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.
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).
Yesterday I dropped in to see Roland and we got to discussing mobile podcasting. I gave him a bit of a brain dump of what I know about audio engineering and recording, which isn't a whole ton (more like half a ton), and here's what I sent him afterward.
Woot, the site that's half the reason I stay up until 10pm most nights in hope of a deal on one of the three techno gadgets I haven't already bought, has a podcast feed detailing the one item they're selling that day. The Woot blog has details.
I know what you're thinking: so what?
Here's the thing: it is hilarious. Seriously. They're producing a song for each item they sell. It's the funniest stuff I've heard in podcast form since the last Jonathan Coulton album. For example, here is a partial transcript from their podcast for today's item, which extols the virtues of the ruggedized Rio Cali MP3 player:
Well, I dropped it on the floor, and I sat on it and kicked it/and I threw it down the stairs, and I spat on it and flicked it/and then I took it waterskiing/and then I tossed it in a local zoo's ape pen, where I briefly lost it/I retrieved it and shaved it and made it wear a skirt/and then I microwaved it and buried it in dirt
These guys make Crazy Eddie look like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Discover the Woot podcast.
New Corante contributors Roland Tanglao and Nicole Simon join Alex and myself to talk about Yahoo, its new podcast area, how it's doing, and where it's going. We'd talk next week, but it's not like a major corporation just released a new media player, or anything. Maybe we'll just get together and play Texas hold 'em.
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.
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.
"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?
In today's podcast, Alex and Matt talk about the iTunes release, and Matt's controversial reactions to it; more on the upcoming Senate debate over online music licensing; Microsoft's fear of the p-word; and, of course, Philip Torrone.
We're desperately hoping that this will get played on terrestrial radio, since Mark Ramsey says that's the best we can hope for, but in the meantime, please listen to this podcast at a time and place of your choosing, and pretend instead that we're interrupted periodically by ads for car dealerships or monster truck rallies.
Sunday. Sunday. Sunday. At the county fairgrounds. You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the month of July, during which a small number of Americans explain calmly to those hundred million wearing yellow bracelets exactly why they should care about a yellow jersey. Yes, it's the Tour de France, where Lance Armstrong goes for a record seventh consecutive title, the Outdoor Life Network dedicates itself nearly full-time to obscure mountainous regions of France, and Sirius is hosting a podcast with the Texan himself.
Starting July 2nd, you'll hear daily stage-by-stage coverage of the Tour on "Lance in France: Off the Bike and On the Mic". This beats live coverage for most Americans, since the French daytime is silly enough to take place while we're still sleeping.
Alex Williams
Matt May
Nicole Simon
Roland Tanglao
