Matt May is a Web accessibility specialist, and has written on the interaction of people and technology since 1995. He keeps his own weblog at bestkungfu.com, and produces a podcast called Staccato, which features Creative Commons-licensed music.
Alex Williamsblogs, consults and produces unconference style events, where people immerse in DIY media. These are fun occasions, designed for people who want to get together with authors, artists, technologists and leading thinkers to converse, eat, listen to music, write, shoot photos and post podcasts and videoblogs. Alex also works with companies to establish DIY approaches, where writing, photography, voice and video come together to create new conversations and communities. Alex is currently fascinated with digital photography. His girlfriend calls him a Flickrholic. Send Alex a nice message: alexhwilliams at gmail.com.
Nicole Simon loves blogging and podcasting, dashed with an European view. As consultant she helps to facilitate such tools for business purposes or personal publishing empires. She can be found at cruel to be kind and on her private blog Useful Sounds.
Roland Tanglao is a well known podcasting enthusiast and a passionate advocate of blogs, RSS, and social software as a means of online expression for people, organizations and businesses. He is a prominent participant in the blogosphere and online communities and one of the founders of Bryght and as Bryght's Chief Blogging Officer reads hundreds of blogs daily. He graduated from the University of Waterloo, worked at Nortel Networks where he ran its first internal corporate blog, has has been blogging since 1999, and was the first business blogging consultant in Canada.
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.
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.
A very controversy topic this week was the publication of a new Link TextForrester research study about the use (or not use) of Podcasting. But the comments left in the Net suggest that many have a different point of view.
Forrester projects that just 700,000 households in the US in 2006 will use podcasting, and that it will grow to 12.3 million households in the US by 2010. (See Forrester's "The Future Of Digital Audio" report). Just to give you some context, we expect MP3 adoption to be almost 11 million households in the US this year, and grow to 34.5 million households by 2010. So that means in four years, about a third of those MP3 owners will be listening to podcasts on those devices. Podcasting will get easier and the content will get better, but it will all take time.
The study (and the thereof following comments and trackbacks) is interesting in two points: It shows how suddenly a well know company can get visible flack about their study but also I was curious to see the limitation of the study to the US market.
Given, most of the interest for this study might come from North American companies, but it is one of the interesting and fascinating parts about podcasting that is is not just that one market but a world wide phenomena.
I also doubt the number of exposure to podcasting - every sold iPod out there is wired to iTunes and this does expose the content of podcasting to every iPod user.
As the study says:
One-quarter of online consumers express interest in podcasts, with most interested in time-shifting existing radio and Internet radio channels.
25% of (again I assume US market) users have expressed an interest in the time shifted aspect. And are getting used to XX on demand, without the boundaries of what today's media brings with them.
My caution is that companies shouldn’t be dashing out to create expensive original content for a small audience – unless they gain value from being seen as innovative.
Yesterday it was only Tivo, and that is mostly offline business. Today, 25% express interest, only 18 months after podcasting started and video casting has not really taken off.
If the whole way changes the way my customers deal with me at all, my advise would be to start *very* soon with going where there are going. Because all it takes for those 25% interested persons to go into regular listeners of podcasts is to find a topic of interest to them.
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.
This morning at 7:50a.m. Pacific, I was on CityTV Vancouver'Breakfast Television for about 5 minutes. I spoke with Simi Sara, the host, on how easy it is to podcast and I demoed Odeo (which works through a web browser like Internet Explorer). All you need is a computer with a microphone, an internet connection and Odeo (free, unlimited 3 minute podcasts!), a story, something to say or a cool sound. What I didn't get a chance to say was: play around with Odeo and then when you get serious, move up to a non free commercial provider like Audioblog (my friend Eric Rice's podcasting and videoblogging service) or libsyn (just to name two).
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.
If, like me, you can't get enough of the XX Olympic Winter Games. Podcasting News has gathered a list of Olympics-related podcasts, including feeds from the AP, New York Times, and the US Olympic Team itself.
