Matt May is a Web accessibility specialist, and has written on the interaction of people and technology since 1995. He keeps his own weblog at bestkungfu.com, and produces a podcast called Staccato, which features Creative Commons-licensed music.
Alex Williamsblogs, consults and produces unconference style events, where people immerse in DIY media. These are fun occasions, designed for people who want to get together with authors, artists, technologists and leading thinkers to converse, eat, listen to music, write, shoot photos and post podcasts and videoblogs. Alex also works with companies to establish DIY approaches, where writing, photography, voice and video come together to create new conversations and communities. Alex is currently fascinated with digital photography. His girlfriend calls him a Flickrholic. Send Alex a nice message: alexhwilliams at gmail.com.
Nicole Simon loves blogging and podcasting, dashed with an European view. As consultant she helps to facilitate such tools for business purposes or personal publishing empires. She can be found at cruel to be kind and on her private blog Useful Sounds.
Roland Tanglao is a well known podcasting enthusiast and a passionate advocate of blogs, RSS, and social software as a means of online expression for people, organizations and businesses. He is a prominent participant in the blogosphere and online communities and one of the founders of Bryght and as Bryght's Chief Blogging Officer reads hundreds of blogs daily. He graduated from the University of Waterloo, worked at Nortel Networks where he ran its first internal corporate blog, has has been blogging since 1999, and was the first business blogging consultant in Canada.
Remember my predictions are worth what you pay for them :-)
Prediction number 2: Apple will not introduce an iPod with built in recording (and leave it to 3rd party manufacturers which is OK but it would great for podcasters if they had an iPod for podcasters) nor will they introduce anything to record video (on a phone or otherwise). This is one prediction I hope will not come true because I think there is a market for a iPod for podcasters and Apple has the ability to make it a truly easy to use, seamless experience from microphone back to the iPod.
Yesterday I dropped in to see Roland and we got to discussing mobile podcasting. I gave him a bit of a brain dump of what I know about audio engineering and recording, which isn't a whole ton (more like half a ton), and here's what I sent him afterward.
From course content and supplemental materials for students to professional development offerings for educators, educational institutions are automatically adding content to iPods. Using podcasts to produce and distribute this content means students, parents and educators can experience learning everywhere. And the cornerstone of this podcasting system is the Apple Podcasting Server
The creation guide covers just some basics, but the backbone guide allows admins of those kind of servers to really set up podcasting for the education server. It is no wonder that Apple tries to push podcasting, because it could increase sales of mobile mp3 players if universities and other educational outlets convince their students to use an iPod for studying.
Barney and Miss Beazley have their own video podcast. Who are these scottish terrriers? Apparently, they're the pet companions of President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Check out the pictures. These dogs travel! I wonder what these dogs have witnessed in their years living inside the president's living quarters?
I've reviewed some weird podcasts since I launched this site, but this one has GOT to be the strangest. From what I can tell this is the official video podcast of President Bush's dogs. Is that right? Is this what George Bush has on his iPod? Have I gone crazy? Is this my tax dollars at work? WTF?
iPodTV is one of those sites to watch if you are into the video podcast space. You'll find multiple categories, including 13 posts on video iPod directories, 12 covering animation and 22 on software.
Here is some of the news I saw there today:
* More news about BlinxTV
* Commander in Chief to be available on the iPod.
* VideoiPodder.com, a site that "scours other bittorrent sites, and posts the iPod-format video torrents it finds there, along with a few of its own."
* And TheBodcast.com -- not to be confused with Playboy's vodcast program.
Now, here's why it is smart to hire, funny, witty authors, with distinctive voices. For they don't only sound good on radio and television, they can make great podcast personalites, too.
Motel 6 has launched a podcast featuring Tom Bodett, their longtime radio and tv spokesman, famous for his deadpan, dry narratives with the cheery hometown music in the background.
The first podcast features top six reasons to stay at Motel 6 during the holiday season, with one of the reasons being, "You, not grandma's poor circulation, control the temperature."
Now, here's why it is smart to hire, funny, witty authors, with distinctive voices. For they don't only sound good on radio and television, they can make great podcast personalites, too.
