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.
We don't need no transmitters, but perhaps Transistr's? The popular crossplattform podcastcher iPodderX has found a new name: Transistr:
Well, our dealings with trademark attorneys have taken far longer than expected, and we apologize for the delay. However, we're happy to announce that, yes, we finally have a new name!
After searching through the 3,000 or so entries we received, the new name is: Transistr
Audible Wordcast Service is now available together with a major relaunch of their website. Take a look, compare the basic and pro service, and don't miss out on the clever statement about "podcasting is just hot air".
John Federico, Sr. Director of Business Development Podcasting, was so kind to offer an interview on Wordcast back in December. Assuming his offer still stands - any questions you would like to ask him?
Allocine's podcast feed packages up movie trailers in iPod-friendly formats for its audience in the UK and Ireland. But Americans can now get them too. Gasp! Alert the MPAA! (Hat tip: MacMinute)
Ben Barren wrote an interesting piece about different aspects of the current podoshere.
While the focus of the article is on Adam Curry and Podshow, it also touches a point with the tools of podcasting I have great interest in at the moment: Can we please have easier tools for production and fetching podcasts? (I am happy to give out some suggestions.)
Ricky Gervais, who's best known in these parts for the UK version of the TV series "The Office", is also known to the Brits as a former radio host. He will reprise that role, according to Media Guardian, in a weekly podcast with his co-writer and former sidekick, to be made available on the Guardian web site.
Podcast Audience To Grow Ten Fold Over Next Five Years
Bridge Ratings: Podcasting audience to reach 45 million by 2010, up from an estimate of 4.8 million who have downloaded a show in 2005.
Bridge Ratings:
Growth in this nascent industry will accelerate quickly due to the rapid acceptance of the technology by the radio broadcast industry in 2005 and Apple's iTunes distribution. The study reveals that two different metrics define the podcast user universe: Weekly users and those that have ever downloaded and listened to a podcast.
Seems as if traditional media sees podcasting as a way to enrich their subscription sales and their brand. While the first two are free, the last one isn't - but to be honest: it would have been better if there would have been at least a teaser from the NYT. How else should I get to know that I want to subscribe to them?
Hats off to Doug Kaye, who earned the award from the Portable Media Expo as person of the year in podcasting. Podcast of the Year goes to Eat Feed, a podcast from creator and host Anne Bramley. Good to see a food podcast winning the big prize. Thought for sure it would go to a podcast in the tech category.
Lost Remote notes that three of the top five podcasts on iTunes are video podcasts in this order:
1. DigitalLife TV
2. Photoshop TV
Tiki Bar TV is in the fifth spot.
Hi My Name Is Mark is the podcast of Mark Hoppus, who was one-third of punk band Blink-182. Mark is up to episode 4, and spinning some of the bands he knows and likes.
Check out today's op-ed from Tom Friedman (if you have NYTimes Select) for commentary on China's podcasting scene:
Unlike earlier techno-media revolutions, which began in the West and moved East, the podcasting revolution is going to explode everywhere at once, thanks to the Web and free technology tools. That's why the next phase of globalization is not going to be more Americanization, but more "glocalization" - more and more local content made global.
If you are into daytrading, you might enjoy the Tip of the Day for Day Trading, Swing Trading, and Options Trading from www.daytradeteam.com. Although they are read out loud blog posts, the combination of podcast, blog entry and charts is compelling.
Podcast Academy presented by IT Conversations at the Portable Media Expo
The Podcast Academy is a new project to help podcasters, worldwide, acquire the skills and experience they need to improve their podcasts and pursue additional opportunities in audio recording and online production.
This entertaining new program will give SimonSays Podcast subscribers access to exclusive original interviews with bestselling authors, special features about the publishing industry, and excerpts from Simon & Schuster audiobooks.
Pointing out a free, Corante-hosted webcast series whose first installment will be taking place today at 1pm EST. Hosted by Stowe Boyd and Greg Narain, today's show provides an intro to podcasting on Windows with discussion of equipment, audio software and standards, formatting and editing, preparing for download, and promotion. Greg will also provide detailed examples from his well-known Beercasting show.
For more information on the show and info on how to tune in see this page. [Also, the show's sponsored by GoToMeeting - visit the page above and you'll find info on how to get a free trial for 30 days.]
LearnOutLoud.com, a portal site for audio and video learning products, has added a podcast section featuring shows with an educational slant. Their press release says that they're focused on podcasts that can be used as learning aids, and "all podcasts have been hand-picked to ensure quality of content and production."
LearnOutLoud.com, a portal site for audio and video learning products, has added a podcast section featuring shows with an educational slant. Their press release says that they're focused on podcasts that can be used as learning aids, and "all podcasts have been hand-picked to ensure quality of content and production."
iTunes mints podcast stars. The gist of it: stars are born, servers buckled, technical glitches abound but at the end of the day, most podcasters get a real kick from all the attention. Right? If you don't like the attention, can you please tell me why?
