Podcastplayer.org news

Podcasts are a great way to learn stuff. Anyone who has listened to a few will know that. Which makes it a natural fit technology for education. Derek Morrison has been looking around for good sources of solid, informative, listenable, podcasts:

For this article I was particularly interested in tracking down podcasts and raw MP3 files with high production values. I know, there’s some real gems in amateur sites with access to limited production facilities or expertise, or in conference/presentation recordings, but some podcasts engage and involve because they have the listeners of the recording in mind and so ’speak’ to their particular audience.

The article contains a long list of podcast and web audio download sources. Some are “the usual suspects", like Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, but others (such as The Naked Scientist archive are more unusual.

Read the whole article at Auricle: Probing podcasting from the professionals

I’ve been looking at some of the software being produced to assist podcasting. One thing that seems relatively simple to implement, but I haven’t found in a podcasting tool yet, is any form of teleprompter. While I’m sure that some podcasters just ramble, others like to plan and pace their speech. Reading from a bit of paper or an on-screen document begins to get pretty clumsy.

Which is why I was impressed to read of the impending release of Vlog It! from Serious Magic . It’s a (slightly) cut-down version of their highly-regarded Visual Communicator 2 product, and they aim to sell it at just $99.

If/when this arrives, it’ll sure shake up the nascent podcast software market. Even if you discard the video side of it, it still looks like a cool podcast tool.

Among the usual run of announcements of new podcasts, new “the one central place to find podcasts” websites, and rants about how podcasting will spell the death of radio, I found the following article from Matt Hartley:

Ctrl-Alt-Del :: SIRIUS/XM and Podcasting - a long overdue match made in heaven

I can’t work out whether this is a really good idea that I just don’t understand, or whether this guy just misses the point completely. He starts fairly rationally:

Let’s face it, most broadcast stations don’t offer much selection in the talk radio realm. With this in mind, I have decided to take the bull by the horns and make SIRIUS aware that we are serious about this thing called Podcasting.

Fair enough. But then he seems to drift off. I was expecting something about informing broadcasters that podcasting is an important phenomenon, and that they ought to “get with the program” and podcast their own shows to reach a wider audience. Instead he takes a backflip and calls for broadcasters to replace (some of?) their existing programming with material from podcasts.

Those of you that would argue that this is not possible with traditional broadcast media are forgetting something very important - satelite radio. Whether it be SIRIUS or XM, each of us has an opportunity to shake the broadcast world to its very core.
. . .
if I have anything to say about it, we will see Podcasts broadcasted in the mainstream one way or the other.

I have to ask, why?

Podcasts already have a distribution medium, through which they can reach listeners all round the world. Why do they need another? As far as I can tell from my reading (and listening to the “On the Media” podcast), Sirius and XM are two (supposedly competing) pay-to-listen radio networks. Why would a listener want to pay to hear podcasts that they can already (a) get for free, (b) get any time they want, and © listen any time they want?

It’s not even as if each listener would get their own personalised choice of podcasts, either. The nature of broadcast media is that everyone gets to listen to the same thing. Podcasting is fundamentally “narrowcasting” - the passionate speaking directly to the interested.

There’s a load of good stuff on the radio already, but I never get to hear it, because it’s never on when I want to listen. I’m honestly baffled why Matt thinks that distributing podcasts by broadcast radio offers any advantages.

Alison Fish writes about experiences of listening to podcasts using iTunes without an iPod. A Fish: Podcasting without an iPod: Tiffany Shlain, iTunes

I hope (if she continues) that she will have more luck listening to podcasts with iTunes than I did. I’ve uninstalled it now. I’m still looking for a good podcast listening solution.

One important thing about podcasts that I found out soon after starting is that it’s irritating to find you are listening to one you have already heard. iTunes has a flag that indicates whether (and when) a track was listened to (good), but I could not find any way to manually set this flag (bad). I have a fairly extensive collection of podcasts, some of which I have already listened to. I loaded my collection into iTunes and it effectively wanted me to listen to them all again in order to set the flag. This seems crazy.