Motel 6 has launched a podcast featuring Tom Bodett, their longtime radio and tv spokesman, famous for his deadpan, dry narratives with the cheery hometown music in the background.
The first podcast features top six reasons to stay at Motel 6 during the holiday season, with one of the reasons being, "You, not grandma's poor circulation, control the temperature."
Slapcast is down and podcasters using the service have lost their shows. It's still unclear what happened but it appears the domain has not been renewed.
Podshow, through their site, Podcast Alley, is offering to help Slapcast podcasters get their shows up and running again.
f your podcast was hosted or controlled by SlapCast.com and you have lost your podcast… please contact me ASAP. It doesn’t make sense and we want to help you get your podcast up and running again.
Send an email to info@podcastalley.com with your show name and contact information and lets get this fixed. PodShow will be happy to help you get your podcast running again.
Yahoo! is paying tribute to Howard Stern with the Howard Nation podcast.
From Yahoo! Podcasts:
Yahoo is giving Howard's millions of fans an opportunity to say thank you for 20 years of the most amazing entertainment, share favorite memories, and wish Howard well on his move from old-fashioned terrestrial radio over to Sirius.
Google Music is getting a lot of mention today. It just seems the online music space just gets hotter with each passing day. While at the same time the traditional music industry seems to get hotter and hotter under the collar about protecting their turf. Most notably is the most recent salvo by the Music Publishers Assocation to try and stop unlicensed publishers from posting song lyrics on web sites. MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed. Wow.
Google Music sets the search giant's sites on the ever more lucrative music business, providing indexed searches for bands, lyrics to songs and music services including iTunes. Will Google be labeled a pirate for indexing sites that feature song lyrics? It doesn't seem likely but who knows when you have someone like Keiser making such inflammatory remarks.
Google Music will allow a person to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar special, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.
But what will Google do, now that it is setting its aim on the ever growing online music world? In particular, how will Google use this directory to form a podcast index that competes with Yahoo!, which has so far demonstrated the most cohesive search strategy for the podcast market? Yahoo! is on a roll with its acquisition of Del.icio.us and its embrace of RSS. They launched their podcasting directory earlier in the fall. Media RSS seems to be gaining attention. They are developing audio and video search. And they have their own music store. Plus, they are focused on being an entertainment brand.
Dave Winer has posted an item that he wrote originally in June (we linked to the post at the time) that he has heard Google is preparing for an iTunes clone with RSS 2.0 to make it a competing podcast service. It's hard to see that in light of Google's apparent close ties to iTunes in Google Music.
A more likely scenario is that Google will continue its indexing strategy and leverage its power to generate revenue from related advertising.
I don't see Google as an entertainment brand. But, perhaps, this is one way for them to pursue the show biz market? Hmm. Any thoughts on this one Mr. Keiser?
...And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.
However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
So, isn't this saying that Wikipedia essentialy has its own peer review network that compares in quality to the systems and processes the encyclopedia folks follow? And so why are we flapping about Wikipedia? What about the millions of bloggers and podcasters who flout all kinds of questionably accurate statements?
The Dickens podcast will be in five instalments running on December 15-16 and December 19-21 and read by the actor Geoffrey Palmer, best known for his roles in 'Butterflies', 'As Time Goes by' and 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'.
Like other publishers, the foray into podcasting is sparking ideas for how to use the new medium to promote authors, unpublished works and new authors.
A reference to podcasting in last night's episode of the Fox comedy "Arrested Development" may have been more than just a one-liner.
It happened as Oscar Bluth, the hapless twin brother of family patriarch and criminal mastermind George Sr., was about to be incarcerated once again due to mistaken identity.
Warden: What a treat: the man who cost me my promotion ends up back in my care. And I don't think there's going to be an I'm Oscar Web site this time.
Oscar: I think this time I'll do a podcast.