Pointing readers next door to Rebuilding Media, a just-launched new blog by Vin Crosbie and Bob Cauthorn that will dig deep into the forces and factors that are reshaping the media landscape. Says Vin, in the introductory post: "The news & information industry has largely lost touch with consumers’ needs, interests, and purses during the past 30 years. The rapid declines in newspaper readership, broadcast viewership, and cinema visitorship are among the evidence demonstrating this. The rapid increases in peer-to-peer file sharing systems, podcasting, and perhaps even citizen journalism, plus the very fact that more than 600 million people worldwide have gravitated onto the Internet despite their already having access to the old media, underline this..."
Evhead has announced on the Odeo Blog that the Odeo site is open for business. The podcast creating tools (in which I am most interested) aren't available yet. I'm looking forward to seeing them soon... --JD
Neville Hobson illustrates the impact the release of iTunes 4.9 is already having on "For Immediate Release", the podcast he and Shel Holtz produce, by noting its prominence in the stats of their hosting solution.
Jake Tapper interviews Steve Jobs on the ABCNews site, with a focus on podcasting and iTunes. One thing is for sure: if you ask Steve a question, there's a high probability that the answer will begin, "Well, you know..."
After a trial launch which FMQB calls "wildly successful," Clear Channel has announced it is accelerating its jump into podcasting. They'll add twelve more stations to their podcasting roster, in addition to ten which are scheduled to launch within a few days.
The first trial was with Z-100 in New York, and CC reports 20,500 hits on their "Phone Tap" segment from their podcast feed, streaming and one-off downloads in the first two weeks.
Odeo co-founder Evan Williams is interviewed in Playlist magazine. Included are Odeo screenshots, strategy, and a bit about his talk at Supernova this week.
MarketWatch: "BadFruit Inc. has released software that turns iTunes, the online music store run by Apple Computer Corp., into a podcast downloading machine." More here...
Greg Narain, next door at Get Real, discusses the implications of the debut of Del.icio.us' multimedia tagging: "...All we need to do now, really, is start to register our podcasts with del.icio.us and provide tags that are relevant to the conversation had. Now we're getting topical views of the podcasting space..."
KCRW, the Southern California public radio outlet which has been podcasting its original programming for a couple months now, has announced that their podcasts will be sponsored by SoCal Lexus dealers starting on October 31st. Reports that KCRW hosts each received an LX450 in the deal could not be confirmed.
In the last few days, I (Jeff) received a copy of Todd Cochrane's new book, Podcasting: The Do-It-Yourself Guide, published by Wiley as part of its ExtremeTech series. I requested the book from the publisher so that I could review for readers of this blog from my non-techie POV. I will post my review by the end of the month.
Dennis Kennedy, a nextdoor neighbor here at Corante, in a lengthy post entitled iPods and Time-shifting: Fair Use, Personal Use and the Digital Copyright Morass: "I’ve lately started to feel, as have others, that there is a certain common sense approach to the use of digital copyrighted materials that (1) reflects our normal expectations about what we should be able to do with a copyrighted work just to use it in ordinary ways that do not seem to hurt the author of the work and (2) recognizes that the more we try to stretch the notion of fair use to cover these normal uses, the more we risk fracturing the protections that the fair use doctrine does provide."
BusinessWeek's online edition has posted a special report on podcasting. It's a series of articles that survey the podcasting landscape and give a quick introduction to podcast listening that is quite suitable for the novice. BusinessWeek Online -> The Lowdown on Podcasting
Hey, remember Rush Limbaugh? He starts podcasting on June 3rd. It's assumed that he'll tie it in with his existing subscription service, as it's been with a number of other talk show hosts who are taking the plunge.
Some good stats from CNET: "In March 2005, approximately 77.2 million customers listened to music stored on a computer, up 22 percent from 63.2 million during the same month last year, according to a report from market researcher The NPD Group. The study also found that online radio stations had 53.5 million listeners this March, up from 45.3 million a year ago. Free streaming of music also saw gains, with a rise of 37 percent, to 46 million listeners."
Staci Kramer of PaidContent comments on KYOU's launch, detailing the hoops one has to jump through to listen to it, and saying the process "almost dares people to listen."
Just caught this bit of news in a press release that went out this morning: "BitPass Enables Premium Podcasts." The meat of it: "[BitPass] announced BitPass Unplugged(TM), a patent-pending, powerful new service that will give content providers the ability for the first time to charge for their podcasts..." More here...
