their home page. The little player, which you can drop into any page, has a short description of your audio content as well as a play/pause button that lets people start listening without leaving the page.

GCast is run by the same people who started the MP3 hosting and distribution site GarageBand.com. GCast definitely fills in a few holes for people who feel as though they’ve missed the boat on podcasting.