The online video coverage from NBC isn't bad -- but it's not portable, either. All of the media available is streamed, and unavailable outside the United States. It may be 2012 or 2014 before we can subscribe to portable video of a given sport, given the licensing restrictions that are in place. There's no doubt that the video is there. After all, nearly every country has cameras in Torino right now. But the IOC bureaucracy isn't very likely to understand the potential of the Long Tail for niche events like curling, equestrian, and distance running. Or for the tournaments (baseball, softball, basketball, hockey, soccer) that are too much to cover well on one network. Which is too bad, really. Especially for people like me.
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."
But now Ricky Gervais has a world record after his podcast became the most downloaded ever.
Gervais' weekly show on Guardian Unlimited, featuring writing partner Stephen Merchant and sidekick Karl Pilkington, averaged 261,670 downloads a week during its first month.
[...]
The podcast debuted on Guardian Unlimited in December 2005 and regularly tops the iTunes podcasting chart, beating the likes of Radio 1 breakfast host Chris Moyles.
While it is nice to see podcasting in the Guinness Book of World Records and Rick Gervais show surely being a success - how can something be the most downloaded one if there are no agreed upon statistics in this area?
Many people for example mistake hits for downloads on a podcast, an error many people make also with RSS Feeds. "My feed was accessed 24 times today!" can mean 24 actual subscribers or just a service checking every minute. With podcast, some software downloads chunks (generating several hits in the servers' log files) or access one and the same file over and over again.
The mentioning of iTunes in this article indicates to me that there is perhaps an interest of Apple to have their download numbers be the standard for such a world record - but they don't publish those and they are only per store basis, also not a reliable number. And, do we count numbers in average, numbers per episode?
But, if you are in doubt and you have a better download rate, you still have a chance to enter yourself in the Guinness Book:
The Ricky Gervais Show will be included in the 2007 edition of the Guinness World Records' book - as long as no other podcast tops it before it is published in the autumn.
I would assume Podshow and other high traffic podcasters will start making phone calls - both to the Guineas World Records' Book and to their webhosters.
When you hear the words "podcast charts" - would the second thought coming to your mind be "from the BBC"? No?
It should, because the BBC website published their numbers for on demand content for December and named the press release "Best of Moyles tops BBC podcast chart".
The experiment was started last year and the BBC plans to continue and study this new phenomena:
Simon Nelson, Controller of BBC Radio & Music Interactive, said: "It's fantastic to see how the demand for radio downloads has grown since we first offered them in 2004. These figures underline the enduring relevance of radio in the digital world."
Twenty programmes were made available in BBC Radio's download and podcast trial last May.
At the end of the 2005 it was announced that the trial would be extended into this year and would include more programmes, in order to gain a better understanding of listeners' preferences.
While for the moment the BBC programs are "just" redistributed as podcast, I am sure we will see the day when Radio itself will serve as "just second" distribution channel!
Allow your users to keep the content at a place they want: One lesson of the last year has been that users want to have their content / their pictures / their podcast not locked in. Websites and applications who understand this have done better than other who tried to lock in the users.
Widgets for your blog is one favorite example - you can use a Frappr map on your page or as of now also a flash player from Odeo on your site. But they go a step further and allow me to use anything I find on Odeo:
If you find something on Odeo that you’d like to share with others on your web site or blog, you can include a Flash player. Just click the HTML link on any audio page and copy the code. Then paste the code in your site or blog editor and publish like normal. The player will show up on that page.
Sounds fantastic, right? Well, not so much.
The fact that I am publishing my podcast also on the Odeo page in my channel is something I am restrictively using for distributing. It would also be okay if I would be able to easily access my own channel with such a player - but not anything I find on Odeo.
Redistributing content I don't have the licensing to is will get me into problems - and it leaves the question whether for example Odeo can be held responsible for encouraging copyright infringements?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Darren Barefoot wrote a piece called "Why I’m Not Smoking the Podcasting Dope" back in March which attracted a lot of comments both agreeing and disagreeing.
