Eric Rice is a showman. He loves the stage. He is the founder of Audioblog, which provides an audio service that allows people to record podcasts and post them to a blog or anywhere for that matter. I consider Eric a friend. He is a contributor at EventLab, a Corante blog. We have produced podcasts together.

Over the next few months, a bit of a chess match will unfold as Eric goes toe-to-toe with Evan Williams, an Internet celebrity and a magnet of the media world with the launch of his latest venture: Odeo, a podcasting service. Evan, as you probably know, started Blogger and sold it to Google. He left Google last October. I don't know Evan but respect him for launching a company and successfully seeing it bought by such a mythic giant as Google. Now, he has a new quest. And so it makes sense that he'd be watched pretty closely by the media to see how he does with start up two.

(Adam Curry is probably the biggest personality in this space but his effort BoKu Communications seems to have a different, more top-end approach. We'll look at his service in more depth in future posts.)

Odeo received a lot of attention at ETech. Evan presented at the conference. In late February, Just before TED, where Evan spoke, the New York Times gushed over Odeo.

But across the Bay from the San Francisco apartment where Evan launched Odeo, Eric and his colleagues have been running Audioblog for about a year, pulling in revenues, showing that an audio service can make money and sustain itself.

Odeo is still in beta, with plans to start offering its service to a small community.

In Evan's words from a blog post last month:

Odeo is in beta right now. We plan to be inviting people to the system, um, real soon now. Sign up to get an invite when available.

And as reported in Silicon Valley Watcher this week:

As of this writing, though, it's not clear if Odeo will be able to make good on that offer on Thursday. However, it won't linger in beta for years. he plans to have it out of invitation-only mode after a few weeks before going to open beta and then to full 1.0 release in a speedy fashion. "We won't be like gmail and be in beta for a year," Ev said, referring to his former employer Google, which bought his Blogger.com business.

Eric and his team announced their own podcast service this week, which allows you to create a podcast by phone or by recording within their service. Here is a list of their features:

# Create multiple RSS feeds (podcasts)
# Compatible with most major blog services.
# Podcast by phone (up to 60 minutes)
# Record over the Web using our BlogRecorder™
# Add and configure multiple weblogs
# Upload MP3 or WAV files
# Organize your audioblogs with playlist
# Customize your players style and color

How does this compare to Odeo?

Here is what Phil Torrone wrote from ETech, after Evan presented yesteday:

Users will be able to play audio from any page (from the source location via Macromedia Flash) use tags, subscribe, add to queues, share queues, post comments, download for iTunes, WinMedia, etc.

He continues:

On the creation side users can record through the web using ODEO studio (using Flash again) upload mp3 files directly, use a phone to call in and record, and import an external feed. User can also add notes, sound "elements" then publish. Possible future features may include Flash based voice conferencing.

And concludes with a summary of the business model:

Evan spoke to the business model. The main opportunities hosting (some free some more robust), publishing (some free some more pro) and enable users to charge for content (Audible sold $19mm worth of downloads last quarter). and lastly advertising (matching shows with advertisers).

So, in summary, we have Audioblog and Eric Rice, who is all about the show. His service is up and running. He provides tools that anyone can use to create podcasts.

But Eric, though he is quite good at getting attention for his product, will face a formidable force when Evan and his team officially launch Odeo.

How will these two brands evolve? How will they approach the markets differently?

I look forward to watching these two companies develop.

And seeing how the stars align in the podcast universe.