The Podcast Awards are coming up again. But apparently the entries are lacking a few basics, reflecting the poor understanding about RSS, show notes, and the various elements that go with a podcast.

Insomnia Radio recaps Todd Cochrane's lament in culling through the nominations for this year's Podcast Awards. What they found:

* 78% of the submissions had invalid feeds, according to FeedValidator.org.
* Of the remaining feeds, 96% had glaring errors.
* 42% did not have an RSS feed button on their home page. (gulp)
* 26% did not have a link to the file in their show notes.
* 21% had less than 2 lines of show notes.
* Some feeds were huge, as big as 500K and 367 entries.
* Only 49% of the submissions provide a way to contact the podcaster.
* 200 of the submissions that called themselves podcasts had no podcast feeds.

People understand the recording part. They get the idea behind making a show. They could be better web marketers.

More so, the findings reflect that RSS is still foreign to most people. It is still the magic part of the mix.

Odeo has lauched twttr, a texting service. Why? Leads to questions over at TechCrunch. How about the core product? Will it become something besides a simple recorder? They recently showed how they are making it easier to create personal lists, using OPML. They now have a video recorder, too. Seems like there is something in line between opening up an Odeo inbox for all to hear and a texting strategy where you are opeining up your text messages for all to read.

Wiith twttr, we have people leaving text messages for anyone to see at a public web site. Cool. People will love it. Show your photos, share your inner feelings in a podcast or blog and now open up your personal messaging from your phone. People like to see and be seen.

These dudes must have some pretty mellow investors. It's either that or they are seeing that podcast publishing and directory tools just don't get returns and it's better for investors to ok focus elsewhere, on the mobile specifically, where text messaging rules the day.

And there is a fiit between texting and podcasting, especially as the mobile becomes the dominant tool for publishing audio. How the two cross is the question. What's the fit between Odeo and twttr?

Sources close to Podshow say that the company will launch its new service next week that from all reports, looks like a media network for creatng and sharing shows. It's clear that they are looking for talent to fill the service they call Podshow+, according to the web site. The black and white video on the Podshow web site asks: "Are you popular?" That's a prett clear sign of their intentions. They want to attract popular shows, following the premise that if these shows can attract millions of people to their netwok then the laws of the long tail will attract Madison Avenue advertisers to their media properties. The news about Podshow is pretty well known to most folks in the business. But it's worth noting if not to underscore the talent search underway as demand for original work increases and networks race to sign new advertisers wanting to reach the communities who are downloading millions of shows.

Other talent searches are getting started. Todd Cochrane launched Blubrry here at Gnomedex yesterday. It's an open community service, too, a space for creating your own shows and connecting with listeners. Leveraging the pool of shows on the network, Cochrane says they will place advertising with the podcaster getting right of refusal, giving show producers some control about the advertising on their show. Podshow's service is looking to leverage this community, too.

Doug Kaye also launched a new media company yesterday but his service, Gigavox Media, is related more to the business approach from Podtech, which recently hired Robert Scoble. Podtech is building a network of produced shows that they receive from partners and the work they produce themselves.

I interviewed Doug last night for the Chris Pirillo show. Gigavox Media is directly associated with the Conversation Network, the non-profit he started. Gigavox will provide a technology license to the Conversaton Network, which will continue to develop material on topics related to matters such as government and the environment. Gigavox will iinclude Doug's IT Conversations, one of the original podcast networks. Gigavox principles will remain the same as those established by IT Conversations, with high attention being paid to the quality of the programming, both in terms of the topics it addresses and the excellence of the audio recordings. He is looking for talent. Doug, btw, helped me get my start in podcasting at Gnomedex 4.0, in South Lake Tahoe, when we teamed to record and podcast the keynotes and discussions from the event. It's good to see him here at Gnomedex.

These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how a major talent search is starting for people producing audio and video. The answers why are in the numbers. In two separate conversatons yesterday, i spoke with podcasting industry people who say they have each been on a tear in signing new advertisers. These are advertisers looking for shows that reach the increasing numbers of people who are looking for indie produced works. They're searching the social networks for news, entertainment and as a way to share their work and meet people who they connect with on a personal level. Those viewers are valuable for advertisers. And the money they are investing shows the considerable monetary value that these shows command.

The demand for shows will only increase over the next year as more advertisers seek to reach these larger audiences. And that's the race the new media companies are facing. It's a race to find the next star.

The talent search has begun.

I love the stories about DIY gear for podcasts.

I ran across this description of a podcaster's wind screen in a post by Jake Ludington :

I'm a big fan of DIY gear for shooting video or recording audio when your budget is holding back your ability to produce an otherwise great creative endeavor. You can save a ton of money in many cases and you get the satisfaction of creating something useful along the way. Case in point, the DIY microphone zeppelin windscreen from Joel Greenberg of Joel and Karen. Zeppelins are those fuzzy things you see covering microphones on long boom arms and help to greatly reduce wind noise when recording with a shotgun style microphone. Using some PVC, leaf guard, fur from the fabric store, and a hot glue gun, Joel built a very functional zeppelin to help cut down on wind noise when recording audio in windy outdoor environments in Texas. He details all the steps and provides a before and after audio recording sample to demonstrate the sound difference. As a bonus he also shows how to build a microphone shock mount using PVC too.

I met someone in San Francisco last week who I urged to make a show, based on the use of a high definition camera mounted to his battery powered helicopter. He has constraints. He can't afford to trash a high def camera nor a battery powerted helicopter. He has to define his shots, plan them and make sure the helicopter is not in the air for more than a few minutes. What results are pictures that are unique to his own perspective. The art is constraint based.

What's distinctive about these examples is how the constraints make the productions more creative. That seems to be the key aspect of why DIY media is becoming so popular. Shows become popular because they have a unique style or perspective which in some part is defined by the constraints of the people producing the show.

I'll be looking for more examples of DIY gear for podcasts over the coming months and how the constraints of the producer serves as the basis for their creative works. Know of a good example?

In the meantime, here's MAKE magazine's DIY Podcast Shower Radio.

Goes to show that DIY is not just for the developer but the user, too. :-).

Time to get this blog back in gear. And what a better time to do it than with the landmark announcement over the weekend that
Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to work for Podtech Update: Maryam is joining Podtech, too. She'll be announcing it soon. Congrats to the both of them.

Robert changed the blogosphere. His engaging style, insights and jovial personality combined as a potent force that he used artfully.. He's a master of the medium. He does great work.

Will Robert have the same effect on podcasting?

Podcasting is a world of its own. Personalities abound but no one, I think you could argue, has transcended the podcasting medium the way Robert has done in the blogosphere. Adam Curry, Chris Pirillo and folks like Eric Rice are immensely popular. Doug Kaye is a legend. Correct me please if you disagree but I do not know of any podcasters who has had as much of an influence as Robert has with his blog.

Will lightning strike twice?

Robert did have the good fortune of blogging from Redmond. He worked there at a time when the company needed to display itself in a way that would counter its image as an evil empire of sorts. He opened up the company in a way that will serve as a historical example of how blogging has affected corporate culture. Channel 9 did what it was supposed to do. With his rough cut video intervews, Robert and the team he worked with showed that people besides Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie actually work at the company.

The timing was just right for a personality like Robert to be a Microsoft blogger and engage with folks. He's a jolly guy, able to counter flames from angry commenters. He'd get fried sometimes. But he was always quick to get back in and engage. He did it in a way that wasn't over the top. And that counts for a lot. It's easier to be a lightning rod when people like you.

We know little about what Robert's role will be at Podtech. But his impact will be far different. My guess is he will continue to be an evangelist in some way, back on the conference circuit, interviewingh people and bringing the message to the corporate world about the offerings that grass roots media and Podtech provides.

Will he have the same effect on podcasting that he had on blogging? Is podcasting so different that the two are mutually exclusive in how they impact our lives? Will there ever be a Scoble like personality in the podcasting world? Podtech doesn't seem like the place where Robert will act as a lightning rod. But maybe he'll do a daily show? Rile it up? I'd love to see that.

I just expect that we will continue to see Robert do great work. And that in itself ill make an impact on podcasting that will change the medium for all of us.

Good luck, Robert and Maryam. We'll all be watching with interest.

John Furrier has raised $5.5 million for his PodTech network. That's a cool load of cash for a company that produces shows. Wait, I thought the startups making media were not in favor? I guess that isn't true anymore. Podshow raised many millions and has all kinds of original programming.

John will be hring podcasters. That's amazing. Will there be a podcast newsroom? I never thought I'd see the day. I am just ecstatic about the prospects of smart, collective journalism that explores issues and is made available as podcasts.

Congrats, John! :-). I'm watching with interest.

Adam Curry and folks are talking about the unlabel. How does the news from Tower Record fit into this concept? Tower is calling their effort, TowerPod. They'll have more news about it at SXSW, where I'm heading later this week. Hope to learn more about it there. In the meantime, here's what we do know so far. Podcasters will get access to 6,000 songs, with revenue coming from embedded ads that will be placed in their shows. Music will come from indie artists. Profits get split between Tower, the musicians, indie labels and the podcast creators.

At the Podcast Hotel, the event I produced recently, an artist round table discussion lead to an animated discussion about artist compensation. Samantha Murphy argued that podcasters should compensate the musician for playing their music. Tim Mitchell of IODA said it is all about conversion and if so, podcasters should do very well as podcasting becomes a new distribution medium for indie music. Listen to the discussion here.

Details are sketchy at this point about TowerPod. How much will the artists receive? What does Tower get out of this? And how are the podcasters compensated?

Plus, how does this work? How is the ad embedded?

Outhink, a P2P service, looks to be the engine behind TowerPod, which makes me think that the podcasters will load their shows to the Tower service, where the ads will be embedded and then categorized according to music genre. I've heard a little about TowerPod from folks who are contributing to it but nothing as of yet about how artists will make a decent buck.

Good to see another player in the space. I just wonder how this will all shake out for the artist.

Coca Cola is sending bloggers and podcasters to the Olympics. I wonder if these blogs will be worth reading. Why make such a point that these people will only have positive things to say? Do they not trust hese college students to just post their own impressions of the Olympics? Won't this just make these posts a bit too fuzzy?

From Mediapost:

Adding to its usual marketing efforts during the games, Coke is paying to fly and accommodate young representatives from China, Germany, Italy, Canada, Austria, and the United States--each of whom has agreed to keep their posts positive, according to Coca-Cola spokesman Philipp Bodzenta.

"They understand they we're looking for the positive side of the Olympics," said Bodzenta, adding: "They are part of the PR team, but they are not Coke employees."

Business Week interviews the founder of Toodou, who discusses podcasting, censorship and the future of their indie media service.

Th Unofficial Apple Weblog shows how to change your podcast feed in iTunes. The TUAW post also has a handy document you may want to peruse. It's the technical specification document for podcasting and iTunes. As they write at TUAW, the docment is a wealth of information.

Podcasting is on the radar for marketing execs but their sites are set more than a year out for investing more dollars into the medium.

That's the conclusion of a Marketing Sherpa, ad:tech study which polled 644 marketers who spend 44% of their total ad and marketing budgets on the Web. The study looked at the 2005 best and worst practices in internet marketing and a look at the year ahead.

Eighteen percent of respondents said they will definitely spend money on an in-house podcasts with 31 percent stating that doing an in-house podcast is more than a year out.

Fourteen percent said they will sponsor a podcast in 2006, while 32 percent said sponsorship is definitely more than a year out.

These numbers make you wonder about the success of podcasters trying to make commercial plays. How will the the market shake out in the year ahead for the podcasting pioneers if revenues from advertisers are limited? And, who will get the dollars available? I expect that the mainstream media players will continue to be the big winners. They are already attracting major advertisers for their podcasts and can offer packages that include podcasting sponsorships as an added value.

What the numbers say:

Sky News, out of the UK, is offering video podcasts

Here's what they say you can see with your video iPod:

In this week's 7 Days programme: see the man with bionic arms... an animal version of Big Brother... the stuntman who goes up, up, and away... an Elvis celebration and a soapbox spectacular.

Here it is -- tabloid TV on your iPod!

Saw this at MicroPersuasion. It shows the demand for podcasting skills among employers as tracked by Indeed.

Steve Rubel says at the MicroPersuasion blog:

Meanwhile, demand for podcasting skills grew to Nasdaq-like proportions last year, only to crash near the end. Will the market return?

Perhaps people are realizing that podcasting is not rocket science?

Podcastsing is taking a next natural step in its development by tying into enterprise applications, hand-in-hand with blogging, its close relative and partner.

Blogs are the first to make this jump as ties to enterpirse and CRM applications are made by setting permissions to a corporate blog with access privileges to specific categories. Within these captegories, podcasts are uploaded, linked from the blog.

I have a few corporate clients who, like most anyone, just want to know the best way to use a blog or a podcast. One of these clients has a sales force that is on the road three to four days a week. One thing I recommend people in companies such as these are audits to define where may be the best fit for a blog or podcast strategy. For this holding company of heavy industrial equipment makers, their sales force needs better access to information related to new products that have higher margins. As the sales force is on the road most of the time, blogs may be less beneficial than a daily podcast that they can listen to as they are driving and trying to prepare for their next stop on their sales journey.

Podcasts can be tied in with blogs that deliver custom information from enterprise applications. And this is where a smart phome, integrated with a feed reader that can download mp3s seems like a natural evolution in how podcastng emerges as not only a wonderful consumer application but also one that provides real advantage for a mobile workforce.

Australia'a Greens leader Bob Brown is podcasting from his mobile phone. He finds it easy to go directly to people simply by pulling over in his car, getting out his mobile phone, recording a comment about an issue and then posting it directly to the web. He now has five shows since he started the effort in early December.

Seems like politcians could podcast pretty easily and a lot more frequently if they used their mobile devices just to let us know what they are thinking about. I'd like to know who is the most prolific political podcaster. Who is really making use of podcasting to be more authentic and real? Are politicians capable of creating podcasts that are real and authentic? My bet is that the list of podcasts from politicians that fit this mold is pretty short. But if you know of a podcast from a politician that really seems authentic, please let me know. I'd like to hear what they have to say.

Matt May and I are speaking about podcasting at Idea Day tonight in Seattle. The event is at ThinkSpot. Social hour begins at 7 p.m. Matt and I present at 8.

Matt May and I are speaking about podcasting at Idea Day tonight in Seattle. The event is at ThinkSpot. Social hour begins at 7 p.m. Matt and I present at 8.

Is podcasing for consumer electronics companies a way to get buzz or is it a feature set important to innovation? I just ran across a Sony announcement on TechSmec about the Vaio Home Entertainment PC, designed to use the TV as display.

They state:

The Sony VAIO VGN-XL100 is supplied with Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre Edition for simplified access to media features as well as full PC functionality. In addition, it comes with VAIO Information Flow, a specially designed graphical interface for use at a distance from the screen. This makes interaction with the VGN-XL100 a very simple matter, and provides instant access to popular services including RSS feeds, a newsreader, podcasting, picture slideshows and the music player.

With video podcasting taking off, I'd expect we'll see similar announcements in the weeks ahead, especially with MacWorld on its way. What will be the impact on podcasting as more consumer electronics companies use podcasting to try and differentiate their products and services?

My Top 19 predictions for 2006. Mark off a few points if you will for my belated attempts but I had to follow an incredibly thought out, accurate, data intensive methodology that took me weeks to process and an hour to write down. Here ya go:

1. New podcast networks will flower like tulips in the spring. Most will just make it through one bloom.

2. I'll go fishing on the Sandy River. Podcasts, especially in music, will be the hot ticket as more people realize that you can listen to a show any time, any where you wish. That includes on the river... which helps if you are fishing below an underpass.

3. Spring will come and the video blogger boom will rumble like thunder.

4. Current.tv will fail as the network looks the other way, deciding not to embrace video blogging.

5. Hijack! Increased instances of feed jacking will shine more light on the practice of redirecting RSS feeds to third party hosts.

6. I'll move for something like the 25th time in the past five years. This time I'll write about it on a paper napkin.

7. Adam Curry will continue to listen to his father's advice and try not to pave the goat path. Eric Rice will move again in Second Life. He'll podcast from the reality world. Chris Pirillo will interview the one red paper clip guy who ends up trading his fleet of Scions for a 20,000 square foot mansion just outside of a well known war zone. Dave Winer will make another few $.

8. I'll be cursed by at least one person for my last prediction, furious yet again they were not invited to the party, mentioned in wikipedia or asked to play a character in a podcast.

9. I'll continue to thrash myself for paying up the big bucks but wireless at Starbucks will be crucial for me to keep connected. I'll continually seek out a penniless connection, hoping that by December, North America will become a free wifi utopia.

10. More people will discover OPML as they finally get that it can serve as a galaxy for millions of feeds. All you need is a magic bike to get there.

11. Web 2.0 will be known as aw2. That means alex williams squared. It's the square root of my life since discovering RSS almost three years ago, about the time lichen started growing on the web after the dot com boom's volcanic eruption in 2000. ;-)

12. Fee, fly, flow becomes a new expression. It comes from a hip hop song about RSS.

13. The FBI will discover a Cosa Nostra podcast and use it as evidence in a reality television show.

14. George Bush will lose his iPod and the NSA will try to stop the media from telling the story.

15. Conferences will continue to draw micro camps that will serve as sorts of satellite networks. A few smart producers will get it and network these camps for an extended event that balances the commercialness of traditional trade shows.

16. The podcast hardware business will grow and become a catalyst for fresh innovation in consumer electronics.

17. Better software tools for podcasting on mobile phones will help at least one company get a healthy round of venture funding.