"An Update on the Podcasting Dope" reflects those and changes in the last nine months in Podcasting / the common perception from his point of view.
Steve Jobs has a standing engagement with every diehard Mac geek in existence for the second week of January each year. It's one of a handful of dates in which he unveils Apple's new products and strategies. In the past few months, much of the attention has been focused on two areas: the gameplan for Intel-based Macs, and the iPod. The impact of the latter to readers of this blog is hardly worth explaining. But the new Macs may have a lot more to do with podcasting than you think.
The iTunes Music Store continues to tease us with a glimmer of what could be. To Apple's credit, iTunes has singlehandedly jawboned media companies into producing downloadable versions of their products. At the moment, iTMS boasts video content from Disney (ABC/ESPN) and Universal (NBC/USA/SciFi), including shows that are no longer on the air. What they haven't done is provide a subscription model for those shows. If Apple could promise me a season of, say, Arrested Development, delivered straight to my 5G iPod, I'd put my money down in advance. (Well, except for the part where my TiVo already fulfills that same promise.)
In fact, if iTunes had all of the shows I watch regularly, and offered a reasonable subscription price for them, I think the only thing that would hold me back from breaking it off with the cable company would be live news and events. I've already used my iPod with my home TV (not to mention the projector at work) to catch up on my shows -- as well as my vid/vod/videocasts -- whenever the mood strikes. It's a natural fit, when you really think about it:
iPods are cool.
TiVo is cool.
Therefore, an iPod that's as good as a TiVo is wicked cool.
I'll couch a 2006 prediction in here: Apple is going to try like hell to prove to the public that a video-capable iPod is not a gimmick. That means interface improvements, larger drives, higher-quality video, and my guess is a video-capable iPod nano this year. But above all else will be an emphasis on everything working with and/or through the iPod and iTunes.
Which brings us to the new Macs. The rumored Mac mini is a home theater PC: an arena Microsoft has tried in vain for years to conquer. The Front Row app that came with the last batch of iMacs was a warmup for an intuitive TV-based media interface, and the Intel chipset offers instant-on functionality, a must-have for home theater components. There's even the suggestion that the new Mac will have an iPod dock built-in.
All indications are that Apple wants to use the iPod as a Trojan horse with which to take over the home media market. (Hmm. Trojans. That reminds me: if you're in the US and didn't see that USC-Texas game, you can and must buy the highlights on iTunes.) While Bill Gates is crossing his fingers over Xbox 360 and Windows Vista, Jobs may already be moving into his endgame.
I had been figuring it would be somewhere into the next decade at the earliest before the broadcast date of a show became simply a transmission date -- the point at which the embargo on a given episode expires, and it is made available to the public. I think that if Apple keeps moving down this path, it might happen as early as next year.
The avenues that would open to the viewer are amazing to ponder, though I'm sure that network execs get white-knuckled at the very thought of that kind of change. For the first time perhaps since the advent of television, entrenched organizations at every step of the media production chain are at risk of being shaken to their core thanks to a wave of new technology.
It's no exaggeration to state that some corporations are entering 2006 wondering whether they'll still be around in 2010. And from where I sit, for the companies I'm thinking about, it's about goddamn time. Many media companies, particularly content owners, have played defense for far too long. If they didn't see the Internet and portable media coming, economic theory says they deserve what they're gonna get. To boil it down to a few words, Schumpeter's principle of creative destruction is going to make your TV kick ass.
Remember my predictions are worth what you pay for them :-)
Prediction number 2: Apple will not introduce an iPod with built in recording (and leave it to 3rd party manufacturers which is OK but it would great for podcasters if they had an iPod for podcasters) nor will they introduce anything to record video (on a phone or otherwise). This is one prediction I hope will not come true because I think there is a market for a iPod for podcasters and Apple has the ability to make it a truly easy to use, seamless experience from microphone back to the iPod.
Barney and Miss Beazley have their own video podcast. Who are these scottish terrriers? Apparently, they're the pet companions of President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Check out the pictures. These dogs travel! I wonder what these dogs have witnessed in their years living inside the president's living quarters?