Bill Gates says Mobile Phones will Kill the iPod -
"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," says Chairman Bill in a German Newspaper quoted in this Reuters Article. (Gates sees mobile phones overtaking iPods)
But don't think that Eric isn't planning new gigs. He's now planning a "Podcast and Videoblog Road Show," with Honolulu as his first stop. Now there's a good place to launch a road show. Where does the show go from there?
Dave Winer isn't the only podcaster who turns 50 this week. Disneyland celebrates its 50th anniversary May 3-5, and they're celebrating with a special podcast featuring "interviews, stories and other exciting events" direct from the Happiest Place On Earth.
Word, via Steve Rubel, that there's a book on podcasting by Todd Cochrane on the way. From Amazon: "Written by one of the first and most popular podcasters, Podcasting is the complete do it yourself guide that will have readers not only finding, downloading and listening to podcasts, but creating and broadcasting their own..."
Tod Maffin reports that the BBC will be expanding its podcast offerings from a small handful of weekly shows to as many as 20 more shows, including interviews from its Today show on BBC Radio 4. Combined with the launch yesterday of its Creative Archive site, this is a fair indicator that the Beeb is happily adopting new technology that extends the effective reach and shelf life of the content they control. Good show.
Kurt Hanson reports in his RAIN newsletter that "ASCAP seems to have completely removed any specific references to podcasts from the descriptions of the new (webcasting) licenses." Looks like we're back to square one on the music licensing front.
Marc Eisenstadt, a neighbor here at Corante, tips us off to the latest news from the team that's chronicling, via podcasts, their attempt to climb Everest.
Steve Gillmor on podcasting, the "syndisphere, and more
Steve Gillmor, in commentary on recent trends: "I’ve been constrained by NDA and negotiations from discussing podcasting too much in the months since I shelved the Gillmor Gang. But the notion that podcasting is an inefficient use of time, vulnerable to its inability to be skimmed, and no threat to the broadcast incumbents–feh. Just as the Syndisphere is upending print and online publishing, so is it taking on the rest of the media. No, it’s not destroying MSM. It is the new MSM. The users are in control, have been for months. The incumbents are burning up the emailosphere trying to corral this beast..."
From their press release today: "iPressroom... has added podcasting functionality to their application. The expanded capabilities are available to all organizations that currently use iPressroom to power their online media centers."
Reports Denise Howell, next door at Corante's Between Lawyers blog: "Adam Curry is testing beta podcasting software that PodShow eventually will be offering for Windows. Among other things, it sounds like it will encode the ID3 tags without fuss or muss for the user..."
iPodlounge interviews Ev Williams, formerly of Blogger and then Google and now of Odeo. Says Ev: "I don't think audio is necessarily a natural progression for most bloggers... Moreso, I think different people are attracted to different mediums. We're hearing from a lot of people who tried blogging and didn't necessarily take to it who are very excited about podcasting."
From a press release that just came across the transom: "WNYC, New York Public Radio today announced its launch of 'Podcasting @ WNYC,' a special web feature dedicated to helping listeners navigate the landscape of this rapidly growing technology... 'Podcasting @ WNYC' will provide visitors with quick access to the podcasts the station offers, as well as a simple "how-to" guide that de-mystifies the process..." More here...
Paris Hilton is podcasting. The world's most overexposed socialite will be talking about the media junket surrounding her new movie, "House of Wax". I know you're thinking what I'm thinking: will she use a breakout box with a condenser mic, or just a USB headset? The podcasting public wants to know.
Jade Walker, a Seattle-based author, has always had a passion for obituaries. Since beginning the obituary tribute site Blog of Death in 2003 she has published over 1,300 obituaries with over 10,000 tributes. Earlier this month, Blog of Death began podcasting audio obituaries as well. Get the feed.
Miss the first podcast from Senator John Edwards? Never fear, his One America Committee has pre-announced their second podcast which will be delivered April 20th. Get the feed.
Smart Feed: podcasting client for Microsoft Smartphone
Info on Smartfeed, an open source "iPodder-like" application for Microsoft Smartphone. Check out Smartfeed's website for details and to download the app.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on Austereo's embrace of podcasting. The company's directory of strategy: "We're very aware of the fact there's a growing generation of people who don't think radio when they think music and audio content..."
As reported in ClickZ, Warner Bros. is dipping its toes into podcasting by sponsoring the Eric Rice show. According to ClickZ, Warner Bros. will sponsor podcasts of the Eric Rice Show and provide exclusive audio content from one of its bands.
Another podcasting company launches - this time it's podcasting pioneer and evangelist Adam Curry with the debut of BoKu Communications. Says Curry in a CBS Marketwatch newsbrief: "We will be making investments in a number of shows and Podcasters so people won't be stuck in irons, not making enough to quit even half the day job..." See Podshow for more.
Alex Williams
Matt May
Nicole Simon
Roland Tanglao