Think they may be dropping hints? AD is on the way out after two and a half seasons, with Fox planning to replace it early next year, presumably with some show featuring models singing on a desert island surrounded by product placements. But the show's DVD sales are strong, and the fan base is rabid, if a bit small. Steve Safran at Lost Remote has already recommended that AD continue on as a video podcast. If they can keep the troupe together (including Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Portia de Rossi, David Cross, and the uncredited voice of Ron Howard), they'd have a lot more fun -- and they may still make a lot of money. Could Arrested Development be the first TV show rescued by the Long Tail?
For months, Del.icio.us has been a chief discovery tool for me to find new video and audio. It's always refreshing to see what pops up.
Last night I saw a parody of Steve Jobs introduce the "invisible iPod," on SNL's Weekend Update. I saw Jelly D, the rapping pastry. He's a guy dressed up as a jelly donut who made it to the semi's of a freestyle rapping competition in Oakland. A woman sang and played the harp with an animated blackboard featurng sailing ships and flying doves. I saw a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his younger days as Mr. Universe on a trip to Carnivale in Rio where he teaches a Brazilian woman some new words using a carrot stick as a prop. A quite insightful look at the California governor.
I've watched a Green Day music video "When September Comes," and "Some Postman," by Presidents of the United States of America.
I don't ever know what will appear. It all depends on what people post to Del.icio.us. The Del.icio.us hack works like this:
I go to Del.icio.us and look for tag words associated with the file format I am searching. For instance, I started watching music videos in June over my desktop. I first created an addres: http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mov
I then added a tag: "music video." The url looks like this. The tag is in bold: http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mov+musicvideo
The address takes you to the web page where you may subscribe to ther RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mov+musicvideo
Copy the RSS feed into iTunes (under avanced) and the videos start appearing as people post to Del.icio.us according to the tag "music video."
In podcasting, still one of the greatest challenges comes as more people start making shows. What is worth watching? Recommendations help. And recommendations through tags works beautifully.
Tags also help extend the meaning of a podcast. I can subscribe to shows I like through podcast directories or by visiting the individual's site. Chris Pirillo, Adam Curry, Rocketboom are all in my iTunes because I have subscribed to their feeds.
But with tags I can listen to podcasts that perhaps may not even have their own RSS feeds. They are collections of links that are either audio or video files that people have tagged. Del.icio.us does the job of providing the RSS feed. And through that process, I am opened up to a whole new universe of shows and programs that appear automatically in iTunes, the same way as a traditional podcast.
What does this mean for Yahoo!? It means that they have an advantage as far as I can tell in the podcasting space. I can use services like Del.icio.us to discover new shows. It also adds value to iTunes in it keeps me going there to see what funky new stuff is showing up. And it takes me out of the traditional podcast paradigm. I am now consuming shows that may not necessarily fit the standard podcast construct. They may not even have RSS feeds. And I am getting grass roots media that is recommended by people, not editors. It's not that I don't like editor recommendations. But I often find that everyone is an editor thes days. So, why should I limit myself to what the traditional mediia suggests?
What a strage world it must be for newspaper executives these days. They face an aging readership and a product that costs a relative fortune to produce.
Seems to make sense that video podcasts would be worth the investment for a newspaper, huh?
Ever watch Rocketboom? Now you can get it on Tivo. Now, who says that original material can't make it in the world of big media? Repurposed? Not Rocketboom. The Rocketboom folks are at the roots of the grass roots media juggernaut. And now, they're moving into a new universe. I wonder what they get out of this?
Good to see a grass roots players get a little love. All the big media seem to love this new medium. But they are the repurposing kings. They're not Rocketboom.
It used to be that headphone manufacturers made their products in black, because they had always made them in black, and it was a big announcement when one would come out with a white set to match the iPod. Well, Etymotic just announced that they will offer a black version of their ER-6i headphones, which originally came only in white. Because the iPod now comes in black, too.
Playboy.com today announced launch of its own sexy spin on the popular podcasting craze. The new "Playboy Bodcast" will enable consumers on-the-go to download online video features from Playboy.com directly to portable players like Apple's new iPod Video.
The "Bodcasts" will be updated every weekday and will contain the following online video features:
* Joke of the Day -- joke delivered by a Playboy model.