I also object to the way that iTunes installed monitoring software that runs all the time, eating CPU cycles and memory, even without an iPod, and the way it greedily claimed lots of filetypes for itself, despite the presence of at least half a dozen other media players on my system.

The final nail in the coffin was that it seemed to provide absolutely no support for any other form of MP3 player other than an iPod, so I was still left dragging and dropping podcast files from the iTunes repository to my generic portable MP3 player, and (guess what) still not getting that crucial “it’s been listened to” flag set.

Sigh.

About.com has a guide to buying MP3 players. Unfortunately it’s targetted much more at imagined pop music listeners than podcast listeners (and certainly not toward people who might want to record as well as listen.) I’m also slightly worried by the wooliness and inaccuracy of some of the information. For example the article states:

The first type of connection option, known as USB, is the more common one found today and is something supported by both PCs and Macs. It is also somewhat slower in regards to how quickly it transfers music from your computer to the player then the other standard, FireWire. FireWire however, is primarily supported only on Macs.

That’s somewhat disingenuous, as it fails to differentiate between more important speed considerations. Sure, USB1 is relatively slow, but USB2 and Firewire are effectively equivalent - they are both faster than any media player (that I know of) can transfer. And the article fails to mention that flash storage is almost always slower than hard drive storage.

Fundamentally an MP3 player good for listening to a bunch of short music tracks, is not the same as an MP3 player good for listening to podcasts, is not the same as an MP3 player used for listening to long, detailled classical pieces, is not the same as an MP3 player used for a mix of playing and recording, and so on. Any article that fails to even acknowledge such differences, let alone differentiate between different needs and features, is only of limited use.

Oh, and the article tried to open a pop-up.

Read the article at MP3 Players Buying Guide

If, like me, you find slashdot just too much to grasp, here’s a way to get an idea of what’s going on without having to face the site itself. Andy McCaskey is producing a regular 10-minute podcast summary of his picks from slashdot.

Brief, clear, and informative. Cool.

Read the latest podcast at Slashdot Review � Podcast 2005-02-25 or subscribe to a regular RSS enclosure feed, or BitTorrent feed

Jason Scott wants to collect “All” of the Podcasts. It’s a tall order, even now with (relatively) few coming out each day. His justification is interesting, though, and is framed in terms of historical research possibilities as much as a general mania for collecting.

There’s another justification, though, in terms of the “antiques and bygones” market. The general rule seems to be that the things that achieve high prices as antiques are those where very few are available. This usually arises from one of two main causes: either very few were made in the first place, or the great majority were considered transient and worthless, so were never kept.

Most modern media falls squarely into the second category. There are millions of web sites, billions of email messages, thousands of local papers and radio stations, all producing a huge quantity of output that is simply discarded as soon as it’s moment of glory is over. Even in the cases where archives are kept, it’s easy for them to be lost when the sponsoring organization can’t (or won’t) pay for storage any more, or when some accident or disaster destroys the archives.

This is added to the problem of storage media and formats. I have information on 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy discs, and can’t read them any more. I have information on 3.5-inch discs formatted for old machines, and can’t read them any more. I even have vinyl LPs and no deck to play them on.

The message is clear. Keep everything. Keep lots of widely separated copies, And keep transferring formats to make sure you can still access it.

Planning on recording/editing sound or video on your PC? It’s probably a good idea to spend a little time getting the machine tuned up first. There’s a bunch of useful tips at Optimize Your PC for Audio and Video

Remember, though. Backing up your system before doing anything like this is always a good idea.

Rex Hammock puts it very eloquently

Podcasting does not want to have a “central place.” The web hates central places. I use eBay as both a buyer and seller and believe me, I hate that it’s a central place as it is now a monopoly. Knowing what we know now, would early adopters of eBay say I want there to be a monopoly running the online auction market? I wish an open, distributed alternative to eBay existed.

I think I feel a similar uneasiness at announcements like Odeo and The Podcast Network. It’s the same old argument over and over again. It’s easy to make money if you have a stranglehold on something. But people who have experienced freedom of choice find that difficult to swallow.