I've reviewed some weird podcasts since I launched this site, but this one has GOT to be the strangest. From what I can tell this is the official video podcast of President Bush's dogs. Is that right? Is this what George Bush has on his iPod? Have I gone crazy? Is this my tax dollars at work? WTF?
iPodTV is one of those sites to watch if you are into the video podcast space. You'll find multiple categories, including 13 posts on video iPod directories, 12 covering animation and 22 on software.
Here is some of the news I saw there today:
* More news about BlinxTV
* Commander in Chief to be available on the iPod.
* VideoiPodder.com, a site that "scours other bittorrent sites, and posts the iPod-format video torrents it finds there, along with a few of its own."
* And TheBodcast.com -- not to be confused with Playboy's vodcast program.
Now, here's why it is smart to hire, funny, witty authors, with distinctive voices. For they don't only sound good on radio and television, they can make great podcast personalites, too.
Motel 6 has launched a podcast featuring Tom Bodett, their longtime radio and tv spokesman, famous for his deadpan, dry narratives with the cheery hometown music in the background.
The first podcast features top six reasons to stay at Motel 6 during the holiday season, with one of the reasons being, "You, not grandma's poor circulation, control the temperature."
Now, here's why it is smart to hire, funny, witty authors, with distinctive voices. For they don't only sound good on radio and television, they can make great podcast personalites, too.
Motel 6 has launched a podcast featuring Tom Bodett, their longtime radio and tv spokesman, famous for his deadpan, dry narratives with the cheery hometown music in the background.
The first podcast features top six reasons to stay at Motel 6 during the holiday season, with one of the reasons being, "You, not grandma's poor circulation, control the temperature."
Slapcast is down and podcasters using the service have lost their shows. It's still unclear what happened but it appears the domain has not been renewed.
Podshow, through their site, Podcast Alley, is offering to help Slapcast podcasters get their shows up and running again.
f your podcast was hosted or controlled by SlapCast.com and you have lost your podcast… please contact me ASAP. It doesn’t make sense and we want to help you get your podcast up and running again.
Send an email to info@podcastalley.com with your show name and contact information and lets get this fixed. PodShow will be happy to help you get your podcast running again.
Google Music is getting a lot of mention today. It just seems the online music space just gets hotter with each passing day. While at the same time the traditional music industry seems to get hotter and hotter under the collar about protecting their turf. Most notably is the most recent salvo by the Music Publishers Assocation to try and stop unlicensed publishers from posting song lyrics on web sites. MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed. Wow.
Google Music sets the search giant's sites on the ever more lucrative music business, providing indexed searches for bands, lyrics to songs and music services including iTunes. Will Google be labeled a pirate for indexing sites that feature song lyrics? It doesn't seem likely but who knows when you have someone like Keiser making such inflammatory remarks.
Google Music will allow a person to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar special, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.
But what will Google do, now that it is setting its aim on the ever growing online music world? In particular, how will Google use this directory to form a podcast index that competes with Yahoo!, which has so far demonstrated the most cohesive search strategy for the podcast market? Yahoo! is on a roll with its acquisition of Del.icio.us and its embrace of RSS. They launched their podcasting directory earlier in the fall. Media RSS seems to be gaining attention. They are developing audio and video search. And they have their own music store. Plus, they are focused on being an entertainment brand.
Dave Winer has posted an item that he wrote originally in June (we linked to the post at the time) that he has heard Google is preparing for an iTunes clone with RSS 2.0 to make it a competing podcast service. It's hard to see that in light of Google's apparent close ties to iTunes in Google Music.
A more likely scenario is that Google will continue its indexing strategy and leverage its power to generate revenue from related advertising.
I don't see Google as an entertainment brand. But, perhaps, this is one way for them to pursue the show biz market? Hmm. Any thoughts on this one Mr. Keiser?
...And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.