18. Podcasts of World Cup Soccer games will garner some of the best audiences ever for a recorded sporting event.

19. I'll play indoor soccer at least once a week for Los Jugaderos. Focus is on the game. Someone else will have to do the play-by-play.

I don't know, is it me, or is the RSS icon looking like a more universal symbol? With Microsoft announcing last month that they are adopting the Firefox radar like symbol for RSS, I wonder what it will mean to people who have no clue about RSS? The little dot, is that a person telling the world about a feed? Are the radio waves a symbol for subscribing, meaning that you want that feed flowing your way?

The efforts by folks like Matt Brett over at Feed Icons will define how the RSS feed will look in the years ahead. Matt is spearheading an effort to standardize the identity for syndicated works. I like what he is doing. As part of the effort, he is asking people to download the icon so they may create one of their own in their favorite color. Matt's plans are to create a user submission gallery in 2006.

The orange xml button works for me. But I see the need to make it more of an international icon. And now I can see the icon for RSS in a rainbow of colors. Seems fitting, doesn't it?

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?

Saw this at iPodGuideTV:

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."

I

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.

From the Podcast Alley blog:

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.

Here's a bit on Google Music from News.com:

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?

It may be scrutinized about its posts for the history of podcasting but as far as science goes, Wikipedia's accuracy is on par with Britannica.

That's what Nature is reporting:

...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?

What is the best way to podcast a written article? The problem Joi Ito's Web is pondering: How do you best express quotes in spoken form?

Quote, end quote is a common radio style when reading quotes from a newspaper article.

I like what one commenter said....

Pinch you nose and use a funny voice.

Perfect. :-).

Penguin is planning to podcast the Charles Dickens classic: 'A Christmas Carol.' It's the publisher's first foray into podcasting.

From Revolution:

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.

My favorite video catching hack now comes from Yahoo!, thanks to the search engine giant's acquisition of Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service.

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?

I love to use Del.icio.us hacks. Do you have one?

Earthlink is advertising in the Washington Post's video podcasts.

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.

Subscribe.

Just saw a post about the Playboy Bodcast. Still not convinced that video podcasting won't bring more riches to the porn biz?

From Sawf News Connect:

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.)

RSS, now there's a great lifehack.

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.

BackBeat Media has started a podcast network, signing Coverville, Evil Genius Chronicles and the Mac Observer's Mac Geek Gab.
From MacObserver:

"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.

John Furrier gets the podcast exclusive about the Yahoo! announcement for RSS in Yahoo! Mail and Alerts. John is convincing folks that it does make sense to launch a new product with a podcast. A few reasons why this makes sense:

* I can listen to the interview, which provides a bit more context to the news release
* I can use it as a comparison to the other blog postings about the announcement
* I can quickly go through the transcript, again to find insights into why the announcement makes sense

I see over at Red Herring that Walt Disney Disney and Clear Channel are getting intio the iPod advertising game. What's going to get onto these iPods? It looks like movie clips from Disney's Chronicles of Narnia and Clear Channel's Rush Limbaugh.

But it is still such a tiny market out there. But the question is, how big will it get? And how fast will it happen? According to eMarketer, spending on online video advertising is expected to triple in the next two years, rising to about $640 million. By 2010, it could hit $1.5 billion.

But how does online video advertising fit as a segment of the total online advertising market? Here are some numbers from Jupiter Reseasrch I saw at ClickZ article from earlier this year:

Online video advertising is a tiny segment of the overall market, drawing a scant $121 million in spending last year compared with $9.5 billion for all online media, according to JupiterResearch. Other stats show Web video ad spending represents just under a tenth of a percent of the $250 billion total U.S. ad market.

But look at the market and you'll see Internet properties with audiences rivaling some cable networks. Sure, but I keep thinking how advertising will affect the original work that people are noe producing. What will advertising do to the fresh outlook of all these backyard producers?

I'll keep watching as long as folks keep mixing it up. So if anyone has a mashup with Rush Limbaugh appearing in the Chronicles of Narnia, please let me know. That's a backyard mix I'd love to see.

Via Scoble, I see that Amy Gahran has added 40 new shows to her women in podcasting list, bringing the total to 120. She posts the list as an OPML file.

Here's what she says about the list:

When I first converted this list from a maintenance nightmare (HTML page) to an OPML outline, I discovered that nearly half of the shows originally listed are now defunct. However, I still have a huge backlog of new suggestions to plow through. As a rough estimate, I think that when I’ve caught up with the by backlog of suggestions, about 100 or more shows will be on the current list.

What I like about this list? It's an updated source of shows edited by someone who cares about the topic. I trust it. Perhaps with OPML gaining more traction, more folks will keep podcast lists such as these as they appear to be easier to maintain than updating HTML files. I just started fiddling with the OPML editor, so perhaps I'm off, but for non-programmers like myself, creating an OPML list or outline looks far less ghastly then editing an HTML document. Now all I do is to learn how to make it look decent. :-).

JD Lasica rounds up some conversation on the distinction between videoblogs and video podcasts.

Hey, all -- Happy Thanksgivng to all of you out there. Enjoy.

Podcasters from 16 Chinese provinces are getting airplay on radio stations iin what organizers are calling lifecasting.

Wangyou.com is the first among a dozen Chinese podcasting websites to pass its podcasts, or home-made or professional audio contents, over to 16 provincial or regional radio stations early this week.

The contents from the Internet are being broadcasted daily on the radio in the form of a 30-minute programme called Wangyou Happy Happy Hour (Kuai Le Le Fan Tian).

The idea behind the effort is to showcase people's lives, primarily from the interior parts of China, where apparently, podcasting and blogging are more popular activities.

More than 40 additional radio stations are expected to join the effort by May of next year

The contrast to the US is striking, where KYOURadio in San Francisco is one of the few radio stations to broadcast the podcasts that it receives from people wishing to get their shows on the air.

Last week, Nine Systems announced a podcasting service to compliment the streaming they do. They're the first streaming company as far as I know that is venturing into the podcast space.

Nine Systems streams sporting events such as The Open Championships golf tournament. These are streamed broadcasts, which in the future could be available as video podcasts.

My question: Do they get it? Here's what they say they can do:

The podcasting solution allows content producers to control the podcasts that are made available to their audiences. Other features of the podcasting solution include publish of podcasts for on-demand streaming and download content and live streaming content and guarantee compatibility with iTunes and other aggregators with support for RSS 2.0, iTunes elements and Yahoo! Media RSS 1.1.0. The Stream OS podcasting platform also tracks podcast circulation, syndication, aggregator type and click-through with extensive reporting.

I read through this and wonder why streaming is so critical? Live sporting events? Sure, streaming may make sense but I'm not convinced people want to sit in front of their computer to watch a game. Financial institutions that need to be extremely diligent about releasing information see value in streaming. I talked to a chief investment officer with a large financial services company earlier this year who said for their annual events they have to stream the whole thing so as to keep in line with SEC regulations. But even in that case, I'm not sure that streaming is any better than podcasting. In fact, podcasting may be even better as people can take the information with them, free from the PC. Publicly traded companies use streaming for quarterly announcements. Streaming allows for live Q&A, etc. Even there, podcasts of the announcements seems like it should be required as they would be so accessible to people.

Isn't it far less expensive to make shows available as downloads than to stream them? And isn't it far less costly to do a recording and then make it available, perhaps in smaller segments? And what is the value in the tracking they provide? Most of this tracking they offer can be done with a service like Feedburner.

Further, all this talk in the Nine Systems press release of content and control makes you wonder about companies getting on the podcast train. After reading the announcement I decided to dive into Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes , the long essay Doc Searls published last week. The essay covers a lot of ground. But it's insightful when you compare it to the language of the Nine Systems announcement.

A main theme of Doc's essay is about the power the big carriers want to wield by controlling access to their pipes. Doc plays out a scenario that asks: Who can afford to play in this web space if the carriers get their way and close down the pipes to all except those who can pay their tolls? The answer: Companies that subscribe to the language that the carriers have successfully spread into our vernacular. The carriers see the web as a system of pipes, not as a frontier or place where free culture is thriving. The carriers see the Internet in terms of packet transports. All those podcasts, blogs and other media are just cargo in containers. And if that's the case, then those containers are subject to inspection and can be stopped to be checked for offensive materials or whatever "illegal," possessions may be inside. The only ones who will be able to fill to these containers are the ones that the big carriers see fit to provide access. In that scenario, the "content industry," meaning big media companies, will be the natural partners for the carriers. And the consumers will only get what the content industry allows us to consume.

And in that case, it won't matter. We'll just have to take what we get. You may not agree with this line of thinking, but it does certainly raise questions how the language is being used to the favor of those with a big interest in making money off all those pipes and switches.

Doc explained this whole concept of "content," to me at the Syndicate conference last year. I had used the terms extensively in a panel presentation. After talking with Doc, I realized that content is a word that we have become used to using in our language and I should avoid it all costs. For me, part of it is just better word choice. Content is one of those words that is right up there with facility.

And this is why these monumental battles often come down to battles over linguistics. For it is those words that define our concepts and our culture.

As for me, I'm with Doc. I beleive the Internet is a place where the indiviidual has control, content is technical speak and people are never called users.

Users. Ugh, don't get me started.

I heard the news today, oh boy. Arrested Development is on the brink of getting canceled. Looks like I have one more reason not to watch television.

I am doubtful of any reprise of the show. And I am doubtful of any re-launch into some other form. But we can dream, can't we, of the Arrested Development video podcast?

Arrested Development seeded into BitTorrent? Arrested Development video blogs?

That's the day dream fantasy I read over at Lost Remote. And reiterated at the Long Tail. Sigh. I have little expectation of this ever happening. But we can dream, right? And one day, perhaps this extended treatment of excellent television comedy/drama will just be the norm? Right?

In the meantime, time to get the show into my queue.

I'm speaking at SRI's Beyond Blogs and Social Networks. I'm looking for people to interview. Your input would be valuable and important as I discuss the issues with setting up a corporate blog or podcast. What are the issues you faced when getting your blog or podcast started? How are you maintaining it?

Interested? Please contact me and we'll set up a time to talk. E-mail: alexhwilliams at gmail dot com.

Thanks. Alex.

Yahoo! is working on a podcast development tool. The news came at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. The show was also rife with talk of similar development efforts from Google and Microsoft.

In the background of all this is hosting, which is changing dramatically now that audio and video are taking a bigger slice of web traffic. Hosting companies are adjusting, upping the amount of bandwidth and storage space to accomodate podcasters and videobloggers.

Winer links to Netcraft, which sums up the situation, again looking at giants like Google, which looks to be making a big play, recently with the lease of 270,000 square feet of a telco hotel in New York City.

On another stage, a firestorm of posts blew over the blogosphere in reaction to Audible's announcement at the Podcast Expo for its news service, which it calls Wordcast. The service is all about the business of podcasting, claiming it allows podcasters to build multiple revenue streams "around capabilities such as advertising management, dynamic ad-insertion, underwriting and secured transactions.." As part of the service, Audilble's fees cover bandwidth, hosting and reporting costs.

Since the announcement, a firestorm has erupted with a hot point sparked with Mitch Ratcliffe's long post on the future of podcasting, in which he argues that Audible's effort is advancing podcasting and that they seek to engage in converastion with the community. Ratcliffe, a consultant to Audible, lites a match to the debate, with not always ingraciating references to Winer and Doc Searls, two firm opponents to DRM, which Audible does use to protect its revenue stream. Read reaction to Ratcliffe's post at Tech.Memeorandum.

We're in the next wave and it appears that podcasting is simply the catalyst, with the bigger story being the morphing amount of audio and video on the web.

Now, who wants to be a news leader in the podcasting space? Looks like NPR is going for the gold medal, with the introduction of 16 new podcasts, bringing its total to 33.

A few matters of interest:

* NPR is doing its own original podcast programming under its new, "alt.NPR," brand. This is a step up in the big media world as most have chosen to simply repurpose existing shows they have run on radio or TV.
* NPR is mining their vast archives. Expect to see more media networks find more ways to use podcasting as a means to surface and get some added value from their archives.
* NPR is combing its broad programming to create theme based podcasts. This is a repurposing strategy that leverages NPR's shows to create new programs that fit into categories. For instance, NPR will inroduce thematic podcasts focusing on environment, food, pop culture, religion, business story of the day and Sports with Frank Deford.
* Topical podcasts are also part of the mix, allowing NPR to provide timely shows such as those that will be featured during the holidays or an important event, such as the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito.

The orignal podcasts include:

Three original-to-podcasting titles, under a new alt.NPR brand name: "On Gambling with Mike Pesca," a weekly examination of gaming culture, trends and psychology from the NPR News reporter; Groove Salad’s "Taste of the Week," a selection of music from San Francisco’s eclectic online music service SomaFM, and "Youthcast," public radio productions from up-and-coming young producers from PRX/Public Radio Exchange.

Archived podcasts:

Also among the new offerings are three entries from NPR member stations and respected program producers WAMU and KCRW: the full download of the new NPR series "The Business" about the entertainment industry from KCRW Santa Monica, and WAMU Washington D.C.’s "Friday News Roundup" from "The Diane Rehm Show" and "Tech Tuesday" from "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

Topical podcasts:

Finally, NPR will introduce topical podcasts. Its upcoming "Holiday Story of the Day" will be available starting November 21 and continue through January 6, 2006. Also, in January, NPR will offer nightly podcasts of its one-hour broadcast wrap-up program of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. These will build on NPR’s commitment to public service and the success it experienced with similar nightly podcasts for the John Roberts confirmation hearings, which immediately broke into iTunes’ Top 100 and remained there through their run. The Alito podcasts will be available nightly at 11PM (ET).

What's the deal with Adam Curry and Tim Bourquin? I just read the Wired article about a feud between the two over the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. Curry is even threatening to do an un-expo event at a nearby hotel.

All of this is so common when events like the Portable Media Expo take a life of their own. The first ever podcasting trade show is expecting more than 2,500 people from 22 countries. It's grown beyond Tim's expectations.

Curry's flaming the trail to the expo with overtures by his spokesman of outright extortion. That's pretty heavy stuff. What it comes down to is Curry's huge presence in the podcasting wold and Bourquin's work to attract sponsors. Curry is not expected to speak at the conference. His company, Podshow.com , is not sponsoring the event.

From Wired:

Although Curry plans to attend the show, he has declined to speak at it or sponsor it. And now he is threatening to hold an impromptu "un-expo" at a nearby hotel, where podcasters may be invited to discuss potential promotional deals with his company, PodShow.com, Curry spokesman Aaron Burcell told Wired News on Tuesday.

"They've been trying to back us into a huge sponsorship by saying we're not supportive of the expo, that we're this and that," Burcell said. "But we have a lot of podcasters who are part of the Portable Media Expo and we've been very supportive. It's not wise to try to extort the company that's been most supportive of the podcasting community."

Burcell accused convention organizer Tim Bourquin of retaliating against Curry for refusing to sponsor the trade show or to speak at it. He also alleged that Bourquin had been bad-mouthing Curry and his company to podcasters who belong to a PodShow stable of talent known as the Pod Squad.

These are forces at play. You have the power of Podshow and Curry's Pod Squad. On the other hand, you have the massive popularity of podcasting and the excellent work Tim has done to put together an event that is drawing international attention.

Curry is popular but he's not a king. He calls himself the "podfather," which can be interpreted as symbolic representation of a mix between organized crime and the Catholic church, which I am still trying to grasp in its meaning and symbolism. But that's for another day.

Bourquin, for his part, is attracting sponsors to participate in an event. This is how he makes money. But the problem is that sometimes the efforts to get quality speakers is clouded by the need to give sponsors their own speaker slots. That's a problem at most conferences. It's a big reason why Dave Winer first organized Bloggercon with the mandate that sponsors were not invited to the game. What results out of all this is a new breed of get togethers that spring up around large events and also form indpendently. BarCamp emerged as an alternative to FooCamp, Tim O'Reilly's annual get together. Other unconferences have emerged, including TagCamp and the most recent Mind Camp.

It's a big game, really. But all in all, the Podcast Expo looks great. And no matter what, this is going to be a conference to remember. And as usual, the side shows will be great entertainment.

Are you looking for what is the latest with Whirlpool dishwashers? Then Whirlpool's "The American Family" is is not your podcast.

The American Family podcast centers on issues that are affecting people in all walks of life. Whirlpool brand's director of consumer insight, Audrey Reed-Granger, moderates the podcast. She interviews people over the phone, talking with them about their experiences such as raising children of divorce; first-time moms and parents of children with special needs.

Glad they took the approach they did. It's a good example for corporations looking to get into podcasting. The podcast is simply sponored by Whirlpool Home Appliances. They have a short promo spot at the start and end of the show. They don't talk about dishwashers or home appliances in the interviews. The podcast centers on issues family's face. Better, these are interviews with parents, people with families. I have not heard any commentary from experts in the shows I've heard. Seems like a smart way to connect with people and get their minds on the Whirlpool brand when they are thinking about that new home appliance.

Just one thing, Whirlpool...Can you add a blog so we can comment about the podcasts? Even better, offer a way we can leave audio comments that you add into the show? Right now, it just seems a bit one way.

Fruitcast is a new service that lets advertisers automatically serve ads into podcasts submitted to the Fruitcast directory.

Advertisers are charged per download for the spots that are added either at the beginning or end of the podcast. Ads are 10 to 15 seconds in length. No music or sound effects permitted. Advertisers are encouraged to follow a set format such as..."This podcast is sponsored by Acme Widgets....."

The Fruitcast service is aiming to provide a Google AdSense type model. It's illustrative of the moving speed that different forms of feed media are gaining a place for how advertising is served.