* Ask Hef Anything -- offers wit and wisdom from Mr. Playboy, Hugh Hefner.
* From the Mouths of Babes -- provides advice from Playboy's sexy Cyber Girls.
Check out this eyetracking study of web video. The conclusion, talking heads are boring to watch online. People check out the controls, headlines and even a trash can. The answer may be that people want action and movement.
Interesting conclusion:
Since the Web's beginning, I've warned against repurposing. The initial problem was that companies simply put up advertising brochures as websites. Later, newspapers and other content sites failed to follow the guidelines for writing for the Web and used headlines that were optimized for print. Now, as technology evolves, we're seeing the same phenomenon for yet another media type: you can't recycle video and expect to create a good online user experience.
Saw over at MicroPersuasion that editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have named podcast as the word of the year. (Steve notes that Oxford American has a blog but not a podcast.)
My question: Now, how does Oxford American's choice of words affect the history of podcasting? Will this be a marked moment?
Check out podcasting and some of the other top words in their press release. I find the first three haunting:
bird flu (an often fatal flu virus of birds, esp. poultry, that is transmissible from them to humans, in whom it may also prove fatal)
ICE (an entry stored in one's cellular phone that provides emergency contact information)
IDP (internally displaced person; someone forced to relocate within a country because of a natural disaster or civil unrest)
And these uplifting:
lifehack (a more efficient or effective way of completing an everyday task: "I found a great lifehack for getting a cheap hotel room.")
reggaeton (a Latin American dance music which combines elements of reggae music with hip-hop and rap.)
Sunshine has a way of revealing the dark shadows below the surface. The rays shine, showing so much of something you could not see before. Ever see a great fish swim by deep in a river pool? All you can see is its dark shadow. But sometimes, when the light is right, you can see the whole shape of the fish. It's spots, rainbows and sometimes, a scar or two from a battle long ago.
I guess that is why I am watching, looking for what the sunshine reveals about podcasting and its history. With just a little sunshine, I am learning more about the shadows below the surface, the ones that say so much about the players involved, but also the podcasting community, myself included. ( Interesting take on this in Adam Curry Daily Source Code.)
I can't judge these guys, Adam Curry nor Dave Winer and each of their takes on the history of podcasting. More so, I wonder, what does this debate mean for all of us as the history of podcasting continues to unfold? How are these past events shaping what happens today?
For instance, with a bit more sunshine. I am getting some glimmer of what happened between Adam and Dave almost a year ago in Miami. I now have some understanding for why suddenly, after talk of being like brothers, Adam and Dave inexplicably split, with nary a mention of each other and what had come to pass.
Here's what Dave had to say on his road trip to Miami, dated Dec. 28, 2004. This is from a cached page on Google. I would link to the original post but Dave's archives for this time period seem to be down. Here's what he says:
Anyway, talking with Adam yesterday I remarked that people seem to like getting ideas from him, but they don't like getting them from me. Then I talked with Scoble at length, and he said something similar about himself, that he works hard to be liked, and that I don't. The weird thing is that Scoble is just beginning to get the taste of people not liking him, but any good editor will tell you something's wrong if you're a reporter and everyone likes you. And if we're citizen journalists, I guess we have to get used to this. Anyway, it's really hard to get motivated to deliver more innovative shit, knowing that it's going to be just as hard the 53rd time to get people to suspend their disbelief as it was the 1st. It's not surprising that Fortune skipped our contribution. I'm constantly written out of the story of my creative life. Should I continue? Why? This is one of the things I'm thinking about while driving.
And in the next post...
BTW, I love Adam and Scoble like brothers.
(A note on this, Dave and Adam had known each other for almost four years, dating back to this post, when Dave talked about meeting Adam and the brainstorming session they had about what Dave termed virtual bandwidth.)
Dave traveled on to Miami, meeting Adam, Ron Bloom and others in early January. The four days that followed, lead to a split. From Curry.com::
For days we had heated discussions about the future of Podcasting and it was clear that the differences of opinion were vast.