The particular example is the world wide web. There are a lot of people who prefer to talk about it as if it’s all about big, corporate, worth-paying-a-premium-for, servers. But the web is actually a peer-to-peer system. Any machine with an IP address can be a server. Blogs, podcasts, and the like are part of this distributed peer system. To publish a website, blog or podcast, all you really need is a computer, an IP address and some bandwidth.

Sure, it’s nice to be able to find stuff. But if the content you publish is worthwhile, it will spread by word of mouth (or at least by word of link and blog). Blogs and podcasts especially can do this, because there is very little requirement for trust. People use eBay rather than some random website, because the consequences of a breach of trust could be quite severe (credit card fraud, non payments, etc.) If I read a blog I don’t want it’s usually no big deal, I just unsubscribe.

I predict that eBay will start to decline as soon as a popularly-acceptable, distributed, secure, trust network is in place. Consider web directories. Who uses the once-mightly Yahoo directory now that searching works reasonably well? The contrast the monolithic Amazon.com with a collaborative network of independent sellers like Abebooks.com.

Read more at rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s Weblog

Here’s someone doing something that I’ve thought about a lot, but never quite got around to. Reading childrens books as a podcast.

I read to my children a lot, and I enjoy it a lot, too. What has worried me about this idea, though, is the complications of copyright. If I were to read one of the hundreds of books that my kids love to hear, I’d probably be performing someone else’s copyright work. I don’t know enough about copyright law to know how this stuff applies.

Are specific retellings of classic tales covered by copyright? When and how does this sort of copyright expire? Are there some older books that it’s OK to read without repercusssions? Who owns the rights? Is there a way of contacting authors and/or publishers to get clearance? Does any of this really matter?

Read more, and listen to the podcasts at Reading to Rowan 4: The Three Little Bears

As an aside, I’d love to podcast some of the several versions we have of this well-known tale, I find the subtle differences intriguing.

Sascha Siekmann is working on a simpler way to make your own complete podcasts. It’s a standalone Windows application designed to allow easy recording (and re-recording, when you screw up!) of “segments", with or without background “beds". These segments can be live faded and mixed with prerecorded music while recording, and then automatically assembled into a final MP3. The application even includes FTP transfer and editing of accompanying text notes.

Read more (and listen to the introductory tutorial podcast) at Podcasting with Winpodcast

I have tried this software out, and it still has quite a few warts. I like to store my media content on a separate hard drive from my operating system files, but WinPodCast only understands drive C. I also found some strange behavior and error messages. When it worked, it was great, though. The live fading and mixing is much easier than the applications I have used for audio post-production in the past.

This is definately an application to watch - when Sascha gets the wrinkles out it could become the podcasting must-have. Sehr gut.

Hmm. releasing teasers, trying to stir up interest in the blogosphere, giving away an iPod?

Looks like another product launch is in the offing . . .

Read what little there is, at Odeo: Listen, Sync, Create

Giant Squid is a bit of a strange name for a company that makes tiny microphones, but they come recommended by Audio Activism, so they are definately worth a look.

Miniature Microphones and Accessories : Stereo Mono Omnidirectional and Cardioid

Here’s an interesting article that doesn’t mention podcasting, but throws some light on issues that I think are likely to grow in importance in the podcasting community in the near future.

I may have been slapped down for it, but I am still convinced that one of the many important reasons that people listen to podcasts is because they have no commercials. The following article raises this point too, but in the context of “subscriber radio":

XM Radio: What Exactly Is The Definition of Commercial-Free?

For me, the important thing about this article is not so much the corprate nit-picking about what legally constitutes a commercial, but the bit about how listeners think of commercials:

Well respected Radio consultant Mike McVay from McVay Media agrees and says radio stations:

“…run :15 promos, traffic commercials, weather commercials, sold and sponsored PSA’s, and community activity calendars that are sponsored. They do not count these as part of their commercial load. The listeners always count them as part of the commercial load. Listeners hear anything that is not music or entertainment as a commercial.”