Fred Wilson touches on this issue in his post: The Future of Media (aka, please take my RSS feed):

Leaving aside the rights issues, which I know are large, if I were a television executive right now, I'd take my content, microchunk it, put a couple calls to a video ad server in the middle of it, and let it go whereever it wants to go, safe in the knowledge that whenever the show is viewed, I'll get to run a couple 15 second spots in the middle of it (which I could change whenever I wanted to and which I could measure).

This is where media is going and its not going to be stopped.

Liz -- Sigh. Still no RSS feed. I'm crushed. Perhaps if you ever see the beauty of that orange and white icon you'll write one of those edgy ballads like Polyester Bride. Maybe it'll be about how you met someone new. What you discovered. The other world that slips into your self as you become more and more immersed in the stories, the sadness and the absurdity of the bigger picture.

We need rockers. Dave is cool. He's definitely the original RSS rock star. But, let's just say... it's a bit different with you. Yes, Dave does sing. He goes on tour. He podcasts. He's a jolly geek.

But you, you're a rocker. And rockers know how events can change their lives and the people they love. And that orange and white icon iis full of events that lead to new places in your mind and your heart.

Who knows what song it will make you want to sing. Who knows what you will write. And how many will find a new connection after hearing your podcast for the first time.. I'll tell you this. This fan will love it.

Really, Liz, RSS is for Rockers.

Always here to help.

Alex.

Liz --I'm heart broken. Read the comments. No RSS to be found with your podcasts. I look and I look, but it's not there, a missing icon, a sign in orange and white. I subscribed to your podcast in iTunes. But that's not the same. That's a different world. Popular, yes, but so many other spaces to reach. I mean, in Yahoo!'s podcast directory you're there but I can't subscribe to your show. No one can. Yahoo! is even confused. Here's their message:

Hmmm. We didn't find any series like "liz phair", but we did find some episodes!

You're not even number one on the Yahoo! list. I can listen to you through their flash player or download your show. But subscribe I can not do. Add that RSS feed and a door will open to a place on the web where people can find you, susbcribe and follow your journey, meeting the people, hearing your laugh and the sounds of a band on the road. You could even try BitTorrent so handy for subsribing to all those music videos I watched tonight on your web site.

Liz, people are asking for the feed. I see you'll be in Portland at the Crystal Ballroom on Nov. 13. I'd be happy to bring all my geek buddies on by and show you and your band how easy RSS can be. We can do a podcast. We'll show you the power of that little orange and white icon. Subscribers are waiting. The nice thing is, they won't be disappointed. You have an entertaining show. It's fresh, from out on the road.

Always glad to help,

Alex.
503-473-6237

Podcasting News reports:

Sony Media Software has announced PSP Media Manager, software for the PC that lets users move content from their personal computer to their PSP (PlayStation Portable) system. Podcasts and video podcasts can be downloaded and encoded for PSP playback.

PaidContent has a post that NPR podcasts have reached 4 million downloads in nearly two months since their launch on August 31.

From PaidContent:

According to NPR tracking, its most-downloaded daily podcast is "Story of the Day," a news report or feature chosen by NPR staff, and its top weekly podcast is the "All Songs Considered" feature, an extension of the popular online-only program that highlights artists, reviews, interviews and other music content.

Acura is one of the main sponsors of the NPR podcasts. It is reported to be the biggest podcast advertising deal to date.

Back a few months ago, Matt wrote about how podcasting could help the National Hockey League restore its image after last season's cancellation due to a player strike.

The Chicago Blackhawks seem to understand that a podcast adds a bit more to the standard fare you find on a sports team web site. And so they launched Hawkcast.http://www.suntimes.com/output/zinescene/cst-fin-ecol02.html

The weekly show features both audio and video with interviews, game highlights and news such as scouting reports. According to the Chicago Sun-Times:

The results are encouraging. The first podcasts averaged about 1,000 downloads, and the most recent shows are downloaded twice as often. More importantly, 25 percent of the people who download the podcasts are subscribers. People sign up for the podcasts at the Blackhawks' Web site.

A review copy of BitTorrent Dummies arrived in my mail box today. Written by Susannah Gardner and Kris Krug, the book is a designed as a reference for using BitTorrent to share and download massive files that are now becoming so much more common with the advent of audio and video on the web.

How does BitTorrent apply to podcasting? What BitTorrent may do is permit us to create our own subscriber based Internet TV stations, post high resolution documentaries or even feature films that you subscribe to using BitTorrent.

I'll write more about BitTorrent For Dummies in the next week. In the meantime, one of the bext examples I've run across about BitTorrent and its applications comes from the Participatory Culture Foundation, which offiers the Broadcast Machine. What Moore is talking about is the natural fit that comes with media and shared, collective networks. That to me is the power of BitTorrent. But is it difficult to use? I've been intrigued by video podcasts as of late. I guess this is opportunity to start posting a few video shorts, using the principles about BitTorrent I learn in the book. We'll see how it goes.

From the Apple Blog's interview with David Moore:

BitTorrent is a pillar of our internet TV platform, precisely because it makes it affordable to broadcast really amazing video. With bittorrent, you don’t need to be a huge broadcaster anymore to be able to reach millions of people… that’s what makes internet TV such an exciting medium and such a level playing field.

Our Broadcast Machine bittorrent publishing software offers that kind of scalability, so that whether you’re publishing video just to your family or to hundreds of thousands of viewers, you don’t have to worry about high bandwidth costs. In that way, even though we sometimes use the analogy that internet TV is like “podcasting for video,” there’s a fundamental difference between self-publishing audio and video. Creators could probably afford to publish a high-quality podcast via HTTP download on their website. But they couldn’t necessarily afford to do the same for a long, high-resolution video — which is why bittorrent is such an important part of the equation. If you’re a documentary filmmaker and you want to put high-resolution video out there, bittorrent is by far the most affordable way of doing it. Or if you simply want to broadcast a video blog from your living room, bittorrent is a way to do it with peace of mind that it’s virtually free.

Internet TV is still an emerging medium, so there will be a lot more publishing and viewing options to come. What we’re working on with Broadcast Machine and DTV is to ensure that there’s a free and open-source platform available to users, that’s built on open-standards like BitTorrent, RSS, and VLC. As we’ve seen with Mozilla’s products, often times the open-source applications are able to take the lead, and we think that’s the best-case scenario for internet TV.

The grim reaper will come to you in a podcast. He'll appear on your little iPod screen. Help! Help! :-o.

iPod Halloween: The Cult of Mac

Following on Matt's thread about rock star podcasters, here's another to add to the list: Poison drummer Rikki Rockett. Here's what he posted at MySpace about what he may possibly discuss:

"O.K., so what will I talk about? After all, I have to fill this Podcast thing with some kind of content, right. So, what do you expect? Some babbling rock-star jerk-off, obsessed with strip club boobs, and using a vocabulary chiefly made up of words like fuck and dude and expressions like, 'What the fuck-ever dude?' Or… I could be one of those pseudo-intellectual-wanna-be rocker types. You know, like how Gene Simmons is now, appearing on things like CNN to talk about… um, sorry, I don't remember. But, I'm sure it involved sex somewhere along the line. :

Sounds like a rock star podcast. And more...

"I do have a few ideas, though. How about one Dr. Rockett question. Play a song or two from an unsigned band. Talk about one current issue and bring a guest on to help with it. And, ask some guy, in some bar a super serious question about something while he is drunk."

"Suggestions, please!"

Channel 7 in New York, an ABC affiiliate, has started a video podcast.

New York and Chicago affiliates are the only ABC affilliates doing podcasts. ABC affiliates doing audio podcasts include Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Gothamist makes a good point about Disney, which owns ABC. It's no fun to be the last to the party:

... Disney, ABC's parent company, is the first out the gate with paid digital content through iTunes thanks to its deal with Apple. The Mouse House was, however, the last company to move over to the DVD format years back, and it looks as though they are trying not to be last to the party again.

Stanford is getting into podcasting in a big way.

Is there a move toward scholars both past and present as the archived voices, the new intellectual strata of the podcast universe? And, why did Stanford go with iTunes? I know Harvard is into OPML. Hmmm...Any thoughts on this one?

I just saw this over at the Daily Wireless. Canon is coming out with a wifi camera for $500. See how easy video podcasting is going to be?

I started doing short video takes on my digital camera this past week: Kung Fu Judy and West Hills Cruise. It was so dang fun. These days, it's alll plug and play. What I did was pretty crude. With a good camera and some of the video blogging packages available, you can be shooting a lot of video and turning them into podcasts or videoblogs, whatever you wish to call it. And with the Canon, you can go online, which I think I still need some time to grok. Display a live webcast? Hmmm.. Hey, where's the phone?

Podcastercon gives a good vibe, doesn't it? The registration is up. I'd love to go to this one. Look, they'll even help you find a place to stay. That's my kind of conference.

The conference is at the University of North Carolina. Hmmm...I wonder what they'll discuss?

I like this part. You can listen to their planning sessions. Smart.

Here are the essentials:

What: PodcasterCon 2006
Where: 116 Murphey Hall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
When: Saturday, January 7, 2006 11am - 4pm
More: See www.podcastercon.org

Liz Phair podcasts. She records jam sessions with her band. She did a reading of a short story and an audio trip around the tour bus.

"I'm all about podcasting," Phair told Billboard. "I'm totally fixated on it. It's what I'm into.

Do you remember music appreciation class? I yawn just thinking about those days in high school sitting through those lectures. Man, I wish I had podcasting and teachers like Chris Paschen and Bruce Bodelson.

The Minneapolis high school teachers found the text book just didn't hold the student's interest. So they decided to start podcasting:

"Although we're following a brand-new music appreciation book that is meant for high school, it doesn't hold or captivate their interest all that much," Bodelson said. "And I'd been reading about podcasting in the newspapers and thinking, wow, that has to be the wave of the future, when a janitor from Glasgow, Scotland, can assemble a huge following just because he has an interest in local rock bands and puts them on his podcast -- and all of a sudden people from all over the world are dialing this guy up."

Students create two different kinds of podcasts. They podcast live recordings and do radio talk shows, featuring individual performances. The idea is for students to use the vocabulary they are learning in the music appreciation class in analyzing the music in the shows. They also get to say what they want in a show that is put up on the Internet for anyone to hear. How cool must that be for those students?

I like what this student said:

Back at the North High band's website, student Conner Vail is segueing out of a Modest Mouse song and into his spiel: "Is it just me," he asks, "or does anyone else feel that pop culture is completely shallow, vapid, materialistic and morally bankrupt?"

Libsyn, a popular hosting service for podcasters, went down on Monday after Hurricane Wilma shot out the power at one of their Florida data centers. From Libsyn's Dave Mansueto on the Yahoo! Podcasting group:

l

ibsyn.com has been affected by Hurricane Wilma. Our datacenters are in Florida, and apparently the power outage there has brought us down. We are investigating as to why backup generators and other
precautions did not prevent this outage. As soon as we know something we will let you know.We are sorry for the inconvenience,

On behalf of the libsyn.com team

Dave Mansueto

Podcasting is inspiring educators who continue to note it as one of the most innovative technologies they have seen in a long time.

Just take a look at what's happening at the University of Washington , where a pilot podcast program is getting off to a fast start. Three classes are being podcast. So far this quarter, there have been 719 downloads, enough interest for the university to consider expanding podcasting to more classes.

I found this statement noteworthy:

And the new recording and distribution method is a good thing for Classroom Support Services too, according to project director David Aldrich. "Videotaping a lecture uses a lot of resources," he said. "You have to have someone present to tape the lecture, then do post-production."

Video is still tricky. But why do you need to watch a professor talking? I could see screencasts as a far better tool for professors if they sought ways to illustrate their lectures.

How will universities use podcasting as it spreads in interest? Will students be allowed to attend class when and where they want?

At the University of Washington, podcasting lectures are meant as a supplement for students, not as a replacement. For now, to get the class room interaction, you still have to go to class.

It's evident that podcasting is changing how educators view how they teach. Language learning services are picking up on the trend and in the process, showing the first examples of podcasting as a premium service.

I ran across an article in Asia Times Online about ALC Press Inc., a company in Japan that is teaching conversational english to students by using podcatching services. The cost comes to about $86 per year.

In ALC's new service, the student will pay a monthly study fee. The student will also purchase a study book that includes the necessary software for "podcatching", the process used to download new podcast feed files.

Here's how it works.

The teacher poses questions to the student by talking on the phone to a server on the Internet. The spoken question is converted into an audio file and stored. When the student executes the podcatching software, the file is automatically downloaded. The student listens to the question and answers via phone to the same server. The teacher listens to the response in the same way by using the podcatching software.

Here are some more podcasting in education sources from gada.be.

Xfm, a London alternative radio station, is teaming with a UK indie label to create a podcast of full length tracks.

Here's how they are working this out. The label, V2, provides Xfm with exclsuive tracks for podcasts from Elbow, a band under the V2 label. The podcast includes as excerpts from an interview with lead singer Guy Garvey.

KEXP out of Seattle has been doing podcasts for several months, featuring in studio recordings and a show with tracks from different bands.

Seems to make sense that labels would be all over getting their musicians into podcasts.

With the intro of the new video iPod, Apple now has a market reason to promote how to make video podcasts or as they have been called for months...video blogs. Here's a video podcast tutorial Apple recently posted. Read the comments over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog for perspective.

Here's another resource. It's called freevlog.org. Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi, two pioneering videobloggers, show what you need to know to make a videoblog at a minimum cost, minus of course, the expense of a camera. They show you how to make a videoblog on a Mac or PC. They go through screen captures, hosting, publishing, RSS feeds and how to get into the community.

Have you seen any videoblogs? I started watching the videobloggers a few months ago. Videoblogs are real entertainment. Many are quite artistic. They're wholly different than podcasts. Here are some places to find videoblogs as well as community sites available where vloggers congregate. Again, check out Freevlog. I found most of these resources at their site.

Videoblogging.info/
Videoblogging Yahoo! Group
Fireant
Vlogdir
Mefeedia
Vlog Universe
Vlogmap.org
We Are The Media

With the announcement of Apple's video iPod, are we entering the age of the video podcast? Perhaps in time but now the closest thing to it are videoblogs, which you can subsribe to already through readers like FireAnt.

Better yet, perhaps is the news that iTunes 6.0 is available. Apple will offer music videos, priced at $1.99. Will indies be able to offer music videos? With video, does iTunes 6.0 provide a new way to distribute music?

I am also interested to see that with iTunes you can now gift music, post reviews and make recommendations, which they call "Just For You." I wonder how open this will really be. Yahoo! Podcasts seems to have hit the right note with their new service. I guess we'll see how Apple compares.

Engadget sums up what iTunes 6.0 offer in video:

On the video side they’re launching with 2,000 QVGA formatted FairPlay DRMed music videos which you can pick up for $1.99 apiece, as well as episodes of five ABC series (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That’s So Raven, The Suite Life), also two bucks a go.

It is a video iPod, though still its use is proimarily for music, so goes the story from Engadget, which is covering the One More Thing event from the California Theater in San Jose:

New iPod announced! The new iPod, as speculated, features video capabilities and the wider display, but it’s still a music-first device.

The device will feature a 2.5-inch display, QVGA resolution (320 x 240), and will MPEG-4 h.264 (natch), and presumably Quicktime.

The new iPod will be 30% thinner than the current 20GB iPod (making it 0.44-inches thick—say wha?), and will feature a 60GB version and editions of both in black. The 20GB should go for $299, and the 60GB for $399. They’ll be shipping next week.

Photos from ILounge, taken at the California Theater :

What role did podcasting play in Apple's best ever fourth quarter? What role did it play in helping Apple achieve its best financial results in company history?

I'm convinced that podcasting factored in Apple's record results. But only in that podcasting plays to our desire for individuality and the power we get from making our own media, on our own terms, free from the confines of control and authoritarianism. Free? What does free mean these days? Free podcasts? Is that it for Apple? Instead, it seems that Apple subtly encourages freedom from big media with the iPod as the tool for unshackling us from those bonds. Marketing campaigns celebrate creativity but also subconsciously amplify the whispers that we try to ignore, startling us as we feel society's invisible undertow, pulling at us as we see our own civil liberities and freedoms wash away into a soupy sea of conflicting emotions about war, terror and the monstrous challenges of our daily lives. Apple's success comes from its understanding of how to tap our society's collective need to break free as individuals and express ourselves. They do it with sleak design and music, encouraging us to feel the vibe you can only get with an iPod.

We all find ways to protect our sense of who we are. Apple caters to that desire in their corporate marketing and product strategy. And the results are record earnings. Apple treats the iPod as an aid, a tool, that helps awaken the soul so people may connect with themselves and their world. People may create their own shows. They may listen to whatever they wish, when and where we want.

The recipe seems to work. It appears to be a message that people are desperate to hear.

Let's say you are doing a podcast. You are trying to get people to comment about it, bloggers to tell the world about this cool show you are doing. Perhaps it's about your band, The Headless Chickens. You don't seek fame but a little attention would be great.

You know how to search across the web for references and links to your show.

If you have an aggregator, then you can create feeds for Technorati, Google News, etc. You are continually looking at these different feeds, looking for new comments, links, commentary.

Gada.be, the new service introduced today by Chris Pirillo, makes this process quite a bit easier, simplifying your seach across different services and getting the results all in one place. Better, you can search across different sub categories and get the resuts back across the different services.

Now, you can see the value of OPML in a service like Gada.be. Once you get your results, you can import the OPML file into your aggregator. Now, you can track the attention of your band's podcast in one place. Robert Scoble pus it well. What Chris has essentially done is create a mashup from ablout 140 sources.