However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
So, isn't this saying that Wikipedia essentialy has its own peer review network that compares in quality to the systems and processes the encyclopedia folks follow? And so why are we flapping about Wikipedia? What about the millions of bloggers and podcasters who flout all kinds of questionably accurate statements?
The Dickens podcast will be in five instalments running on December 15-16 and December 19-21 and read by the actor Geoffrey Palmer, best known for his roles in 'Butterflies', 'As Time Goes by' and 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'.
Like other publishers, the foray into podcasting is sparking ideas for how to use the new medium to promote authors, unpublished works and new authors.
A reference to podcasting in last night's episode of the Fox comedy "Arrested Development" may have been more than just a one-liner.
It happened as Oscar Bluth, the hapless twin brother of family patriarch and criminal mastermind George Sr., was about to be incarcerated once again due to mistaken identity.
Warden: What a treat: the man who cost me my promotion ends up back in my care. And I don't think there's going to be an I'm Oscar Web site this time.
Oscar: I think this time I'll do a podcast.
Think they may be dropping hints? AD is on the way out after two and a half seasons, with Fox planning to replace it early next year, presumably with some show featuring models singing on a desert island surrounded by product placements. But the show's DVD sales are strong, and the fan base is rabid, if a bit small. Steve Safran at Lost Remote has already recommended that AD continue on as a video podcast. If they can keep the troupe together (including Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Portia de Rossi, David Cross, and the uncredited voice of Ron Howard), they'd have a lot more fun -- and they may still make a lot of money. Could Arrested Development be the first TV show rescued by the Long Tail?
For months, Del.icio.us has been a chief discovery tool for me to find new video and audio. It's always refreshing to see what pops up.
Last night I saw a parody of Steve Jobs introduce the "invisible iPod," on SNL's Weekend Update. I saw Jelly D, the rapping pastry. He's a guy dressed up as a jelly donut who made it to the semi's of a freestyle rapping competition in Oakland. A woman sang and played the harp with an animated blackboard featurng sailing ships and flying doves. I saw a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his younger days as Mr. Universe on a trip to Carnivale in Rio where he teaches a Brazilian woman some new words using a carrot stick as a prop. A quite insightful look at the California governor.
I've watched a Green Day music video "When September Comes," and "Some Postman," by Presidents of the United States of America.
I don't ever know what will appear. It all depends on what people post to Del.icio.us. The Del.icio.us hack works like this:
I go to Del.icio.us and look for tag words associated with the file format I am searching. For instance, I started watching music videos in June over my desktop. I first created an addres: http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mov
I then added a tag: "music video." The url looks like this. The tag is in bold: http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mov+musicvideo
The address takes you to the web page where you may subscribe to ther RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mov+musicvideo
Copy the RSS feed into iTunes (under avanced) and the videos start appearing as people post to Del.icio.us according to the tag "music video."
In podcasting, still one of the greatest challenges comes as more people start making shows. What is worth watching? Recommendations help. And recommendations through tags works beautifully.
Tags also help extend the meaning of a podcast. I can subscribe to shows I like through podcast directories or by visiting the individual's site. Chris Pirillo, Adam Curry, Rocketboom are all in my iTunes because I have subscribed to their feeds.
But with tags I can listen to podcasts that perhaps may not even have their own RSS feeds. They are collections of links that are either audio or video files that people have tagged. Del.icio.us does the job of providing the RSS feed. And through that process, I am opened up to a whole new universe of shows and programs that appear automatically in iTunes, the same way as a traditional podcast.
What does this mean for Yahoo!? It means that they have an advantage as far as I can tell in the podcasting space. I can use services like Del.icio.us to discover new shows. It also adds value to iTunes in it keeps me going there to see what funky new stuff is showing up. And it takes me out of the traditional podcast paradigm. I am now consuming shows that may not necessarily fit the standard podcast construct. They may not even have RSS feeds. And I am getting grass roots media that is recommended by people, not editors. It's not that I don't like editor recommendations. But I often find that everyone is an editor thes days. So, why should I limit myself to what the traditional mediia suggests?