Paul Maloney, editor of R.A.I.N. (Radio And Internet Newsletter) says, “My instinct tells me that MOST listeners would categorize ANY kind of announcements that interrupt music (or other programming) as ‘commercials.’”

Some interesting ideas about interactively filtering and re-aggregating podcast feeds to produce a lean-and-mean feed for automatic transfer to a player.

I want a web based podcast aggregator, but with a few extra features …

I want to browse a directory (populated via opml from ipodder.org) and sample podcasts (with an inline player something like this), save podcast feeds to my personal aggregator, from which I can add individual podcasts to a personal channel (my own custom RSS 2.0 with enclosures) which is sucked into my iPod.

Read more at: Surfarama - Podrolling

I’m sure we’ll see more of this. Just like we’ll see more podfade.

Finally … It’s really odd, but talk about needing a podcast production fix! It seemed like it had been forever since I’d been behind the mic. I feel much better now.

Read more at kevindevin.com - In the Trenches - 02-08-2005

Still looking around at good devices for listening to, and recording my own, podcasts. I found a mini-review of one at Webfeed Central - My New Toy

I bought an iRiver, yesterday. Not the really good, expensive one, but the iFP-190TC. Ever since I got it, i’ve been putting it through the normal tests of recording everything, all the time. I found a few places where I can’t use it, due to the ambient noise, but I learned a lot
. . .
I really like this thing. I can record up to about 18 hours on the lowest setting, and a hefty 4.5 hours at the highest setting. The internal mic is really sensitive and sounds good. That’s pretty important, because there is no input jacks on it. There is one rattling moving part that will get the super glue (or something) real soon. The eye that the lanyard connects to swivels. NOT a good idea for something that only has an internal mic.

This post has the feel of a sleeping giant awakening. General Motors (or at least one tiny part of it) is taking a sensible, evolution-not-revolution, approach to blogs, podcasts and vidblogs.

Definately seems the way forward: do a bit, learn from it, adapt it, do a bit more. What’s mildly surprising is that this is coming from a big corp, not from some geek in his spare room.

# Podcasts: GM is working on a 15 minutes-long weekly program.
# Video blogging: it’s ‘certainly something that is appealing’ to GM, but they want to make sure they ‘have plain old text blogging down’ before moving on to the next thing.

Read a bunch more analysis at Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs : Like large law firms, General Motors learning from its first blog

Excellent! More people pushing the assumptions about podcasts. This is not your grandma’s radio.

As promised in Sunday night’s audio post, here is also a recording of the rain [9MB MP3], as heard from my home in L.A. Now why on Earth would anyone want to hear that? Beats me - I just enjoy the sound of rain. Perhaps somebody’ll want to use it as sound effects for their own podcast, or play it in the background while you’re making love

Listen to this, and more, at Something that Happened

One of the reasons I started this site in the first place was to explore how well the current generation of Mp3 players support listening to podcasts, and what suggestions people have for improvements to data formats, player software, and player hardware.

As well as a wide range of PC-based players, I currently own two portable MP3 players. I don’t really consider either of the portable players really suitable for listening to podcasts, and their limitations are beginning to seriously grate. Logically enough, I’m now in the position of looking for a new player. And I’m both boggled by the huge range of available players, and stumped by how hard it is to find out if they are really suitable for podcasti playing.

I’ll say at the outset that I have little or no interest in listening to music. Even the popular Coverville podcast is too much music for my taste. I typically listen to podcasts in chunks of about 15 minutes each, so a player that picks up where I left off is vital. I’m also quite keen on using it for recording ad-hoc podcasts, so some form of microphone (built-in or pluggable) is highly desirable, too.

So, what players do other people use? How do they stack up for playing podcasts? I would love to hear from anyone with an opinion or suggestions.

Many thanks in advance

This had to come, sooner or later: podcast-specific hosting. It seems a neat idea, but it’s not easy to tell from the site exactly how simple and transperent their publishing system really is.

libsyn // podcasting made easy

As a side note, there is some discusion of what their “unlimited” bandwidth might actually mean at another site.