Gada.be gives us results, lots of resutls with far less searching, And in that way it may emerge into a major reference site, where you can point people to multiple sources, instead of one static web page. I like what the folks at TechCrunch have to say:

It’s likely that Gada will become a much-linked to site for definitive results on a term, in a similar way as wikipedia is today. Gada incorporates all relevant information in a permanent URL, and so becomes a comprehensive result set for a tag link. Gada also outputs search results in RSS and OPML, allowing users to easily subscribe to and organize searches.

The service also makes it easier to search across a mobile device. As Chris states in his blog:

It was borne out of several frustrations. If you've ever tried to visit a Web site over a mobile device, you know it's a pain in the knuckle. The domain had to be simple to key-in from anywhere. gada.be is 4232.2233 on most cell phones and/or PSP. Normally, when you want to find something online, you have to choose a Web site (wait for the page to load) enter the query (wait for the second page to load) then see results from that provider. With "gada.be," you insert the query *AS* the subdomain!

* http://corpse-bride.gada.be/

* http://corpse.bride.gada.be/

Those are two different URLs, each with a different set of results. A dot between two keywords implies a quoted statement, whereas a dash implies the AND operator. Note, too, that you can easily change categories by adding the designated category slug to the end of the entire URL. Too geeky for you? Then you're thinking too hard about it.

The greater implications of Gada.be are to be discovered. I can't access the site right now. Chris is getting a bit of server overload, which I'd say is a good sign.

On a last note,I think that in many ways, bloggers, podcasters, all of us, want attention, a little bit of fame. It makes us feel good.

We all Gada.be famous.

News of Verisign's other acquisition comes from PaidContent, where the concept of the rich ping is seen as the reason for the approximate $25 million purchase. What is a rich ping? From PaidContent:

And yes, the deal connects directly into VeriSign's Weblogs.com acquisition: VeriSign need parsing, datestamping and other such data collected from rich ping, that is, pings that contain more info than simply fact that a site was updated. And this is where Moreover comes in. Of course, Moreover comes with more than rich pinging ...

How does rich pinging fit with podcasting? That's my question of the day. Seems that Verisign is trying to be a key part of the open blog infrastructure. I expect they have their eyes on podcasting, too.

More on Yahoo! Podcast:

Looks like Yahoo! is listening. Nice features that make the community the agent for strength. Staff picks, recommendations and how to explore on your own. This is the kind of thing that I expect is the new standard for community sites. A striking trend is emerging with the search players that you see in Yahoo! Podcast.. It's not that people are being directed away from the search engine but keeping you in the Yahoo! garden to find and subscribe to RSS feeds..

Just look at what occurs when you susbcribe to a feed from the Yahoo! Podcast page. You are directed to subscribe to Yahoo! Music or Apple iTunes through a feed they call .pcast.

And when you listen directly to the podcast, you get a pop up window for their flash player.

Again, the effort is in keeping you at Yahoo!, not sending you to another place.

Any features you find striking in this first version of Yahoo! Podcast?

In the past few weeks, the news of Yahoo!'s entry into the podcasting world started to emerge. Podcasters recived e-mails from Yahoo! asking if they would submit their podcasts to the search engine giant. Over the summer, Yahoo! announced an audio search tool which includes the capability to search for podcasts.

Now it's official. From MSNBC:

Hoping to tune into the latest craze in digital media, Yahoo Inc. is introducing tools for finding, organizing and rating "podcasts" — the audio programs designed to be played on Apple Inc.'s iPod and many other portable music players.

John Furrier did an exclusive interivew with Geoff Ralston, Yahoo's chief product officer, who talks extensively about their plans.

Interview: http://www.podtech.net/?p=181

I took a bit of time today to play today with Judy. We rode the bus, walked a lot and ate well. Came home to read the good news about Dave's big score with Verisign. But first, the food...

* Greasy food at our new favorite diner
* Roasted corn, prepared Mexcican style
* Sushi, tempura and sake
* Thick, toasted artisan bread with blue cheese and apple, washed down with red wine
* Pepperoni pizza and a Bridgeport IPA at the Laurelhurst Theater while seeing one of the best films I've seen in a long time: "Hustle and Flow."

Judy is a nurse and works the night shift. So, my schedule is now quite nocturnal. Coming home about an hour ago, I opend my reader and read about Dave's day and how he got the news.

I don't want to go through the details of the sale in this post. That's been covered, though noteworthy is the deal includes audio.weblogs.com so Verisign is now a part of the podcasting community's infrastructure.

More so, I am just happy for Dave. I first met Dave when he opened a webcast I produced called RSS Winterfest. I was nervous about asking Dave to participate. But he accepted the invitation, promoted it graciously and assembled a whole bunch of interesting folks to join him in the webcast conference call from the Berkman Center.

Podcasting got off to a big start due to a lot of the work Dave did. He's a real reason why RSS is what it is today. He gets people to do sing alongs. He's a road tripper. He speaks his mind. He talks candidly about his health.

And he's one of our most valuable innovators.

Way to go, Dave. The news made my day.

Apple Insider cites sources that say Steve Jobs will unveil a video iPod, possibly as early as next week, potentially coinciding with Apple's results from its fourth fiscal quarter of 2005.

Apple Insider reports:

* It's similar to the iPod photo player but thinner

* The video iPod has a smaller click wheel, allowing for a bigger screen size

* With the video iPod will come a major update to iTunes music store, with a number of music videos and short videos

* A major update seems more likely, considering the stop in updates over the past month to the the video section of the iTunes download service. The thought is that Apple was preparing for the upcoming release

"This is MGS Podcast, live from Gig on the Grass."

Nice exanple of why in many ways it's a good thing technology is complicated sometimes.

Earlier this fall, CBS and KYOU announced an audition. They were looking for a podcaster to interview CBS celebrities.

Dana Greenlee won and now has her own show on CBS Netcast.Dana has already done 30 interviews, which have started airing on KYOU. the all podcast AM radio station in San Francisco owned by Infinity. The shows will run over the next several weeks.

Dana and her husband Rob are Seattle area podcasting pioneers who have been in the webcasting business as long as I can recall. They're a team for this production, too, as Rob does the recording production while Dana interviews the stars of new and returning CBS programming.

Like Fox, NPR and other networks, CBS is podcasting on a fairly large scale. Granted, much of the podcasts are to promote their TV shows but podcasts are also available for such news progams as 60 Minutes.

Bookcast is a podcast from Portland-based Powells Bookstore, a sacred place as my daughter once said. I think it was the Washington Post that once called Powells the greatest bookstore in the western world.

Thanks to Kord for the heads up.

A new breed of aggregators are emerging with the advent of podcasting and the audio/video experience we are witnessing on the web. Fluctu8 is one of the more recent new aggregators in the space that I've run across.

Of note in all of this is the consolidation in the aggregator business with Newsgator now the undeniable gorilla with its announcement today that it has acquired NetNewsWire.

What will this do to aggregators like Bloglines, a solid aggregator, but seeming to be a bit less of interest among the A-list bloggers, who are playing therse days with the new generation of newsreaders such as Rojo, Fireant and attensa.

I wonder how this market will emerge now with the increasing use of audio and video by people who are both creating and consuming media on the web.

Will there be a few big players? Sure. But the world of remix is not just limited to the music world. We are already seeing constellations of different social applicaitons that will be hybrid aggregators, wiki's, photo sharing services, recommendation tools, etc. Providing the service to make these new apps seems to be the gist of what Ning is doing.

Ning, if you have not already heard, is offering a free online service for for building and using social applications. Ning is funded by Marc Andresson's venture group, 24 Hour Laundry.

Here are some of the ideas Ning has for what people can do. One suggestion is to build a podcast review app. Seems like they are doing what any good online service does and that's getting the community to create and build it themselves.

No doubt, constellations are forming. Now all you have to do is become a star.

What do you do to make money when you have millions of potential podcast listeners out there? Perhaps a better question: "How do you make 20 million listeners part of a conversation?"

The latter question is much more interesting, isn't it? I think of Loomia and what they are doing to make podcasts more relevant to their listeners. They're gettting the conversation going, showing people what podcasts are relevant to them.

Melodeo is bringing podcasts to mobile phones. Now, will people listen to podcasts on their mobile phones? Carriers are betting on music will be the hit in 2006.

I am betting on the conversation about the music. We're seeing conversation spread in remixes, mashes and all forms of DIY media. Mobile phones are natural conversation tools. Music is meant to be shared. Incremental developments in technology are creating a revolution in our views about music and its context with the individual and society.

Podcasts and music on the mobile phone all add up to technology innovation. That is sure. But these are only incremental changes. The real innovation is in the conversation and the sparks that ideas create, moving our views to a place that is far different than before, both for us as individuals and as a cutlure, experiencing music and sharing it over a mobile phone.

Give me the tools to converse about music and share it on the mobile phone. Show me how I can listen to a podcast recording on my mobile, take a picture of something and send it along to my friends with a note about this great new hip hop I heard. Show me how I can share my mobile phone podcast and music playlist across different groups. Direct me to recommendations. Show me something random. Help me broaden my music preferences.

Help me with those questions and I am sure the answers will come about those millions of listeners and the treasures they possess. Where will you find them? They'll be in groups of 12, across one very long tail, available on your mobile phone.

Seeing a lot interest in Duke's podcast symposium, here is a day one overview, and here is day two. A live stream is available and there will be a podcast.

The always enlightening Doug Kaye talked about the "value of free" and how podcasting and blogs work together. Essentially, you can't have a conversation about the podcast if there are no links to it. The thread just stops.

Here's more from Audio Activism:

Why should businesses help citizen journalist create media? To help people reach their passion points. A passion point according to Michael Geoghegan is the place where a person is super happy doing what they love. In his example getting free pre-release movies on DVD. My passion point is seeing people make their own media that creates a loud voice against injustice.

Of intereast is Duke's initiatives, according to the Herald-Sun. They're piloting a podcasting initiative on the campus after it distributed free iPods last year to all incoming freshmen and this year to students whose professors opt to use the digital device in their classes.

Professors are seeing the possibilities. From the Herads-Sun:

Duke professor Daniel Foster told about his theater studies students' MP3ater Project, a conflation of "theater" and the MP3 audio file format. They re-create classic radio dramas, which since July have had 1,500 listeners.

"What we should be doing is using the media they're using: Instant Messaging, cell phones and iPods," said Tim Lenoir, a Duke professor who has used iPods in a class on the influence of new medical technology on the popular imagination.

60 Minutes will start podcasting. As Media Week reports, no word yet if Andy Rooney will do a show on why he hates podcasts. Heh.

I can hear Andy Rooney now...:

" I am hearing all about this podcast stuff. And so, I checked out a few. There are podcasts on trout fishing in Los Angelese. There are podcasts where you can hear obituaries read. Who is listening to this stuff?"

Heh. :-).

Loomia offers podcast and videoblog search. Scoble checks it out. Each time he comes across a video search engine, he does a look for Channel 9. He says this one failed, too. Since his first post, he blogged that Loomia indexed Channel 9. I'm not so sure it fails. It lacks in blanket searches for different terms. For instance, I searched for KEXP, one of my favorite sources fro new music. Here are the results. I know for a fact that KEXP has podcasts that are far more recent.

But the real strength seems in their efforts to lay a foundation for a tag rich, recommendation engine. It's a classic example of the new, Web 2.0 applications we are seeing.

Their basis for their approach is summed up here:

Searching for media is trickier than searching for web pages. It's a process of browsing and discovery as well as filtering and personalization.

Exactly. What I really like about Loomia? It's people driven. It searches by tags. You can search across different categories and see other recommendations. It lists the most popular shows of the day, which I don't care about too much, but it is a good barometer in some respects.

I signed up, loaded my picture and was presented with other people who are similar to me. I can see their own preferences and who is in their community.

For recommendations, I can see what people like across different categories, audio and video. The more I rate, the better personal recommendations I get.

This is a big step for podcast search. It's comnmunity driven, Web 2.0 style. Loomia is a service I'll really use.

Podcasters are for hire.

You, too, can move beyond static recordings, the ummms and uhhhs that plague your show. It's time to enter the world of voice over talent, sound engineers and professional recordings.

Welcome to the world of vanity podcasting!

Actually, these are the kinds of services that may be ideal for a company with an international presence or those that wish to enter a foreign market. Hire voice talent, have the recording produced and launch it in the market you are trying to reach.

It could be part of a whole series of audio shows that cover marketing, sales, customer service, etc.

Steve Jobs, at the Apple Expo in Paris, continues to downplay a video iPod. He just doesn't see the right model for it right now. What do you think of this statement?

From Silicon.com:

"Whether people want to buy a device just to watch video is not clear - so far the answer's been no. Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula."

However, he didn't shut the door on a video playing device. "One never knows," he added.

Is Steve just loving the mind game? We know Apple will do video someday. I got hammered a bit by saying there may be an opening in the market if Apple doesn't get on it.

But what happens if Apple pauses a bit too long? Better yet, what do we see happening after Apple offers video?

Podcasters are already innovating with images and video. We're at the early point in the game.

But are we years away from any real competition to the Apple iPod? Where does video fit into this equation? And if we are years away, what does that mean for competitors in the podcast aggregator space? In the post-podcast era, are we years from seeing any meaningful competition to Apple?

Business Week does a good job explaining why video is likely to show up on the iPod.

Really, Apple has no choice. Either adopt it or give rivals a chance to at least ungrip a bit of Apple's mythic hold on the minds of our digital society.

Not to offer video would also seem unlikely, especially as the Hollywood set seeks some sort of DRM digital salvation.

For years, Steve Jobs answered questions about a video iPod with a simple line of reasoning.

Watching video is consuming. Out on the road, you can't very well watch a video. Talking on the cell phone while behind the wheel is dangerous enough. But listening to rocking tunes is another matter.

But the issue may not be about video and it inherent distractions. Most people would not watch a video while driving. But what if you could move videos around really easily on your iPod? Your iPod now becomes a video storage device that you hook into the TV.

Your iPod is now in the living room. And Apple continues its reign over digital media.

The inner guts of the iPod don't require too much to make this occur. Business Week notes that chips for displaying video on mobile devices are becoming readily available, making it far easier to manufacture different types of video products. If Apple doesn't adopt some sort of video strategy then its rivals, companies like Archos and Creative, most likely will be using Texas Instrument's Davinci technology or similar chip technology from other manufacturers.

Business Week also notes how advancements in storage technology will make it viable to store huge video files on mobile players.

Just look at the Nano, iPod's new player. It uses flash memory chips. Just after Apple's Nano annoucement, Business Week notes that Samsung unveiled a new generation of flash technology that can hold up to 16 GB of data with the ability to stretch to 32 GB.

And here is more from Business Week:

Hard drives are improving too. Japan's Toshiba has announced it's building small hard drives that use a new storage technique known as Perpendicular Magnetic Recording, which allows data to be packed more tightly and over a smaller area of the disk. Toshiba says it will use the technology on its 1.8-inch hard drives. This could make an 80-gigabyte iPod a reality fairly soon. At 80 GB, you're starting to reach the kind of capacity that can store a sizable music library and still have room left over for plenty of standard-definition video, and even a few hours worth of HDTV-quality video.

So, we're possibly talking about 80 GB hard drives on an iPod.

The technology is there. Now, it's time for Hollywood to come up with a digital distribution model. That may be what is keeping Steve Jobs from making any commitments to a video iPod.

But how long should Jobs wait? As competition creeps, Jobs also faces the challenge of keeping iPod's star power strong.

If he can't do that, then the iPod living room may not be so mobile after all.

The US higher education system is hot for podcasting. The latest news comes from Classcaster, a blogging platform with podcasting built in.

From Classcaster:

The Classcaster system is designed to be provide course-related blogs with integrated podcasting to law faculty at CALI member schools. Bloggers on the Classcaster system can create podcasts using any telephone.

More money talk about podcasting, this time with an article in Forbes that talks about different approaches, including commercials. Do you see commercials? I think an approach that may be better suited is one that drives other revenues from a long tail of products and services. Maybe even ask customers to create their own mash ups from a selection of different products that are featured in the podcast?

I think that's what's missing. I don't' see any remix in these money making ideas. None try to get the listeners or viewers involved. People love the mixes and mashes. It's DIY. And that's the new way. DIY advertising networks. The companies who prosper will be the ones who are smart, honest, humble and embrace the new world. What could be better for a company than be talked about in the extended world of a mix up, mash? Some might say this is dangerous. I'm not so sure. Anyone can make a blog, podcast or videoblog. Why not embrace the medium in the advertising effort? Let people do what they want, when they want and how they want. Isn't that what this new DIY world is all about?

Conference Call Unlimited is offering podcasting services. For an indie, the prices seem steep. But how do these prices seem for a corporate customer? Is this in line with what they would pay? This may be a better solution, too, if you want to keep it simple, no downloading required.

But there are other options. Audioblog lets you record conference callls. There are free services that all you to have up to 100 peole on a call. You can record and then post as a podcast.

But it looks like Conference Call Unlimited is banking on offering pakaged services. And for the corporate customer, that may be just the ticket.

Is this the way corporate customers will go? Is the price right? What do you think?

Conference Call Unlimited Pricing....

BRONZE

Tollfree:

30 minute call with up to 3 callers: $40.00
60 minute call with up to 3 callers: $60.00

Toll*:

30 minute call with up to 3 callers: $25.00
60 minute call with up to 3 callers: $35.00

SILVER
Same as above plus $10.00 per month, 10 podcasts hosted.
1-10 podcasts: $10.00
11-20 podcasts: $20.00

GOLD
All the above plus: $25.00 per podcast to syndicate for maximum publicity.

* Callers pay the cost of their long-distance.