What a strage world it must be for newspaper executives these days. They face an aging readership and a product that costs a relative fortune to produce.
Seems to make sense that video podcasts would be worth the investment for a newspaper, huh?
Ever watch Rocketboom? Now you can get it on Tivo. Now, who says that original material can't make it in the world of big media? Repurposed? Not Rocketboom. The Rocketboom folks are at the roots of the grass roots media juggernaut. And now, they're moving into a new universe. I wonder what they get out of this?
Good to see a grass roots players get a little love. All the big media seem to love this new medium. But they are the repurposing kings. They're not Rocketboom.
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.)
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.
Two big consumer devices announced podcasting support this week. Sony's PSP firmware 2.60 supports RSS enclosures. The new feature is only able to stream content found in podcast feeds. With built-in wifi, though, that might not be so bad. It also adds a few million new potential listeners to the audience.
TiVo's announcements made a bigger splash: through its content partnership with Yahoo, TiVo Series 2 devices now offer a section for podcasts, with listings taken from the Yahoo Podcasts site. What's more, TiVo, whose talks with Apple broke off recently, announced it will support the iPod as a TiVo-To-Go device sometime in early 2006. It's sort of a funny juxtaposition, from the podcaster's perspective: first, we get into the set-top box, which was the domain of broadcast and cable; and next, broadcast and cable get onto the iPod. That's a fair trade, I'd say.
There's just one problem. The greatest potential for TiVo's podcast support is in downloading video in RSS enclosures. At the moment, I've been pulling down video feeds and running them through a transcoder so my TiVo's MPEG-2 decoder can handle them. (Sidebar: video transcoders are going to be the fastest-growing software segment in 2006. Write it down.) But the TiVo box itself doesn't have much processing power, and its hardware MPEG-2 decoder can only handle a narrow range of bitrates (2-8Mbit/sec), all of which are pretty big in size. Most video feeds are much smaller, but with MPEG-4 and especially the H.264 format used on the iPod, they take a lot more horsepower to render than the TiVo will be able to muster.
This, like most great opportunities, has a big barrier sitting in front of it. I don't think a lot of videobloggers will want to make their work available at a minimum of 10MB per minute of video. Something will have to be done to get video feeds to work well with the TiVo, even if it involves using the companion TiVo Desktop software to transcode for the time being. There is too much good stuff that would be well-received if only it could jump from the laptop screen to the living room TV.
And that's the big message of both the Sony and TiVo announcements: convergence. Sony's device is the second-hottest electronic device on the market today, and they have responded with an upgrade to support podcasts (and Windows Media) to showcase the PSP as a convergence device. TiVo's announcements have convergence practically written all over them. They and Yahoo are making a play for the coveted "digital hub": the device that brokers media and services to you from your home. Expect more of this kind of announcement over the next six to twelve months, from Microsoft for the Xbox 360, Sony for the PlayStation 3, and probably Apple for a new Mac-mini-based media center. They've all been looking at this space for years.
"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."
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 want a box about the size of an iPod that has drag and drop of files via a USB Mass storage driver, 6 hour battery life, takes compact flash cards so there are no moving parts, has 2 XLR and 1/4" inputs and real phantom power (48 Volts) and a built in compressor (software compression is for the birds :-) !) so that people don't talk over each other. The M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 comes the closest (the Marantz PMD 660 is too big!) but it doesn't have real phantom power (only 30 volts) and there is no compressor.
I want the ability to easily create and manage my audio podcasts using simple software in the same way that iPhoto is easy and simple, entry level, software for photos. And when my needs increase, I want the "Aperture of podasting"; basically software that allows me to manage my workflow and has rudimentary sound editing tools with the ability to launch more powerful sound tools. Sorry, but Audacity, GarageBand et al don't cut it!
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. :-).
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.
Alex Williams
Matt May
Nicole Simon
Roland Tanglao
Just saw a post about the Playboy Bodcast. Still not convinced that video podcasting won't bring more riches to the porn biz?