Several people have already commented on this, but I think its important to take a look at what’s going on in detail.

First we get the warm, cosy bit for the current podcast crowd (both producers and consumers)

By the end of 2005, our goal is to have 100 shows in TPN, with an average global audience of 100,000 listeners. We are going to spend the next 12 months building a slate of great shows and making it easy as possible for people to produce, distribute and listen to great podcasts.

This sounds great - more good stuff for me to listen to, more good tools to help me make and publish ‘casts. But is it all a bright, sparkly, future?

We’ll have to sign deals with media buyers and I’ll probably move to NYC to build the advertising sales team. I see an opportunity for us to negotiate distribution deals with vendors of mobile devices who are looking for great content to stuff them with. Are you a telco who is selling mobile phones and wants to provide a content deal to your customers?
. . .
We’re going to write some back-end software to help us stick ads into our shows.

So, we’re looking at podcasts with automatically-inserted ads in and deals with telcos (who, naturally enough, would probably prefer that if they are paying for stuff, then it’s not available to competitors for free). The lovely dream of a wide river of podcasts at the start of the post bas become polluted and fenced-in.

This is a whole different world from the “make it for love and give it away for free” nature of the current podcast ecosystem. One of the major things that distinguishes podcasts from radio and TV is the lack of ads. Put simply, I listen to podcasts because I do not want ads in my media. If that means getting my podcasts from elsewhere, that’s cool. If that means developing ad-filtering software for MP3s, that’s harder, but also cool.

And guess what, if the distributor is making money from the podcast content, then the creators are going to want a slice. How much is selling out to “the man” worth, these days?

Maybe those millions of future listeners and creators will feel differently, if they enter podcast-space after the 2004/5 “season of love". But maybe they’ll be even more adamant.

Read the whole thing at cameronreilly: The vision for The Podcast Network

Interesting thoughts about how podcasting has spread and prospered, possibly because it has not been committeed and marketed and press-released.

When I first started I was being completely selfish, I didn’t imagine loads of people listening; I concentrated on talking with a single person. I was podcasting because I liked to, it made me feel good; kind of like in The Sims when you make your character paint he gains points, or whatever they are. Since I’m not an engineer I felt no need to research, collect, parse-though and debate over what technological implementation would better fit podcasting.

I’m sure there are lots of us who tend naturally toward over-analysing, tinkering, and procrastinating. Podcasting, like blogging, only begins to really make sense once you actually do it. No amount of conference presenstations and pontificating really express what it feels like.

Read more at Northwest Noise: No Corporate Marketers and Rex Hammock

I’ve been wondering recently how other people record their podcasts. Idly browsing found me this, where “Mr Blake” points out that an iPod can be used for recording as well as playing, using a gadget called “iTalk". I don’t own an iPod, and this possibility is something that simply hadn’t occurred to me. Cool.

See Mr. Blake’s ClassBlog :: Cool Classroom Tech Tool and Griffin Tehnology iTalk

More people getting into the podcast production services market. They seem to have a comprehensive portfolio of products and services. I’d love to hear from anyone who has used them.

We are a one-stop shop for custom podcasting production: phone conferencing and recording, editing, production, royalty-free music, flash, graphics, web design, hosting, RSS feeds, BitTorrent support, and transcriptions!

Read more at PWOP Productions - www.pwop.com

Another podcast directory and portal.

Several people and groups are setting these things up now, but how many can the community support? here’s bound to be a shakeup coming.

Podcasting News

Here’s a fairly common complaint about podcasts.

the musings of Brandon Jaynes :: I’ve Been Wrong Before

I can sympathise. I started the same way, picking a few podcasts in areas that I was familiar with. I also found them (on the whole) deathly dull.

One trick that I have found is to deliberately choose topics that I know nothing about. My top recommendation at the moment is definately KnitCast. I have absolutely no interest in knitting, yet I found this podcast fascinating and informative (as well as very well produced and easy to listen to). There are plenty of others.