Thirty percent of all cars will have iPods by 2006.

From WebPro News:

* There are 10 million iTunes customers (which also means 10 million credit cards.)

* The average iTunes customer purchases 60 songs.

* Podcasting technology has been around for one year.

* After offering podcasts on iTunes for two months, it has 7 million podcast subscriptions.

* iTunes offers 15,000 podcasts and adds 1,000 new podcasts each week.

* 30% of cars will offer iPod connectivity in the US in 2006. This is HUGE for podcasting.

And for fun, the Nano is:
* 80% smaller than the iPod that first shipped less than 4 years ago

* 1/3 the size of the smallest phone on the market and it carries all the features of an iPod.

Audioblog has received funding from Transcosmos Investments , the US arm of Transcosmos Japan. As part of the deal, Audioblog will be in partnership with Transcosmos Japan and J-Stream, a Japanese media infrastructure provider.

Eric Rice says:

Together, we'll be launching our existing podcast and videoblog service and portal in the region for mobile and computer-based customers.

Apple sued Think Secret the last time they broke news about an Apple announcement. Who knows what will happen this time.

Their scoop? They are reporting that Apple will announce a new Motorola, iTunes phone at the big press conference they have planned for this week.. The phones will work across the Cingular network.

Think Secret reports:

The new phone will reportedly be available in two capacities, 256MB and 512MB, capable of storing about 70 and 140 songs, respectively. Users will not only be able to plug the phone into their computer to tap their iTunes Music Library for tunes, but will also have the ability of buying songs on the fly over Cingular's network, probably for about $2 a song, sources report.

Think Secret also reports that changes are in store for the iPod mini.

The music player will ditch its hard drive and move entirely to solid state, flash media, a move that sources familiar with the new design say will shave 20 to 25 percent off the size of the unit.

The new iPod mini, which will probably be introduced at Apple Expo Paris on September 20, will be available in three capacities: 4GB, 6GB, and 8GB. The iPod mini will sport dual NAND flash memory chips to achieve those higher capacities, and Apple has already locked in for the rest of the year a majority of Samsung's new 4GB flash modules.

Saw the word of this at Steve Rubel's MicroPersuasion blog. Steve always has a good nugget of news to pass along.

PR Newswire gets into podcasting. I talked with a client about podcasting some breaking news they have coming up. I think it's a good idea to have a conversation with your senior executives about some news about your company. But PR Newswire is doing something a bit different. They are podcasting press releases they distribute through their network. A podcast of a press release is really not conversational, is it? It's a form of repurposed news. It's a bit like someone reading the newspaper to you over the phone. I'd prefer to read the newspaper or scan a press release. Now, if the news had a radio edge, meaning it carried some context, then it would seem to have some value.

But who knows, the service seems designed for radio and broadcast, though I wonder how much this matters as the idea behind podcasts is to listen to it on your mp3 player or on your desktop at your own convenience.

Rumprs are hopping about what Steve Jobs will announce Sept. 7. Will it be a video iPod or an iPod phone? Industry watchers and Apple insiders say that each is a possibility.

From a San Jose Mercury story:

`A big flash iPod? The Motorola iTunes phone? Let the rumor-mongering rule,'' wrote one bloger on TechRepublic.com.

Apple-watchers say the debut of the much-anticipated iTunes phone is just as likely as a video iPod. The iTunes phone would allow callers to buy songs using a mobile version of Apples's music software. Tracks would be stored on the phone's flash-memory chip.

rbitron has tested its "portable people meter," to measure podcast listenership. The test is part of an effort by Clear Channel to develop a new electronic measurement system.

From Billboard Radio Monitor:

In a test with Clear Channel during the week of July 18, Arbitron encoded several podcasts from WHTZ-FM (Z100) in New York that were uploaded to the podcast section of Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The podcasts were then downloaded to an MP3 player and played over headsets using the PPM headset adapter.

The PPM, which tracks media exposure by detecting inaudible codes embedded in programming can now add podcasting to its list of media platforms that the PPM has the ability to measure, including radio, TV, cable and the Internet.

Part of the daily task in the newsroom of most daily newspapers means writing a budget or your story ideas for the day. You write a one-sentence description, how many inches the story would fill in the paper and if it has art, such as graphics or photos.

The editors gather all the story ideas, look at the size of their news hole and then decide what goes in the paper. Editors debate, look for angles and then add or cut stories that they decide can wait another day or never see black ink on white paper.

I listened to an enhanced podcast last night from G4: Attack of the Show. To me, it showed what newspapers and other big media could do to show the people behind what stories run and the thinking that goes into the process. Big media seems so impersonal. These are the kinds of meetings where the personailties show.

An enhanced podcast, as demonstrated by Phil Torrone, essentially allows you to show images and create chapters in your podcast. The chapters are like a playlist. You can skip to the chapter you want or listen to it as it progresses. If you have an iPod, you would see the images for each chapter appear on the iPod screen.

By using an enhanced podcast, the guys at G4 turned a meeting about what to run on their site into an entertaining glimpse of what stories get presented, which ones the editors like and which ones they don't. (Word of Zoolander II with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson got groans from the group.)

I kept the chapters open the whole time. A little icon of a book appeared in iTunes, which allowed me to see the different images. I could listen and see what they referred to in their meeting. True, these guys are entertaining and their topics are eclectic but more so I received a new insight into how they make decisions about what to get on the site.

Could big media do this? Podcast their budget meetings? Make them enhanced? The mass media get a lot of grief these days for their ways of reporting the news .But if they did podcasts of those morning budget meetings, then we'd get an idea about what they were thinking about covering that day. Take it a step further and you could have the reporters podcasting as they research and interview. The community gets involved each part of the way up to the time the story actually goes to the press and gets delivered to your door.

Now that's a paper I'd read.

.

NPR is going all podcast and dropping Audible.

But is this an old story? One that the blogosphere just got wind of? Could very well be the case.
Apparently, MacObserver started reporting the story in June.

This is the kind of stuff you see in the media biz all the time. A story breaks and it gets ignored. Then, a few weeks later, its recast by a competitor and treated as breaking news.

What also happens: The story doesn't get any play and when it does get attention, it is treated as breaking news because people think it is a hot, fresh story.

In the blogosphere, though, to me at least, there is no such thing as a breaking story as the link trail goes long and about. Who broke it first? Does that matter? It's such an old media game. I want the insights.

Like this from Doc Searls:

...The main problem will be what in sales they call call "channel conflicts", which are more political than technical. NPR essentially wholesales programming to local stations, which retail them to listeners. The new strategies will need to help, rather than hurt, local stations and networks, which are the final "sales channel" of programming to listeners (and sponsors)

And this from Phil Torrone:

...Here's my review / HOW TO of Audible with their podcasting features...and on that note, I've been using CD audio books for the last month, and so far, working out great.

PodcastCon UK is set for Sept. 17 at the Berners Hotel in central London.

PodcastCon UK 2005 is the first conference in Europe dedicated to podcasting. The conference will include an exciting combination of presentations, practical sessions and debate on all aspects of podcasting as it moves into its second year.

The Daily Source Code celebrated its one-year anniversary on Saturday.

Libsyn is getting some attention for problems with their podcast hosting service. Like other services that cater to podcasters, Libsyn is finding that podcasting is a monster in some ways, growing so big, so fast that they need to focus on just the core essentials to make the service work. To make it more challenging, these guys all have day jobs.

From Libsyn at the Yahoo! news group on podcasting:

Podcasting is a monster, and when something goes wrong, it is an all encompassing balancing act to remedy the problem while minimizing interruptions.

For Libsyn customers, the stat service the hosting service offers makes it possible for people to measure their audiences and recruit sponsors. But the periodic outages are taking their toll. Some customers are leaving all together.

Warren Ellis writes:

Well, I checked the stats on the system provided by the host I use for the Superburst Mixtape, Libsyn, last night, and it seems like they’ve gotten the stats system working again. The bad news is that Libsyn’s outages, so many people moving to iTunes for their podcast-catching (where people are still telling me they’re having trouble finding the thing) and, presumably, people losing interest have taken their toll.

So Superburst Mixtape 25 will be the last one. I’ll give people a week to grab any they don’t have from http://warrenellis.libsyn.com, and then I’ll terminate the PayPal subscription, and the page will go away soon after. I’ve got other uses for the money.

Libsyn admits its faults. In their post at the Yahoo! podcasting group:

Secondly we'd like to apologize for the state of the stats. Our
number one priority is always that the media gets to your listeners.
Stats is number two. If the media delivery network doesn't stay up,
there are no downloads to record anayway, so that's our reasoning. We
understand how important statistics are to the podcaster. It is the
audience that feeds you, and seeing that audience grow is what pushes
you to improve your show. And not only that, sponsors are right
around the corner, and your success with them relies on your ability
to verify your audience. From the beginning we wanted to provide
folks with the a stats system that was tailored to podcasters. Our
display engine has been a mess, but we're getting closer to having it
locked down. We've brought in some help to make the stats scalable to
the proportions we need them to be.

Where doe all this lead? To consider is the sudden venture capital interest in podcasting. Both Odeo and Podshow announced funding this past week.

When Dave Winer suggested that despite its gropwing pains, Libsyn is a great business, venture capitalists took interest:

They ask why would Libsyn make a good investment. Answer: No matter what podcasting grows up to be, their service is going to be needed. And while I haven't met the individuals who run the company, I've seen how they've dealt with trouble, they're a class act. Summary -- they picked a starting point that makes sense, they run a high integrity business, and they treat their customers well. That's a business with a future, imho. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Perhaps the folks at Libsyn may not have to keep their day jobs after all.

Via MicroPersuasion: Rex Hammock reports that President Bush's weekly address is now available as a podcast.

Apple has lost an attempt to patent its menu-based software interface for the iPod. Apparently they lost out to a fellow named John Platt, a senior researcher in the Knowledge Tools Group at Microsoft.

According to AppleInsider, The Apple application lists lists Apple vice president Jeff Robbin and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs as two of its primary inventors. Robbin came to Apple from Casady & Greene, a small software company which developed applications for the Mac OS platform.

AppleInsider reports that Casady & Greene was widely known among Mac users for its SoundJam MP3 player software, which Apple eventually took control of and re-branded as iTunes after hiring Robbin. In his first role as an engineering manager at Apple, Robbin was credited with leading the iPod's software development in the early days of the project.

From AppleInsider:

Platt's application describes his invention as a system or method that "generates playlists for a library collection of media items via selecting a plurality of seed items, at least one which is an undesirable seed item." The process by which the iPod's software displays its own menu-based interface is very similar to the process Platt's filing goes on to describe.

"Platt discloses an apparatus and a method of assisting user interaction with a multimedia asset player by way of a hierarchically ordered user interface, comprising: displaying a first order user interface having a first list of user selectable items; receiving a user selection of one of the user selectable items; and automatically transitioning to and displaying a second order user interface having a second list of user selectable items based upon the user selection."

What leverage does this provide Microsoft? Anyone have any idea where this may lead?

Saw this at Scripting News. Podshow is receiving $8.85 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the big boys of the VC world.

On the board are folks like John Doerr and Ray Lane.

Just did a Google search about Doerr and ran across this from Winer, back in 2001.

Dave, on his morning walk, saw Doerr on his bicyle. Doerr rides a bike? Now that's my kind of VC. What kind of bike? I expect it's a standard, ten speed, but I digress.

Dave's encounter with Doerr seems bit foretelling in this day of podcasting. With such an investment, Doerr seems like a believer in the read/write web, the Web 2.0, which seems more fashionable to talk about these days then even the Long Tail.

Is this the next evolution in the VC world? Millions more invested into companies developing the Web 2.0?

The Oxford English Dictionary will add podcast to its second edition.

Oxford said words like podcast, wiki and phishing are part of the english language and reflect the growing influence of technology on daily life.

Oxford defines podcast as a broadcast that can be downloaded from the Internet to a personal audio player.

Keep pressing the subscribe button to get higher iTunes rankings. From PlasticTrees.net:

I had to click on the subscribe button of our podcast a number of times. I noticed that shortly after I had done so our rank on the iTunes Canada music store had gone up.

He tested it with a buddy and sure enough, higher iTunes rankings.

Anyone else having this same results?

CBS is looking for a podcaster.

They're looking for a DJ, really. From the CBS web site:

The network is searching for an amateur DJ to interview CBS stars and create a podcast about the new fall season. The podcaster will join the nation’s top DJs at the CBS Radio Junket on September 10 in Hollywood to interview CBS talent for the podcast, which will be made available to millions via CBS.com and Infinity Broadcasting’s San Francisco-based KYOURADIO, the world’s first-ever podcasting radio station. For consideration, you'll need to upload a mock three-minute interview.

Here are two major media companies looking for amateur podcasters to interview CBS stars as a promotion for the Fall season.

The move follows Fox Broacdcasting's announcement to promote its upcoming shows with podcasts, featuring interviews with their stars.

For Fox, the effort is intended to promote its DVD sets. For CBS, the podcast contest comes in the first weeks following their announcement of a broadband network.

The CBS strategy seems far more compelling. With the Fox podcasts, you get stars talking about their shows with a professional actor. With CBS, who knows what will happen? Will the winner be the first podcaster to become a mass media star? Adam Curry is a celebrity. But if the winner of this contest is entertaining, then we may see someone who receives mass attention.

A strategy that reaches out to indie podcasters makes sense. Indie podcasters are at the heart of what has made podcasting so popular, so fast. The people who make podcasts are bright, orignal and talented people. Their "amateur," status is what makes them appealing. They are authentic.

In contrast, Fox is going the professional approach with actors interviewing actors. Does that seem interesting? Perhaps....If they let Bart Simpson do the interviews. Doh!

But before you submit your three-minute interview, read the rules and regulations. Then read the KYOU terms of use agreement.

It's a lesson in copyright law.

"Tell the FCC to stick it...The revolution is on."

Those are just some of the lyrics to: "On a Podcast," a podcast anthem written and performed by Cruisebox a quintet out of Oklahoma.

It's a catchy tune. One of those tunes that gets in your head...."I heard it on a podcast...rock and fuckin radio."

The song is striking for a few reasons. First off, it rails against the authoritarianism of the FCC and towards a government that people recognize as increasingly repressive. Second, the passion you hear in these folks comes from a growing indie movement, fueled by podcasting and a DIY ethos. Third, it's a rally against pinhole distribution systems that all indies face, be they artists, musicians or writers.

Further, these guys seems to be incredibly savvy and fully aware of the times in which we live. How?

They have a clean version of the song and an explicit version. Now, which one do you think is getting more downloads?

PodcastAwards announced the winners of its first contest.

Winners were in the following categories.

People's Choice: This Week in Tech
Best Produced: Daily Source Code
Business: Media Artists Secrets Podcasts
Comedy: Distorted View Daily
Cultural/Political: Free Talk Live
Education: Tips from the top floor
Food and Drink: Good Beer Show
General: illinoise!
Health and Fitness: MARINA's Walking & Aerobics
Mature: Dawn and Drew Show
Movies/Films: TheForce.net
Music/Radio:Coverville
Non English: Annik Rubens: Schlaflos in M?nchen
Religion/Inspiration: Catholic Insider
Sports: 1954 and Counting
Technology: This Week in Tech
Top Rated: Slice of SciFi
World News: Kathleen Keating
Sound Seeing: The Richard Vobes Radio Show
Gaming: Orange Lounge Radio

PodcastAwards announced the winners of its first contest.

Winners were in the following categories.

People's Choice: This Week in Tech
Best Produced: Daily Source Code
Business: Media Artists Secrets Podcasts
Comedy: Distorted View Daily
Cultural/Political: Free Talk Live
Education: Tips from the top floor
Food and Drink: Good Beer Show
General: illinoise!
Health and Fitness: MARINA's Walking & Aerobics
Mature: Dawn and Drew Show
Movies/Films: TheForce.net
Music/Radio:Coverville
Non English: Annik Rubens: Schlaflos in M?nchen
Religion/Inspiration: Catholic Insider
Sports: 1954 and Counting
Technology: This Week in Tech
Top Rated: Slice of SciFi
World News: Kathleen Keating
Sound Seeing: The Richard Vobes Radio Show
Gaming: Orange Lounge Radio

PodcastAwards announced the winners of its first contest.

Winners were in the following categories.

People's Choice: This Week in Tech
Best Produced: Daily Source Code
Business: Media Artists Secrets Podcasts
Comedy: Distorted View Daily
Cultural/Political: Free Talk Live
Education: Tips from the top floor
Food and Drink: Good Beer Show
General: illinoise!
Health and Fitness: MARINA's Walking & Aerobics
Mature: Dawn and Drew Show
Movies/Films: TheForce.net
Music/Radio:Coverville
Non English: Annik Rubens: Schlaflos in M?nchen
Religion/Inspiration: Catholic Insider
Sports: 1954 and Counting
Technology: This Week in Tech
Top Rated: Slice of SciFi
World News: Kathleen Keating
Sound Seeing: The Richard Vobes Radio Show
Gaming: Orange Lounge Radio

Business Week takes a look at the issues facing indie podcasters. The one gap? Indies produce original works.

From Business Week:

The mainstream media's approach to podcasting provides some clues for how independents can succeed. Many of the traditional media's shows are simply repurposed snippets from morning talk shows and elsewhere. Indie podcasters can distinguish themselves by creating something truly different, such as Skepticality's irreverent take on science and space or the infectious enthusiasm for offbeat cover songs found in a show called Coverville. "The way that indie podcasts are going to stand out is to keep providing content that people can't get on radio," says Brian Ibbott, the producer of Coverville. It may not be clear today which podcaster will end up on top. But there's no doubt that the technology is leading to an explosion in content. That should be music to all listeners' ears.

