We've been getting emails from y'all asking "Why aren't you producing more podcasts?" "What happened!" And as of yesterday, why aren't the "subscribe" buttons working?

The short answer: We're in freeware hell!

We've been producing podcasts and iTunes has been distributing them for FREE via the iTunes Store. And about a month ago, we moved our podcast feed to "feedburner" - a FREE program that tracks subscribers.

After we did it, we realized that the transition isn't seamless. If you Google: "I changed to feedburner and lost all my subscribers!" -- you'll see quite a few links. You might even see a post from me!

When we changed over, most of our subscribers didn't get the new feed and so didn't get new podcasts.

But where to go to fix this problem? "Free" means that if you have a technical problem, you're pretty much S.O.L. There are no numbers to call, only form-emails. And you don't even get an automated response saying, "Yeah, Yeah, we got your email and we'll get back to you (wink, wink)"

Are these emails reaching anybody?

And I'm not necessarily blaming iTunes and Feedburner -- no money coming in means no money going out to pay customer service techs.

Lucky for us, our web guru Josh is on the J-O-B and has miraculously broken through the great wall of email-forms and bad "contact" info to reach a real person at iTunes. The good news is we might get our subscribers back!

But not everybody is lucky enough to have somebody as tenacious as Josh. So I'd like to make a suggestion to iTunes and Feedburner -- why not have a pay option? We'd happily pay for some version of Apple Care - say $100 a year to get somebody on the phone. "Feedburner care" doesn't have same ring but that would work too.

I'm willing to pay so please charge me!

In the meantime, please forgive our technical difficulties, they're free came free of charge.