Another trick is to listen to podcasts away from the computer. I know I can’t help myself flipping through things on my browser, feedreader and email, or tinkering with some project I’m working on, whenever I try to listen to podcasts at the computer. Inevitably, concentration slips, and I “zone out” of the podcast, to come back a few seconds (or minutes) later having lost the context of the ‘cast. On the other hand, if I listen while walking, driving, waiting for a take-out meal, or whatever, I have very little to distract me, and can gain much more from the podcast.

Brandon, if you read this, please try again.

A very professional-looking “portal” offering a directory of podcasts, podcast software, voting, and forums. I’ve not dug very deep in here yet, but it seems it should be worth the effort.

See more at PodcastAlley.com – Podcast Directory : The place to find Podcasts

These look fairly neat - apparently painless shareware tools for splitting and joining MP3 files. They are not very expensive and seem straightforward enough. Has anyone used either of them for podcasting?

Direct MP3 Joiner is easy and fast tool for merge MP3 files. With Direct MP3 Joiner you can join multiple MP3 files to one larger MP3 file. You can merge your MP3 files without recompressing and without reducing quality. Direct MP3 Joiner has incredible feature that allows you to insert pauses between songs. We have tried to make Direct MP3 Joiner as easy as possible.

Direct MP3 Splitter is an easy to use tool to split MP3 files. Direct MP3 Splitter allows you to split, cut or trim a MP3 files and save results into new MP3 files. A build-in MP3 player let you listen, playback and then split. Also you can automatically split a MP3 file into equal-sized parts. The program can quickly split larger MP3 files without reducing quality.

Read more at: PistonSoft

Alan at CogDogBlog, a very thoughtful fellow, who I have referenced a few times in my other blog, takes on the idea of podcasting:

Podcasters, take note- you put a lot of time and effort into the recording, but you are not serving a wider feed audience without a decent text summary in the feeds.

In an ideal world, I gues this would be true. Unfortunately Alan is missing out on one major aspect of podcasting, presumably because he usually listens to podcasts at a computer. I don’t know the figures (does anyone?) but there is a large proportion of podcast listeners who use “podcatcher” software such as iPodder. This software grabs the enclosures from podcast feeds, and silently discards any accompanying notes. That makes sense, because the ultimate destination of the audio files is probably a portable audio player with no way of showing the notes.

With no way to view notes, podcast creators steeped in that environment are less likely to value the effort in providing text notes.

My personal take on this is that all media downloads should include optional, flexible metadata as part of the media enclosure. This metadata should always accompany the media file on its travels, render for view as text where appropriate, and inform the operation of player software (for example by populating “chapter” buttons) where appropriate. This approach is one of the huge advantages of DVD over VHS, and we need it for other media files.

Read Alan’s article at cogdogblog: Podcaster Request: Feed With a Summary

Here’s another Flash podcast player. This one’s smarter than most - it allows you to choose “playlists” each containing several podcast feeds, then scroll through a list of feeds to play. It’s got that smooth Flash look to it, and it’s a reasonable and simple way to listen to podcasts if (a) you don’t mind waiting by your computer and (b) you don’t want to keep a copy.

It’s got play/pause and track skip, but it still doesn’t seem to support any kind of advanced navigation or bookmarking within a ‘cast, and by taking this route you miss out on any accompanying notes that may have been provided in an accompanying blog article.

To fully enjoy what podcasting is all about do you think you need an iPod. I would say not. Preseting PODCAST JUKEBOX !!! A one of its kind where in your can tune into recently updated 100 podcasting events right here. So get your headphones ready and sit back and relax.

Podcast Jukebox @ Search 4 RSS :: The RSS Engine

This is a neat idea. A podcast poetry readings magazine. I listened to the first one, where Sherri asks for submissions, and then reads three of her own. The poetry was interesting, although I guess I would have preferred a slightly more measured reading, to allow time for the nuances of the words to settle in before rushing on to the next.