Podcasting is a technology for spreading political opposition. That theory will be tested in Singapore, where an opposition party has launched a podcast to denounce the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) ahead of independence day celebrations.

From the Singapore Democratic Party web site:

The podcast is a way for the Party to by-pass the state-controlled media in Singapore. Airwaves in the country are monopolised, cable television is owned by a government-linked company, satellite dishes are banned, and the press is controlled by the ruling party. The Internet remains a medium that the Government finds it hard to censor, although it has enacted many laws aimed at curtailing the use of the Internet for political purposes.

The Edinburgh Fringe Podcast from Ewan Spence and the Podcast Network:.

Welcome to the first podcast for the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Covering the largest Arts Festival in the world, the Edinburgh Fringe Podcast is going to put you right in the middle of all the best clubs, acts, street performers, reviews and news from the Fringe.

Fox Broadcasting is podcasting. But to set itself apart, the network is distancing itself from the "podcasting," term, instead using its own brand to start what it calls: "Foxcasts."

If Fox followed the practice of most media companies and simply re-distributed their shows as podcasts then there would be no reason to instill their brand into podcasting.

But it appears they plan to do more. Starting August 29, Fox will include exclusive material, similar to the premium they offer in their DVD box sets. Not surprisingly, the podcasts will be used to promote the DVD's. On September 19, Fox will offer a recap of the entire season for such shows as Arrested Development for listening before the new season's launch.

For now, the Foxcasts are pretty dull. The Lost Remote puts it well:

But don't get excited just yet. I listened to The Simpsons "Foxcast" and the announcer just rambled through what happened on the show in a little over a minute. Borrrring. But Fox promises exclusive cast interviews and other expanded audio content in the future.

If they do follow on the promise of exclusive interviews and offers such as pre-series recaps, then the Fox strategy seems to make more sense.

They'll be creating original work to supplement their shows. That's not exactly ground breaking but it is using this new distribution medium a bit more creatively than the other big media players.

Podcastercon is set for Jan. 7, 2006 in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina.

It's an unconference for podcast users. Looks cool. Click here to donate.

Read Doc Searl's suggestions for unconferences.

We've started an affiliate program for the Podcast Hotel. We're giving 35 percent commissions.

Why? We're hoping to get a good crew of podcasters to the Podcast Hotel. The idea is to turn the hotel into a podcast and videoblog studio. If a podcaster can sign up a few folks, the affiliate program can help pay their way. Here's a bit about the program:

Click through to the page and you'll find details on what we're offering - 35% commission for any sales, a pointer to the application page, an example of the sort of ads we'll be feeding out to you, and advice on how to help promote the Podcast Hotel. Also worth noting: a little contest we've set up that will have the top performer getting to attend the Podcast Hotel for free! Check it out and please feel free to send any questions or suggestions about the affiliate program to Dave Evans: devans at corante dot com.

More media players provide their critiques on podcasting. Shel Holtz, who will speak at the Podcast Hotel on podcasting and public relations, gives his take on the big media and how the forces at play can be compared to the heyday of FM radio and his daughter's own quest for new music.

Eric Rice came to Portland earlier this month for his Podcast and Videoblog Road Show. Here is the show that he made in his own Eric Rice style.;-) Eric's road show, which moves on to San Francisco next month, is an exercise in DIY (do-it-yourself) media. You'll never see this kind of show on the local news.

Eric is our host for the videoblog festival at the Podcast Hotel. We'll run the festival over two nights of the event. We'll show videoblogs, discuss how they are made and what people are doing with them in this time of early adoption.

Check out Eric's video. This is a videoblog. But you know what? Eric showed how he put his videos on his phone. And there are rumors of a video iPod. So, what is a podcast? A question we all continue to ponder. And one we will discuss at the Podcast Hotel.

It's a usual practice to get a preview before you subscribe to just about anything these days.

This can't be more true than when you decide to susbcribe to a podcast.

The Wimpy Podcast Amp lets you do just that. With the Wimpy Podcast Amp, you can listen to the podcast before you susbcribe.

Here's what they say at the Wimpy web site:

"I decided to port Wimpy over so that i could check out Podcasts BEFORE i download them to my iPod.

Podcast Amp allows you to listen to Podcasts from your desktop, nothing fancy, but at least you don't have to install an "aggrigator" then download the Podcast and then open the file in another program."

KEXP is a staple for music lovers in the Pacific Northwest. They are known for their commitment to the local music scene with their regular feature of local acts in their daily programming.

According to KEXP, they are now offering a podcast of full-length songs by fourteen Pacific Northwest artists, making it the first radio station to offer a music podcast of this scope. This effort compliments their excellent online radio offering.

On the podcast you can hear bands like the Blue Scholars, a hip-hop group that makes its Seattle roots known.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Fans of Seattle radio station KEXP 90.3/91.7 FM now can listen to local artists and live in-studio performances on their MP3 players.

KEXP, known for its unique mix of music ranging from rock to hip-hop to country, offers podcasts -- a convenient option for listeners on the go.

"We know that people can't necessarily tune in live all the time," said John Richards, host of the KEXP "Morning Show" and producer of "Audioasis," a weekly program featuring local musicians. "So we hope to create an environment where they listen to what they want, when they want it."

Trevor Cook points to an interview with the Podcast Network about the revenue question with podcasting. The bottom line: you don't need a car company or a condom manufacturer to make money from your podcasts.

From Trevor:

"The more we talked about the shows they're doing, and the shows I'm subscribed to, the clearer it became to me: podcasters don't need advertisers like car companies and condom makers. There's a whole community of financing in every town that's already supporting niche programming. It's made up of foundations and law firms and home builders who traditionally underwrite local public radio shows and stations.”

Here's a brief wrap wrap up of podcasting announcements over the past few days:

Sonos offers iTunes support for its digital music system, providing podcast capabilities.

Talkr allows you to turn your blog entries into podcasts.

Spanglish podcast network debuts.

Audioblog is offering iTunes support. Eric Rice, one of Audioblog's founders, was in Portland over the weekend for his Podcast and Videoblog Road Show. He talked about iTunes. What I found interesting? Eric said that the volume of support queries about iTunes just skyrocketed since Apple announced its support for podcasting. It's not just the podcasters that are seeing jumps but the service providers are facing challenges, too, as people rush with questions about how their shows can appear in the iTunes directory.

Doc Searls is podcasting. Read the show notes at his "podblog." Isn't that a great portmanteau? Is it a portmanteau if the words put together come from different portmanteaus?

Doc starts the show with his son, who says: "It is working," when he realizes they are actually recording and the music can be heard. Nice.

Doc goes on to talk about the music he is playing in the podcast from the late Danny Gatton Cruisin' Deuces.

"Its a perfect pound on the steering wheel song," Doc says.

They go on to talk about the music. Doc says over and over that he would so like to have the rights to play Danny Gatton over his podcast and promote the heck out of him.

It's just like hearing two people talk. But the added bonus is hearing Doc's son, who you can tell is a young guy, just hanging out with his Dad.

"You should have been a drummer," his son says. "You should have been but you are not."

Heh.

"I have to start podcasting," Doc says. "It just has to be done. I'm a radio guy."

No doubt. Doc is definitely a radio guy. He's a natural born podcaster.

Doc -- you like to quiz us about photos you show on your blog. What is the name of the tunnel that you have in the header of the podblog? Where is it? Anyone know?

MSNBC relays a Wall Street Journal report that Apple is in talks with the major entertainment companies to do video iTunes.

I hear a lot of debate about podcasting and what it really means. If you check out Phil Torrone's cool piece on "enhanced podcasts," you can see that podcasting is more about the full use of all DIY media, with audio playing a vital but not all encompassing role. (Torrone's piece for Make is a must read for anyone interested in what the iPod and iTunes means for podcasting and DIY media.)

The iPod is a little, white box. But it means a lot more as we change the way we try to make sense of this world. We're moving out of the mass media, industrial lifestyle. The video iPod tells us once again that we're not on a programmed entertainment schedule.

iPods and podcasts demonstrate that we get the media that we want on our own time. But Apple's efforts are different and some might say is representative of the contradictions that face us all when powerful forces collide. Apple execs are embracing the media giants, who have a mass distribution, which seems to counter the home grown aspects of podcasting and videoblogging.

So, the iPod symbol works different ways. It's a symbol for grass roots, DIY media and the changing view for our world. But it also serves as a symbol for the mass media and the power for controlling distribution. That little white box has power to do a lot for whoever controls it and how it is used.

How is it that a little white box coud be so powereful as a symbol in society? What is the symbolism of the iPod? What is the symbolism of podcasting? By understanding the symbolism can we get a better picture of what podcasting really means to us all?

Eric Rice, podcast and videoblogger promoter extraordinaire, is here in town for his Podcast and Videoblog Road Show.

Eric is the man to teach you about podcasting and videoblogging. Here's what he writes:

"Up the street from the Farmer's Market is a Seattle's Best at Portland (doh!) State University. It's at 1742 SW Sixth Ave., and we're meeting there at noon. We'll hang out for an hour or so and then start walking through downtown for the infamous blog/pod/vlog walks. This is Saturday, July 16th.

Bring a camera, bring a microphone, bring a newbie! There's no set schedule and who knows where we'll end up to eat or drink that oh-so loverly Oregon beer. Comfy shoes, cuz it's an outdoorsy-kind of day."

Eric is also here for Webvisions, where he is speaking about podcasting on a panel with Corante podcasting contributor Matt May and Greg Narain, of Beercasting fame. Greg is also a contributor over at Get Real.

Eric Rice, podcast and videoblogger promoter extrordinare, is here in town for his Podcast and Videoblog Road Show.

Eric is the man to teach you about podcasting and videoblogging. Here's what he writes:

"Up the street from the Farmer's Market is a Seattle's Best at Portland (doh!) State University. It's at 1742 SW Sixth Ave., and we're meeting there at noon. We'll hang out for an hour or so and then start walking through downtown for the infamous blog/pod/vlog walks. This is Saturday, July 16th.

Bring a camera, bring a microphone, bring a newbie! There's no set schedule and who knows where we'll end up to eat or drink that oh-so loverly Oregon beer. Comfy shoes, cuz it's an outdoorsy-kind of day."

Eric is also here for Webvisions, where he is speaking about podcasting on a panel with Corante podcasting contributor Matt May and Greg Narain, of Beercasting fame. Greg is also a contributor over at Get Real.

Financial Content is proposing that the RSS community to consider a new category element for RSS 2.0 in order to standardize the use of stock ticker symbols for the syndication of financial podcasts and other online financial content.

From the press release:

"To ensure compatibility with previous versions of RSS, FinancialContent will follow industry standard by proposing a category element for "stocksymbol" with a domain attribute. The element's value consists of the stock ticker symbol of a publicly traded company, optionally prefixed by the stock exchange on which the company trades. By default, a stock ticker symbol without a stock exchange symbol is considered a U.S.-based equity. FinancialContent also proposes support for international stock exchanges."

It seems like every day that I run across new products and services being offered in the podcast space.

Here are some of recent note:

Wavigo adds podcast support. From their press release: "Wavigo has just added podcast support to its powerful voice, text, information and entertainment service suite. Now Wavigo users can select, manage, and listen to their favorite podcasts with ease. Wavigo's podcast management feature allows users to download or stream podcasts directly to Wavigo, and play them through Wavigo's built-in music and video media player."

Clickwheel offers comics on the iPod through RSS. This is similar to a podcast. They call them podstrips. From their web site:
"Central to Clickwheel's design is an RSS feed that allows you to search,
grab and display comics or toons that have been created for the iPod photo.
And because comics on the iPod is a completely new field, we've commissioned
a number of leading artists to create work for us — these include
demian.5,
Ted Dewan,
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and
Colin White.
They've each been asked to produce a running series for the feed, so their
work will be appearing over the coming year, with new episodes following on a
regular basis."

Parliant offers Phone Valet podcast bundle. From Yahoo!: "The VST edition of SoundSoap 2 and BIAS Peak Express, the PhoneValet 3.0 hardware and software, are included with the PhoneValet Podcast bundle. The three tools let podcasters to capture, edit and enhance phone recordings. According to the company, PhoneValet records telephone interviews, while SoundSoap 2 is basically the clean-up cres: It removes hiss, clicks, crackles, and other unwanted noises. Peak Express is a version of the stereo audio editor that improves the sound file through sample rate conversion and invert, fade in/out, gain, and other functions."

iPodverts lets podcasters sell advertising space on their podcasts. From their web site: "Podcasts attract very targeted audiences, which makes for a fantastic opportunity for advertisers to target specific demographics. iPodverts will now be able to bring together Podcasters and Advertisers, opening up a whole new category of advertising."

iPodObserver takes on iLounge, the site formerly known as iPod Lounge.

Have an announcement about a podcast product or service? Contact Alex Williams. E-mail: alex at corante.com.

A 20-page white paper on podcasting is available from Podblaze. Rok Hrasnik writes a good summary of the paper at the RSS Diary.

A story from USA Today speculates that this surge in popularity may make it tough for the indie podcaster.

Almost overnight, the mass media took up podcasting. You can now find podcasts from ABC, CBS, Disney, NPR, and shows like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.

But most of the podcasts are repackaged from what these media players already produce. Since iTunes adoption, more than one million people have subsribed to podcasts.

Matt and I talked about this in this week's podcast. Apple iTunes may expose a wide larger audience but with it what are the costs for the indie? If a small, indie podcaster gets a surge in interest, then they may also go way over their alloted bandwidth from their host provider. That would cost them a bundle.

What does the surge in popularity mean for the indie? Is there a conflict between the big guys and the indies? Are the indies in danger with the mass media muscling in to the podosphere?

What do you think?

Via Steve Rubel: CBS announced a new effort to create a broadband network. As part of their web overhaul they unveiled a bunch of podcasts.

Excellent coverage of the announcement from PaidContent, including an interview with CBS News President Andrew Heyward.

Robert Scoble is writing about podcasting with Windows Media Player. He refers to Chris Lanier's list of Windows Media Player plug ins.

Podcasting is a term Robert uses freely. Others at Microsoft are calling podcasting something else entirely. Some call it blogcasting. In his presentation about Microsoft's commitment to RSS at Gnomedex, Dean Hachamovitch, GM of Microsoft's Internet Explorer team , grouped podcasting as part of the term: "feeds of content." What Microsoft seems to say is that it's not just about audio, it's about all forms of feeds. They'll have to come up with a different term but I think I understand what they want to address.

It appears they want to move the conversation about podcasting to a different space that encompasses more than just audio. They want the conversation to be about the feed, through the built in aggregator that delivers it all.

And if they can accomplish such a feat, what does podcasting matter to them? What will podcasting matter to Microsoft if Windows applications and Internet Explorer act as feed machines? Podcasts just are another form of data that gets delivered to people when they want and how they want it.

Does Microsoft need to get all caught up in podcasting? It doesn't seem like they do. Why? Podcasting is only one part of the loosely coupled big aggregating machine that they are building as part of Longhorn and IE 7.0.

More so, it seems Microsoft is seeng a future where RSS is everywhere. Just look at MSN Spaces. When I inteviewed Mike Torres, he said that of the approximate seven million blogs, the far majority opting to have an RSS feed. Couple that with IE, which will server as a giant aggregator and you have a huge RSS ad network that can include blogs, podcasts, videoblogs and more. They don't want to talk about podcasting for obvious reasons. In the Microsoft world, nothing trumps the operating system. They want audio, video and all other data to be fed through this giant aggregator.

I like what Eric Freeman wrote for O'Reilly, after Dean's presentation at Gnomedex:

"...what Microsoft has done is essentially build an RSS aggregator into the OS and expose API's that any application can make use of to produce or consume RSS. That's a little more interesting (and perhaps would have made for a more interesting talk and discussion)."

What Eric is hinting at is a world far more universal than just syndicated audio shows. It's about feeds of all kinds that are published and consumed.

But do me a favor. Please, call it anything but "feeds of content." As Doc would say, this isn't about shipping, this is about language and how we converse.

Mark Cuban makes a point that there is a big difference between repurposed content for a podcast and trying to make a living off starting your own podcast. He suggests folks trying to get into this business to look back at the streaming business ten years ago.

The good news, according to Cuban: podcasting is a low cost mediium for pushing out speeches, trade show presentations, customer education, etc. The bad news, the Internet is one heck of a long tail and there are no hits. They're just blips on the radar.

From Cuban's blog:

"Talk Radio Shows repurposed from radio to a podcast. No brainer. It’s cheap and easy. Repurposing industry specific information from tradeshows, speeches, product presentations for employee or customer education or as sales support. No brainer. These are just extensions of existing content into a new low cost medium.

For those who are tying to jump on the podcasting bandwagon and create a “hit” podcast that you plan on selling advertising in, its cheap and easy to do, but even with Google Adsense for RSS its going to be really tough to do it as a fulltime job and make minimum wage back."

Feedburner is offering support for iTunes.

From Feedburner:

Instructions for SmarterCasters
For the nearly 10,000 of you podcasters currently using FeedBurner's SmartCast service, all you need to do is check a box to include iTunes enhancements and then provide your own description, copyright, author names, etc. Don't forget to include a link to your logo (if you have one). You can also select the correct iTunes-provided category so your podcast is assigned to the appropriate directories. If you are already including iTunes tags in your feed, we do not overwrite or edit any existing iTunes tags we find in your feed. To get started, simply log in to FeedBurner, choose the "Edit" link for your podcast feed and look for all of this goodness under the SmartCast Service (located among the other Essential Feed Services)

Apple released iTunes 4.9 with podcast capabilities today.