It was also clear that no one from the group (which included 2 investors) wanted to work with Dave but me. It was a very uncomfortable time for me, and at the end of the week I told Dave I wasn't interested in setting up a business anymore if we couldn't get the business people on board. He freaked out (in a restaurant) and demanded that if I got a television show out of the press at the time, that I would have to pay him his 'share' and drove away without saying goodbye. That event made me realize I had made a wise decision. Some people you just don't want to be in business with.
Podshow, which was started months after the Miami meeting, is not the company Dave and I discussed and it wouldn't be where it is today if we had followed Dave's vision. In fact, he shunned the entire idea and even the name outright. We made a clean break in Miami and Dave apparently can't accept that.
Part of the 'work' that Dave and I did under our so called 50/50 agreement was on audio.weblogs.com, which I promoted relentlessly. Where's my piece of the $2.3 million that Dave received for it? He didn't even have the courtesy to toss a bone to the server admin he promised to 'make whole' upon a sale for setting up the infrastructure gratis. And there are more Winer stories like this flowing into my email box.
All of this is not a "whatever," kind of issue. It's not about these guys making fools of themselves. It's about us all and what is happening as the stakes get higher as more money gets into podcasting. I disagree that someone needs to tell these guys to behave. That's not anyone's job.
If we did look at it as an issue about behavior then we'd all be a bunch of drones, minding our manners, making sure all is secure and quiet. Instead, we're discusing the issue. Look at what has come out of the entire debate:
* Dave has repeatedly been critical of Wikipedia in his blog posts about the podcast revisionist issue. The discussion has surfaced all kinds of debate about the online encyclopedia. In response, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, has decided that anonymous articles may not be created at Wikipedia.
* The debate about podcast revisionism is flowing more sunshine into who out there really are the pioneers, the ones who started creating new applications and services as well as the foundation for what a podcast should be.
So,I say, bring on the sunshine. Let the discussion grow, weeds and all.
The RSS Hijacking story is getting a bit more sunshine now that the folks at Podkeywords are giving their side of the story.
A lot of questions to answer. I'll have more later as I am traveling.
Here are a few posts to read:
Podkeyword's response, which includes, a post from Kevin Devin, who comes to Podkeyword's defense. David Lawrence is under the belief that George is getting a bad rap. He will have George as a guest tonight on his radio show to discuss what has happened. See the Podkeyword blog for info on time and how it can be heard.
In particular, look at the list of podkeyword users that has been posted. Are you on this list? Are you having the same problems or is this not an issue at all?
Also, see Collette Vogel's follow up. She is taking Erik as a client over this issue.
Ben Barren wrote an interesting piece about different aspects of the current podoshere.
While the focus of the article is on Adam Curry and Podshow, it also touches a point with the tools of podcasting I have great interest in at the moment: Can we please have easier tools for production and fetching podcasts? (I am happy to give out some suggestions.)
Two big consumer devices announced podcasting support this week. Sony's PSP firmware 2.60 supports RSS enclosures. The new feature is only able to stream content found in podcast feeds. With built-in wifi, though, that might not be so bad. It also adds a few million new potential listeners to the audience.
TiVo's announcements made a bigger splash: through its content partnership with Yahoo, TiVo Series 2 devices now offer a section for podcasts, with listings taken from the Yahoo Podcasts site. What's more, TiVo, whose talks with Apple broke off recently, announced it will support the iPod as a TiVo-To-Go device sometime in early 2006. It's sort of a funny juxtaposition, from the podcaster's perspective: first, we get into the set-top box, which was the domain of broadcast and cable; and next, broadcast and cable get onto the iPod. That's a fair trade, I'd say.
There's just one problem. The greatest potential for TiVo's podcast support is in downloading video in RSS enclosures. At the moment, I've been pulling down video feeds and running them through a transcoder so my TiVo's MPEG-2 decoder can handle them. (Sidebar: video transcoders are going to be the fastest-growing software segment in 2006. Write it down.) But the TiVo box itself doesn't have much processing power, and its hardware MPEG-2 decoder can only handle a narrow range of bitrates (2-8Mbit/sec), all of which are pretty big in size. Most video feeds are much smaller, but with MPEG-4 and especially the H.264 format used on the iPod, they take a lot more horsepower to render than the TiVo will be able to muster.
