In the old days, you could reference a section of audio in an IT Conversations program using a handy tool that Doug Kaye created. Jon Udell was among the most frequent users of that service, but others, including yours truly, used it as well.

Then, IT Conversations started auto assembling so that the show always had fresh sponsorship promos in every show--even those from long ago. The problem is that this created variable length intros and so the excerpt, which was measured from the start of the MP3 file moved around. Not good.

Doug has fix that with a new technique: basing the excerpt timing on the start of the show body. Of course this means that the MP3 file has to care metadata about when the body starts. Doug's done that using EXTO frames inside the MP3 file. Doug's documented the process. Anyone who needs to tag variable length MP3 files will be interested.

For those not interested in the details, here's how you create a URL that points to a portion of an IT Conversations show:

• Go to the show's detail page
• Click the "excerpt" link
• Enter the start and stop times

The start and stop times are relative to the beginning of the show body. You'll have to calculate that yourself just find the start and stop times on your player and then find the start of the body and subtract it. Enter the resulting times in the form and you're good. From then on, the excerpts will be right no matter how the intro changes. This excerpt FAQ will help with anything I've missed.