The basics:

* Apple is initially is offering 3,000 podcasts that people can listen to through iTunes
* Shows include those from: ABC News, Adam Curry, BBC, Clear Channel, The Dawn and Drew Show, Disney, Engadget, ESPN, Newsweek and NPR member stations such as KCRW in Los Angeles and WGBH in Boston.

From the press release:

"iTunes enables anyone to quickly and easily find and subscribe to their favorite Podcasts so that every time there's a new episode, it's automatically downloaded to their Mac® or PC and Auto-Synced to their iPod. iTunes also makes it easy to manage multiple Podcast subscriptions with simple organization and display by episode and date. Starting today, iPods will offer an easy to use Podcast menu, including bookmarking within a Podcast and the ability to display color Podcast artwork."

From Red Nova:

"Online lifestyle community MySpace.com has expanded the kinds of exclusive content it offers its members.

Among the new features unavailable elsewhere are a podcast by Foo Fighters and a personal blog maintained by Smashing Pumpkins founder Billy Corgan.

In the Foo Fighters podcast, founding member Dave Grohl plays clips as he relates the making of the new two-disc set "In Your Honor," which is currently No. 2 on the U.S. pop charts. The downloadable audio is offered with streams of the first single and other items of interest to fans.

"Podcasting is probably more hype than people are using it, particularly since the majority is talk radio or bad talent, but it's a good fit for MySpace because of the personal connection," MySpace.com CEO Chris DeWolfe said."

Virgin Atlantic offers podcast guides to New York. They also have a podcatcher.

From the Revolution web site:

"In launching the guides at virginatlantic.com/podcast, the firm is also making available a branded, downloadable pice of software called Podcatcher.

The four guides include a look at the "10 coolest restaurants", an insider's guide to shopping, a guide to the quirky side of the city and the 10 best things to do for the first-time visitor.

The Podcatcher and host site have been created by UK-based software firm Loudish with content sourcing, development and editing handled by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and Manning Gottlieb OMD."

Virgin Atlantic offers podcast guides to New York. They also have a podcatcher.

From the Revolution web site:

"In launching the guides at virginatlantic.com/podcast, the firm is also making available a branded, downloadable pice of software called Podcatcher.

The four guides include a look at the "10 coolest restaurants", an insider's guide to shopping, a guide to the quirky side of the city and the 10 best things to do for the first-time visitor.

The Podcatcher and host site have been created by UK-based software firm Loudish with content sourcing, development and editing handled by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and Manning Gottlieb OMD."

Newsgator announced a podcast receiver today. They're calling it FeedStation.

From DesignTechnica:

"Called FeedStation, the new Podcast receiver will download audio and video files automatically to your favorite portable media player. Both NewsGator and FeedDemon will support the new Podcast audio and video files and let you store the content to your iPod, or any other portable media device that uses Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes."

IE 7.0 is being shown for the first time at Gnomedex right now. RSS is built into the browser. The theme, as explained by Dean Hachamovitch, is making it easy.

Highlights:

* Simple RSS subscription

* Talking about podcasting:

Dean says podcasting is more about "feeds of content": audio, music, photos, videos, calendar events, contacts, documents.

This is interesting. They are consciously moving away from the term podcasting.

Clear Channel announces more podcasts.

From MediaWeek:

"Buoyed by the success of its "Phone Tap" podcast downloads on WHTZ-FM, Clear Channel's Top 40 station in New York, the company announced Thursday it will expand its portfolio of podcast feeds. The accelerated rollout will offer nearly 20 new podcasts of popular on-air content from 12 more stations, with an additional 10 expected to launch later this week. "

Here's the biggest difference in this year's Gnomedex. There are a lot of microphones out there. And video cameras, too. John Hartman is sititng next to me. He's podcasting. He is videoblogging.

In the front row, Steve Garfiled has his camera pointed on Dave Winer who is about to begin his keynote, discussing OPML.

Rob Greenlee of WebTalk Radio is talking into his microphone.

Chris Pirillo announced that everyone is free to cast, podcast, videoblog, etc.

The wi-fi is a bit sketchy. But, hey, there are a lot of podcasters here. Please don't upload/download is the request from Chris.

Dave is talking. I have to go. He's talking about looking out at the crowd and for him, he says, it is like doing a podcast. Instead of looking out at the ocean, he is looking out at the minds of the blogosphere and the podcastosphere.

His quote I like: "Podcasts are like unconferences."

Oh, and Dave is podcasting his keynote.

Who made BadApple? It's a plug in for iTunes 4.9 made by BadFruit that turns the Apple iTunes software into a downloading podcast machine.

The BadApple news comes as Apple's CEO Steve Jobs announced recently that Apple iTunes 4.9 will support podcasting. Apple is reported to be a few weeks ahead of schedule and are evangelizing their support for podcasting. Jobs even goes as far to call podcasting the hottest thing in radio.

But who is behind BadApple? No one has fessed up. But behind it is some pretty sophisticated programming that is causing some to speculate that this is not some lone hacker making a play.

From CNET:

"At this point, there is no official indication of BadFruit's origin. But a handful of signs seem to link the site to MP3Tunes.com, the online song store opened a few months ago by MP3.com founder Michael Robertson.

Log files created by the software indicate that it talks to a server hosted by MP3Tunes. Code inside the software package, once downloaded, also show links to MP3Tunes.

The privacy policies displayed by MP3Tunes.com and BadFruit are also identical in almost every way, with details such as the name of the company and the name of the service changed. BadFruit's terms of use say that any legal actions concerning the software should be taken in San Diego County, where Robertson's companies are based. "

So, who madeBadApple? What does it mean for Apple? What is the next move? Is it a legal one?

Pennyslvania's Senate Republicans are offering a weekly podcast. I wonder about politician's interest in podcasting. Thes podcasts seem more like the well-scripted radio addresses that elected representatives often do. If a Republican caucus is podcasting, whose goal it is to achieve their objectives on state legislation, then questions will surface about their authenticity. How should politcians use podcasting? How do our views change about DIY media when that technology is being used by politicians to achieve some form of power?

A few weeks ago I published an interview with Mike Torres about MSN Spaces over at Feedfest. We talked for a while about MSN Spaces policy about censorship. I thought it might be of interest now that MSN is reported to be censoring Chinese bloggers.

Link to interview with Mike Torres.

A note: One commenter had a bit of an issue with my interview style. The style had a lot to do with the problems of the recording cutting out. We had thought the service was not hearing me talk and automatically stopped the recording. To ty and solve the problem, I used the interview style of agreeing, saying "mm-hmm," etc. Well, I am still having the issue with the recording dropping out. So, on to other tests to try and make this work.

A question: Do you have a method that works well for recording phone calls? Looks like I am going to have to give Skype a go.

Tod Mafin says that a podcasting robot will be launched at Gnomedex.

This not a bot. Tod says it is a real, mechanical podcasting robot. Now, what do you call this? Robotcasting?

Here's a sketch that Tod says he received from a "mole," in the group.

Can't wait to see this....podrobot?

AppleInsider reports that iTunes 4.9 is ahead of schedule with plans for a high profile technology launch.

On May 22, Steve Jobs said in his keynote address that iTunes 4.9 would be available in 60 days. Now, it appears that the launch will be sometime in late June or early July, about three weeks ahead of schedule.

There have been reports this week of iTunes forays into the podosphere. It's obvious these guys are going into high gear.

Now, here is what I find most interesting from the article. The company is taking a three-tier approach to simplifying podcasting:

Here's a recap. Check out the article for the full report.

Recap:

* Apple is developing a user-friendly "Podcasts" area in its iTunes Music Store that will closely resemble the existing "Audiobooks" store.

* Apple is tying trying to simplify the process of locating relevant Podcasts.

* Apple is simplifying categories, finding that the iPodder.org directory is too complex for the average user.

Plus...

* Aple is reaching out to all kinds of players to produce podcasts, including television stations, radio stations and motion picture studios.

* Premium podcasts are on the way.

Here's an Odeo screen shot. Folks are jumping up and down about Odeo. They're in the media stream, so to speak. And they seem to be a lightning rod, too.

Todd Cochrane claimed that Odeo was creating custom RSS feeds, amounting to a podcast hijack.

Showing how sensitive they are to this sort of furor in the podcast world, the folks at Odeo quickly responded.

That shows a lot. They're listening. But Cochrane makes a good point in his follow up post. He says that people should be more concerned about this practice.

Re-directing RSS feeds is a hot issue. Dave Winer has been critical of Feedburner for creating custom feeds from the original feeds people provide when using the Feedburner service.

Recently, Feedburner developed a redirect method. Here is excerpt from their June 10 blog:

"So, beginning today, we're providing a detailed service for publishers who choose to leave FeedBurner. When you delete your FeedBurner feed, we have added an option to redirect your feed. If you select this, we begin a one month process of transitioning your subscribers back to your source feed. This is the interesting part; because of the very different capabilities of the different feed readers, we have to take a few different approaches."

As more business interests get into podcasting, look for this issue to keep showing itself. People will be sensitive about keeping their feed address as it will be a measure of traffic and a factor in brand awareness. And for many folks, that RSS feed is a sign of identity.

This seems to be the big issue that will hit us over the next few months. As the big guns emerge, services like Odeo will be portals for podcasts. Who will get the brand attention?

Will the services essentially swallow up any recognition for the independents? And if they do, what does that mean for the long term vitality of this fresh and vibrant form of radio?

A CNET article explores some of the efforts underway to reach some accord in what music can be played in a podcast.

Brian Ibbott, who does the podcast show Coverville, is quoted extensively in the article. He is currently involved in the negotiating with the Recording Industry Association of America.

From the article:

"If the most important part is to ensure that the songs they broadcast aren't used as substitutes for purchased music, podcasters could agree to use a format that doesn't provide CD-quality music, such as 128-kilobyte-per-second MP3s, Ibbott said. They could also wrap their podcasts in some kind of copy protection as a condition of using music legally."

The Diffusion Group is forecasting that podcasting users will reach 60 million by 2010. The press release does not state how The Diffusion Group come to that figure. Instead, they state that the demand or time-shifted digital audio files or podcasts is expected to grow from less than 15 percent of portable digital music player owners in 2004 to 75 percent by 2010.

The report is definitely designed for a corporate audience, trying to get their heads around podcasting. Check out the link to the report and you'll see why. The price tag for the report is a hefty $1,495.

Here aresome more of their findings:

"Podcasting: Fact, Fiction and Opportunity," suggests that between 2004 and 2010, the use of podcasting among U.S. consumers will enjoy a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 101%."

What is fueling the podcasting growth? According to Marc Freedman, contributing analyst with The Diffusion Group, it is the discovery of time-shifting by consumers. People understand that they can liusten to their programs when they want and how they want.

According to the press release:

"Consumers were already accustomed to downloading music for playback on portable devices – this is a well-engrained activity that precedes online digital music," said Freedman. "However, the downloading of online 'audio blogs' for portable on-demand consumption is certainly new. Yes, the roots of podcasting lie in non-commercial amateur blogging, but podcasting's non-commercial status is changing as more businesses begin to find creative ways to use this new delivery medium to push audio content."

Next door at Corante's Between Lawyers, Dennis Kennedy follows a post from Cory Doctorow, asking: "Where do all the iTunes songs come from?"

In a few years, perhaps we'll ask a similar question when the podcasts start hitting a volume pace: Where do all the iTunes podcasts come from? If the math shows that very few songs on an iPod are from the iTunes music store, than what chances are there that any tiny percentage of podcasts will be from some iTunes equivalent?

There won't be 60 million podcasts that have been purchased. There may not even be an iTunes service that allows you to charge for a podcast. And even if there is, most podcasts won't cost a dime. So, where will they come from? How many podcasts will people have on their iPods that they have purchased?

Here's an excerpt from the Gear Live web site where the iPod math quetion is discussed:

"While talking with Tiffiniy Cheng of Participatory Culture earlier today for our next Gear Live Podcast, she mentioned the website put out by them called iTunes Per iPod. Essentially, it aims to show that while many people walk around with iPods filled to the brim with their favorite tracks, barely any of them are from the iTunes Music Store. Granted, the data is a bit outdated as it is from April 2004, I think it is safe to say that the data probably hasn’t changed all that much. Based on their calculations, in April 2004, if you divided the number of songs sold on iTunes by the number of iPods out there, you would find an average of 21 iTunes songs per iPod. Now I understand that many people rip CD’s that they have purchased legally to their computers as well, and this accounts for a percentage of the music on iPods - but I will go out on a limb and say that is a small percentage as well. Gotta love Bittorrent."

The smallest iPod holds 1,000 songs. The largers ones hold 10,000 songs. There is plenty of room for podcasts that feature the spoken word.

So, I ask again, where will the podcasts come from? How many of those podcasts will be ones that people have purchased?

Just listened to a podcast at hypecasting, featurng the innermost thoughts of Dakota Fanning.

I wondered what this might be about. Would it be funny? Well, I laughed. Satire and comedy just seem to work in podcasting.

Hypecasting, which sharply describes itself in its tagline: "...Podcasting The Knife Right Into Hollywood's Lazy Heart," is the offspring of MovieJuice, written by Mark Ramsey, a comedian and satirist.

A taste of hypecasting:

'What are the innermost secret thoughts of Dakota Fanning, star of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds?

I don't think even she knows, but listen for yourself and find out!"

Listen: MP3
Subscribe to the feed.

Dave Winer says that he is hearing from multiple sources that Google is preparing an iTunes clone, based on RSS 2.0 and fully podcast capable.

The new podcasting services, like the just launched Podblaze, reminds me of all-in-one packages that have emerged with other DIY media.

They offer templates, unique urls, uploading of logos, etc. And they are hosted by the service provider.

The idea is to make DIY media easier for people who want to visit a web site, register and have the everything there for them to podcast, write a blog, whatever the DIY media may be.

Podcasting is now in that stage where a host of DIY platforms are emerging. They'll continue to pop up. Odeo is getting a lot of attention. I often use Audioblog.com. BlogMatrix Sparks offers a service to share videos and podcasts.

They're worth trying. I'd like to hear how people view these platforms. Have you tried any of them? What do you think?

Tim Germer of Northwest Noise reads the first chapter from 40 Watts From Nowhere by Sue Carpenter.

I talked with Eric Rice recently who said that podcasting reminds him of pirate radio back in its day.

I get a picture of what Eric was talking about when listening to Tim read from Carpenter's book. Carpenter sounds like a podcaster at heart. She wants to broadcast the indie music that she loves.

From Publisher's Weekly in a review of the book:

"But her frank, often funny narrative is easily absorbed, and the story's a good one: one woman quitting a humdrum receptionist job to flout the law by filling the airwaves with the indie rock she loves, music she believes the monolithic Clear Channels of the world aren't playing."

Tim does a good job in his read. It's worth the listen.

Heh. Makes me think. Perhaps I should get a parrot, a patch for my eye and call myself a paarrrrrrrdcaster.

Just checked out the new Technorati beta site. What's the number one search? Podcast.

Technorati has some neat tagging features. You can create an RSS feed for a tag you are watching. Here's one I created for podcasting.

Podcasting: http://beta.technorati.com/feed/posts/tag/podcasting

Just checked out the new Technorati beta site. What's the number one search? Podcast.

Technorati has some neat tagging features. You can create an RSS feed for a tag you are watching. Here's one I created for podcasting.

Podcasting: http://beta.technorati.com/feed/posts/tag/podcasting

The Podcast Hotel is teaming with MusicFest NW, a music festival here in Portland, featuring 250 bands over three days.

So, it looks like this could work out well. The Podcast Hotel will go Sept. 6-7, running into MusicFest NW, which starts Sept. 8 and runs through the weekend, ending Sept. 10.

Part of my interest in all of this is the music angle. It's where Corante is experimenting a bit so it seems appropriate to be there and teach musicians what podcasting and videoblogging is all about. The idea is to do workshops for the musicians during MusicFest NW. We'll be doing workshops with kids, too, teaching them about podcasting so they can extend the remix that is such a part of their lives. We're talking about podcasting some of the shows. Jam sessions that we podcast would be cool, too. We'll interview musicians and muse about where all of this podcasting talk is taking us.

I have to thank Mark Zusman, editor and publisher of Willamette Week, Portland's Pulitzer prize winning weekly newspaper. MusicFest NW is a Willamette Week event.

I had put a call into Mark earlier this spring. Zusman had orchestrated Willamette Week's winning the Pulitzer this year.

Us Portland folks just beamed when Willamette Week won the big prize. Better yet, it's the first Pulitzer for a story that broke online. The story dealt with a nasty bit of history dealing with former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt. Willamette Week covered the story like no one else and came away with the prize.

Mark listened to what we were doing and asked if we would be interested in changing the date for the Podcast Hotel so it would run around the same dates as MusicFest NW.

It made sense. We had thought about changing the dates. A lot of reasons for making the decision but teaming with MusicFest NW helped make up my mind that this was the way to go.

So, we'll have more to say about all of this in the coming weeks.

Should be fun.

A thread at the Yahoo! podcasting group last week posed a question to explore:
What will Microsoft call podcasting?

Blogcasting?
Microcasting?

Will they accept the term podcasting even if it is so associated with Apple? Seems hard to believe that they would.

Podcasting is now pretty much accepted. It caught. It also fit with something cool, the iPod, a minimalist little white box, that people treat as if it is magic.

So, what do you think Microsoft will call podcasting? Why?

Check out the continued growth of podcasting in this chart from Feedburner.

Feedburner reports that they now have 60,000 feeds, of which 6,000 are podcasts.

Other highlights of the Feedburner report:

* Podcasts managed by Feedburner have an average of 33 subscribers, up from an average of 15 in February. Discounting the number of podcasts with less than five subscribers, the average number of subscribers per podcast is in the neighborhbood of 65 listeners.