This, like most great opportunities, has a big barrier sitting in front of it. I don't think a lot of videobloggers will want to make their work available at a minimum of 10MB per minute of video. Something will have to be done to get video feeds to work well with the TiVo, even if it involves using the companion TiVo Desktop software to transcode for the time being. There is too much good stuff that would be well-received if only it could jump from the laptop screen to the living room TV.
And that's the big message of both the Sony and TiVo announcements: convergence. Sony's device is the second-hottest electronic device on the market today, and they have responded with an upgrade to support podcasts (and Windows Media) to showcase the PSP as a convergence device. TiVo's announcements have convergence practically written all over them. They and Yahoo are making a play for the coveted "digital hub": the device that brokers media and services to you from your home. Expect more of this kind of announcement over the next six to twelve months, from Microsoft for the Xbox 360, Sony for the PlayStation 3, and probably Apple for a new Mac-mini-based media center. They've all been looking at this space for years.
Ricky Gervais, who's best known in these parts for the UK version of the TV series "The Office", is also known to the Brits as a former radio host. He will reprise that role, according to Media Guardian, in a weekly podcast with his co-writer and former sidekick, to be made available on the Guardian web site.
"We have six years of experience working with web publishers so it is a natural transition for us to work with podcasters who need business and advertising support," said Dave Hamilton, cofounder of BackBeat Media, iPO, and TMO, and cohost of The Mac Observer's Mac Geek Gab, in a statement. "With the formation of the BackBeat Media Podcast Network, we can bring that experience to a new medium while offering advertisers an additional channel to connect with a smart and savvy consumer base."
Look out, the RSS Hijackers are here. News comes that podcasters may be vulnerable to people who steal RSS feeds.
Collette Vogel at the Center for Internet and Society recounts the experience of Erik Marcus, the podcaster responsible for Vegan.com and his show, "Erik's Diner." Apparently, Erik lost 75 percent of his readership to an RSS Hijacker.
Erik writes to Collette:
RSS hijacking is different [from domain hijacking]. Most podcasters/bloggers are not technically savvy, and the technique used for hijacking their feeds doesn’t involve swiping passwords or overt illegal methods. Rather, it merely involves finding a target podcast, and creating your own unique URL for it on a website you control. You then point your URL to the RSS feed of the target podcast. Next, you do what it takes to make sure that as new podcast search engines come to market, the page each engine creates for your target podcast points to your URL instead of the podcast creator’s official URL.
The problem comes down to this. RSS Hijackers are sneaky. And most podcasters are doing their shows, not checking to see if their original url is in the podcast directories. Collette writes::
Since the URL points to their RSS feed, everything works fine and listeners will be able to hear their show through iTunes, Yahoo, etc.” The RSS hijacker can then sit back back for months or year letting “the target continue to grow his/her show’s listenership
So years can go by and then the hijacker strikes:
At some point, [the hijacker] can then spring out of the woodwork and demand payment from [the] target [podcaster].” The podcaster is “supremely vulnerable”, because the hijacker can at any moment change URL pointer to any other show of the hijacker’s desire and the target podcaster’s audience will “vanish.”
How do you stop this? Collette has a few suggestion:
1. You should check all the podcast directories and search engines to be sure that their RSS feeds are pointing to your official URL/RSS feed. (Though, in iTunes and possibly others, this information may not be readily available or obvious.)
2. If you learn of a hijacking, you can write to the hijacker and demand that she or he stop their conduct.
3. You can also write to the podcast directories and search engines to point out the bad actor’s conduct.
4. And, of course, you can consult a lawyer about possible claims against the hijacker.
I orginally found a post to the RSS Hijacking issue over at Om Malik's blog. The comments from his post shed some light on this issue.
Alex Williams
Matt May
Nicole Simon
Roland Tanglao
Just saw a post about the Playboy Bodcast. Still not convinced that video podcasting won't bring more riches to the porn biz?