* Feedburber says that hundreds of podcasts have more than 100 subscribers.

From Feedburner about podcasts and the long-tail effect:

"As we noted in our first podcasting report in February, a typical "long tail" is developing. Granted, these are still very small numbers we are talking about when contrasted with other media, but considering the wealth of additional podcasting tools and services about to come to market, both podcast production and subscription will undoubtedly become easier. So, an order of magnitude leap in attention in just a few months is exciting."

Via Steve Rubel: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is podcasting. Steve Rubel writes: "Is it me or are corporations/government agencies taking to podcasting more comfortably than are to blogging?"

It does seem that people are really getting podcasting. My mother tells me whenever she hears about it on the radio.

What do you think? Do people get podcasting more than blogging?

In his keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference, Steve Jobs called podcasting the hottest thing in radio.

According to the AP:

"Jobs previewed iTunes version 4.9. The software allows users to click on and subscribe to different podcasts, then automatically delivers the shows to any connected iPod — far less cumbersome than the third-party applications many listeners now need.

The newest iTunes will include a directory of podcasts, and creators will be able to register their shows with Apple's iTunes Music Store.

"We think it's going to take podcasting mainstream, to where anyone can do it," Jobs told the gathering of software developers."

The race to podcast is escalating among broadcasters with both Clear Channel and Infinity announcing new efforts to make their programs available in the increasingly popular podcasting format.

According to Billboard Monitor, Clear Channel will repurpose programs from its morning shows and making it available as podcasts.

Infinity, meanwhile, announced it is planning to podcast nine all news stations.

Clear Channel's efforts are far more gingerly than Infinity. Starting June 6, Clear Channel will offer podcasts of their morning pranks they do on New York's Z100.

According to Billboard:

"Evan Harrison, senior VP of online music & radio (for ClearChannel), says educating listeners and taking small steps are part of the company’s podcasting strategy. “I want to build the knowledge base of what we’re doing first and start with premium content in shorter segments,” he tells Billboard Radio Monitor. “Podcasting has more confusion than any of the latest buzz fads. There’s been exponential amounts of press” but limited available content."

Last I checked, more than 860 podcasts have been submitted to KYOU. That's a pretty fair number of submissions. It looks like Clear Channel will take a different approach, looking more to its programming than that from the podcast community.

According to Billboard Monitor:

Infinity will podcast nine news stations, lead by 1010 WINS in New York City.

According to Billboard Monitor:

Infinity will offer free daily podcasts from its nine news stations, with flagship WINS (1010 Wins) New York set to lead the way in July.

The podcasts, which will vary in length, will include local and national news, sports, business and entertainment headlines, as well as weather and traffic updates, plus content developed exclusively for download.

A podcasting feature has been added to Thunderbird, the Mozilla Foundation's open source e-mail client.

According to ZDNET Australia:

"Thunderbird already supports RSS feeds as they are commonly utilised by blogs, but a new patch will deal with Podcast-type content by opening a dialog box through which the user can summon a helper application such as a Web browser or audio player."

Link: Mozilla

I saw this post at antimusic.com, talking about The Transfer, a band that is pushing their new independent release "Romantics & Addicts." The press release claims that the first single "Down With Everything" is now getting hundreds of plays on podcast and internet radio stations alike.

I guess podcasters now operate their own stations? Funny how language is used to fit podcasting/blogging into old media terminology.

Are more bands starting to use podcasts to promote their music? Know of any good examples?

Via Dave Winer: Tod Maffin reports that "CBC Radio, Canada's public broadcaster, is in the process of developing a weekly on-air program about the blogosphere and podcast community, using the voices of audio bloggers and podcasters."

I listened to the Gillmor Gang Monday night and heard Adam Curry talk about his conversations with Steve Jobs about podcasting. Striking is how much Apple seems to get it. Podcasting fits into the DIY decade of self-expression, which increasingly seems to be the theme of Apple's product ecosystem.

Now it looks as if Microsoft is getting into the podcasting game. I see (via Steve Rubel and the Seattle PI) that Microsoft is putting together a podcasting team. Scoble made the hint on his blog.

Curry said that Microsoft was quick to give him a call after the reports of Jobs doing a demo of iTunes podcatching capabilities at last week's Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference.

According to the PI, Curry said:

"It was like 15 minutes after it showed up in the Wall Street Journal when Microsoft called, saying, 'Hey, how do we get in this?' I don't know a lot about Microsoft. I do see they're a lot hungrier company than they used to be. But every single time you talk to them about anything that's new, or in this case iPodder functionality inside Windows Media Player, the almost standard answer is, 'Yeah we're going to have a lot of that in Longhorn.' That to me means there is this huge steamboat that is very difficult to steer left or right, and it's just harder to get stuff done at Microsoft."

That was the main point I gleaned from what Curry and the other guests said on the Gillmor Gang. It's not that the work can't be done. It's just that people need to make decisions to get the work done.

In the end, the ultimate difference may be who embraces the DIY culture most. And so far, Apple seems to be winning the race to embrace. Microsoft is talking a lot about Longhorn. But it is still a top-down, horns locked operating system. Let's be clear that Apple does not have an open environment. And in defense of Microsoft, the company has taken to the open nature of blogging. But if you look at the product lines of the two companies, the differences are clear. The iPod and iTunes products are like magic swords, giving people the semblance of freedom to cut through the controls, obstructions and emptiness of sterotypical, top-down media. Their embrace of podcasting is just another magic weapon they are creating for those who seek strength in the freedom to express and absorb themselves with digital technology. Microsoft provides DIY tools, too. But their real strength is in the corporations, where their operating system dominates the enterprise.

Somehow, Apple has turned the iPod and iTunes ino mythic weapons that people see as hip. And in the process, they have aligned themselves with DIY youth culture, who live in the remix world.

No doubt, there are shades of grey. But I leave with a few questions:

Is the future of podcasting really not about the DIY culture that Apple embraces? Is it broader? And if so, how will Microsoft achieve the zeitgeist that Apple so increasingly seems to possess?

Please, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Starting June 5, the BBC will offer all nine symphonies by Beethoven as podcasts. The effort is part of a larger celebration of Beethoven by the BBC. The symphonies are all performed by the BBC Philharmonic.

According to Digital Music News, the move is creating a stir in the orchestra community, which views the effort as major cannibalization threat. The tempest mirrors a similar storm in the recording industry, where in some quarters, barons of the recoding industry are shuffling and scurrying to cast doubts on the legality of podcasting, seeing it no more than a variation of illegal file sharing.

Yes, we changed the dates for the Podcast Hotel and Videoblog Festival to Sept. 6-8. July looked too close. And then I spent a few stressful days watching over my daughter at the hospital. Life is too short. It was one of those times where you really want to do something but other matters just have a far higher priority.

We are sorry if the date change causes any inconvenience.

The idea is the same for the Podcast Hotel. We're turning The Jupiter Hotel into a podcast and videoblog studio.

We'll have themes for several of the rooms. During the day, we'll do workshops and share in discussions about the future of podcasting. In the evenings, we'll open the rooms, do some shows according to the themes and share in conversation about podcasting and videoblogging.

We'll run a videoblog festival during the event where we will showcase different works.

Attendees at the Podcast Hotel will create podcasts. They'll create videoblogs. They'll spread out into the city of Portland.

Experts will be there to share and show how the tools can be used. Newbies will be coached and get the chance to learn how to produce sharp, authentic works. There will be "how to," discussions, "think tank," talks and demonstrations.

The Podcast Hotel is about sharing this huge passion for creating new works through podcasts and videoblogs while simultaneously creating a platform for people in other parts of the world to participate. We will actively involve the city of Portland in the event and will seek people from other cities to participate, too.

Here are some of the basics

Who? Geeks, musicians, bloggers, entrepreneurs, artists, marketers, developers, authors, curious ad execs, film and video editors, directors, actors, comedians, recording industry execs, journalists and media honchos.
What? For two days we turn the Jupiter Hotel into a podcast and videoblog studio. This is not your standard conference. It's an art and commerce fair that flows offline through Portland then online back to the rest of the world.
Web site and registration: http://www.corante.com/events/podcasthotel
When? Sept. 6-8, 2005. Checkout is 11 a.m., Sept 8.
Where? At the Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon. That's where we participate in person. Outside the realm of the hotel's physical space, we move into the extended network of the Intenet. The goal is to get people in other places to participate so we create a worldwide event that becomes a giant media project.
How? How to podcast. How to videoblog. How art and commerce work together in this new realm. How musicians can use podcasting. How advertisers can use podcasting creatively. How book authors can use podcasting. How to set up a podcast for your brand. How to market your podcast. How to get sponsors. How the market will develop. How to have more fun at a conference and paricipate in the art and commerce of DIY digital technology.
Why? Art and commerce come together in podcasting and videoblogging. The Podcast Hotel will be a rave, a happenng where these forces meet.

Register

Hobbits now have a radio station. According to Cinematical, the Lord of the Rings Radio podcast started last week at lotradio.com.

In their first show they debate who is the central hero in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. A second show is in the works.

Let's hope you never leave old friend
Like all good things on you we depend
So stick around 'cos we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual
You had your time - you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio - radio

Lyrics from Radio Ga Ga by Queen

Do advertisers get that radio may still not have reached its finest hour?

Let's look at the where the money is flowing and go from there.

Business Week Online is reporting that Volvo paid $60,000 to Weblogs, Inc. for sponsoring the Autoblog.com Web log.

Wow. Advertisers are gaga over podcasting.

The rush is on. GM and Ford are advertising in podcasts. Lifestyle brands such as Heineken are using podcasts.

Can it be that the ones really starting to understand th DIY media are advertisers, not the big media? This sets up a dynamic that will sure to affect how the mainstream media adopts DIY media. But if the trend continues, how will it affect the ways that the mainstream media tells their stories? Will they change so the advertisers continue to grow their advertising with them? Podcasts are personal outlets. They're radio but as far from terrestrial as you can get. Podcasts also reach small audiences. The advertising costs for a sponsor are far less than what they would pay on syndicated radio or on TV. How does that balance out for big media companies? Creating a new network may be the answer. A network that is comprised of small shows that reach micro audiences. These may even be premium channels that use a Salon.com model so people may either subscribe for $35 per year or get it free by going through a series of ads to get to the good stuff.

Either way, advertising execs will no doubt be eager to try it out. Here's what one ad exec said in the Business Week story:

"Podcasting is one of the developments, along with online digital music services like iTunes and Rhapsody, that allow a consumer to be their own programmer. That will obsolete terrestrial radio for many advertisers," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at Publicis Groupe Media.

GM's chief marketing exec even went as far to say inthe Business Week story that he can see a day when the broadcast budget is far less than what it spends to advertise across the Internet:

"GM marketing chief Mark LaNeve says he's very keen on such nontraditional media, especially for brands that have an "enthusiast" audience, such as Hummer, the Chevy Corvette, Cadillac's new V-Series of performance cars, and Chevrolet's SS performance cars. "The key will be improving the production and entertainment levels of these so they're really compelling and get passed around," says LaNeve.

In future, he says, brands like Pontiac may have a very small TV ad budget. Instead, GM could advertise Pontiac mostly on the Internet. Podcasting is one of the formats LaNeve is looking at for multiple products and brands."

One striking aspect of podcasting may be the creative platfor that it provides advertisers. It's far more playful to use than traditonal mediums. You can use it for radio theater or to do comedy sketches.

That may be where the big media players can use the podcasting platform to its advantage. But with their desire to get big names, I'd guess that they would be reaching a far more general audience. And it seems to be going this way already. Adam Curry going to Sirius is the clearest example of this trend.

What the great number of podcasters do is show that radio can be one of the most creative places for telling your story, be it commentary, comedy or high drama. Advetrtisers seem to be understanding this trend.

And as that podcast network extends, so will the advertising reach new pockets, new places where, perhaps it may actually be useful for the listener.

And perhaps those advertisers will hear the call of DIY media and use their clever creative ways not to destroy the medium, as some fear, but actually help propel radio to that time that Roger Taylor dreamed about when he penned that tune for Freddie Mercury to sing for Queen back in 1984:

So don't become some background noise
A backdrop for the girls and boys
Who just don't know or just don't care
And just complain when you're not there
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio - radio

Let's hope you never leave old friend
Like all good things on you we depend
So stick around 'cos we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual
You had your time - you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio - radio

Lyrics from Radio Ga Ga by Queen

Business Week Online is reporting that Volvo paid $60,000 to Weblogs, Inc. for sponsoring the Autoblog.com Web log.

Wow. Advertisers are gaga over podcasting.

The rush is on. GM and Ford are advertising in podcasts. Lifestyle brands such as Heineken are using podcasts.

Can it be that the ones really starting to understand th DIY media are advertisers, not the big media? This sets up a dynamic that will sure to affect how the mainstream media adopts DIY media. But if the trend continues, how will it affect the ways that the mainstream media tells their stories? Podcasts are personal outlets. They're radio but as far from terrestrial as you can get. Podcasts also reach small audiences. The advertising costs for a sponsor are far less than what they would pay on syndicated radio or on TV. How does that balance out for big media companies.

Here's what one ad exec said in the Business Week story:

"Podcasting is one of the developments, along with online digital music services like iTunes and Rhapsody, that allow a consumer to be their own programmer. That will obsolete terrestrial radio for many advertisers," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at Publicis Groupe Media.

GM's chief marketing exec even went as far to say that he can see a day when the TV budget is far less than what it pays to advertise across the Internet:

"GM marketing chief Mark LaNeve says he's very keen on such nontraditional media, especially for brands that have an "enthusiast" audience, such as Hummer, the Chevy Corvette, Cadillac's new V-Series of performance cars, and Chevrolet's SS performance cars. "The key will be improving the production and entertainment levels of these so they're really compelling and get passed around," says LaNeve.

In future, he says, brands like Pontiac may have a very small TV ad budget. Instead, GM could advertise Pontiac mostly on the Internet. Podcasting is one of the formats LaNeve is looking at for multiple products and brands."

One striking aspect of podcasting may be the creative platfor that it provides advertisers. It's far more playful to use than traditonal mediums. You can use it for radio theater or to do comedy sketches.

That may be where the big media players can use the podcasting platform to its advantage. But with their desire to get big names, I'd guess that they would be reaching a far more general audience. And it seems to be going this way already with Adam Curry going to Sirius as the clearest example of this trend.

What the great number of podcasters do is show that radio can be one of the most creative places for telling your story, be it commentary, comedy or high drama.

And as that network extends, so will the advertising reach new pockets, new places where, perhaps it may actually be useful for the listener.

And perhaps those advertisers will hear the call of DIY media and use their clever creative ways to propel radio to that time that Roger Taylor dreamed about when he penned that tune for Freddie Mercury to sing backl in 1984:

So don't become some background noise
A backdrop for the girls and boys
Who just don't know or just don't care
And just complain when you're not there
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio - radio

NBC News and ABC News announced that they are going to podcast.

ABC News is looking to its efforts in blogging as a model for its podcasting efforts. According to Reuters, ABC will offer a combination of original and recycled content.

Reuters reports: "Among the original content will be "The AfterNote," a two- to three-minute wrapup of the daily's political news modeled on ABC News' blog "The Note." There also is original material and segments from such ABC News shows as "Nightline" and "Good Morning America." "

NBC News' podcasts will be available in June on MSNBC.com, with initial efforts to be recycled content. NBCwill offer hourly updates, clips from popular shows like "Today," and headlines from MSNBC.

Both efforts demonstrate a mainstream approach to podcasting. What original content comes from these network players will largely be based on their traditional approaches to the news. Just the facts.

Someday, perhaps, these big broadcast outfits may accept other ways to tell a story other than gathering the news and reporting it as fact. Perhaps they will embrace the conversation style that you find with bloggers, podcasters and videobloggers. It seems like that approach would be tough for them. Blogs are personal expressions as are most podcasts and videoblogs. They flow with the voices of the individual. They speak in the first person, telling a story, giving their thoughts on what matters to them and what it means for us all. Can you see broadcasters using this approach? Their approach wil resemble the style they sculpted over the better part of the last 100 years. Just the facts.

I spoke with Charlene Li of Forrester Research at the Syndicate Conference. Her point is that these big media companies are not going to make some radical shift to adopt blogs, podcasts and other social media. They have shareholders, who demand healthy profits. Instead, they'll ride the profits on traditional platforms as long as possible before making large investments in innovation technology.

That makes sense. And in the process, the media that emerges out of the blogosphere will continue to rise in popularity.

The question I have? Where do the new and old intersect? And what strategies will the big media guns use to push out or pull in the DIY media players? When will we really see this emerge?

Any commentary is welcome...not just the facts.

Be sure to susbcribe to our new feed so you can get our podcasts. We've had this feed up for a few weeks but just want to make sure people know about it. It's a Feedburner feed. I'll explain the reason why we are going with Feedburner in upcoming posts. What's your preferred method for making your podcasts available to subscribers? Debate is open on this topic. Some say Feedburner is not the way to go. What are your thoughts?

Phil Torrone reports that Apple will include an iPodder type feature in iTunes version, due out in the next 60 days.

According to an O'Reilly report, Steve Jobs is quite excited about the podcasting phenomena, though likens it to "Wayne's World for radio." The content wil be free on iTunes but Jobs says that he is open to the concept of opening iTunes for paid podcasting.

Podcasts blow. That's the headline and the basis of a blog by CNET Executive Editor Charles Cooper.

After Dave Winer wrote in his blog that Cooper should check out IT Conversations, the CNET editor changed his tu