Still, a good start, and she’s keen on submissions in text or MP3 format, so I should really get of my lazy swivel chair and record some of my own so you can all poke fun at my reading style too :) maybe I’ll get something in the second edition.

Read/Listen at Plain Clothes Poetry

There’s a lot of good thoughts going on in this post about how to refer to excerpts of podcasts. Options offered include QuotePlay, a little flash appet for playing fragments of audio files, and the use of customised/extendable “playlists". The state of the art in podcast referencing is obviously improving, but there’s a long way to go before it’s as easy as “blog this!".

Read the article at: [blog.forret.com]: QuotePlay and portable SMIL

My wife was just complaining about the awful quality of our local morning radio (which we have set to switch on as a wake-up alarm). This, in turn led me to think about how podcasting may be out-evolving radio, and what sort of difference waking up to some queued-up podcasts might make.

I’m not sure I would want to wake up to some of the more thoughtful podcasts I subscribe to - I like to be a little more awake and post-coffee for that. Then it occurred to me, podcasting alarm sounds.

Imagine ~ ~

Do you have trouble waking up? Do you always sleep through your alarm clock? Does it all sound just too boring?

Subscribe to our Random Alarm Podcast and get a new surprise every morning. Our top team of researchers spend the whole day napping just to test out new alarms for you. We guarantee you’ll never get cozy and famailiar with these wacky sounds . . .

It should actually be really easy to set up a web site where people can upload short sound samples, and pipe a random pick from the collection out as a daily feed. All listeners need to do is ensure that the newest alarm sound is the first ‘cast in the player each morning, and waking up will never be dull again.

If Anyone does this, please let me know (ZZZzzz…)

Although this article doesn’t mention podcasting, it is another good example of how distributing media content using BitTorrent can make real sense. In this case it is concentrating on “time-shifting” TV programs by adding a plugin to a BitTorrent client (Azureus) to scan RSS feeds like a typical podcatcher. The twist that makes this clever is that it also includes searching (although I might prefer to call it filtering) - only RSS entries that match your supplied search patterns are downloaded. This differs from most podcatchers, which seem designed to bring down all the latest RSS enclosures, whatever they contain.

As far as I can tell, if you follow this advice, but set it to point to a prolific podcast site (for example IT Conversations) with a search filter for your particular interests, you should be able to automatically download only the ‘casts that you are interested in. Neat.

I can really see this approach taking off in the future. Currently podcast feeds are like the early days of email - when a new one arrives, it’s exciting, and you listen to it just to see what it is about. Before long, there will be so many that we’ll all need to filter them before they go to the the podcastplayer. Filtering by name (as the technique described here seems to do) is a first step, but categories and tags (a.k.a Ontologies and Folksonomies) would add much more flexibility in selecting what we really want to hear.

Read the how-to at: How-To: BroadCatching using RSS BitTorrent to automatically download TV shows - Engadget - www.engadget.com, but read the comments as well. Apparently getting this running is not all plain sailing.

Long, somewhat dry and academic, but detailled, analysis of developments in communication and marketing technology. Seems longer than it is because he uses such a tall, skinny, web page layout. Grrr. I really do not get on with fixed-width page design that leaves 70% of my browser window as useless white space… Anyway:

This move to “1-to-1″ marketing – the holy grail for marketers – would be cost prohibitive if it weren’t for Internet technologies, which offer cheap, fast and effective communications.

Read (a lot) more at iaocblog :: Toward a New Communications Model

A lot of web sites have a fairly dry definition of podcasting, in somewhat abstract terms. Hell, I have one myself. here’s a different take - definition as narrative …

Its late and you have had a long day. Just before you go to sleep, you drop your iPod into its cradle. The next morning when you wake up, your iPod is full of the latest content from your friends’ audio blogs. Now you are traveling to work and you can scroll through all new content. Yuch, that music sucks. *delete*. Hmmm. cool lecture about why life is purposeless. Hey, here is a very funny song my x-girlfriend would like. Long day. Just before you go to sleep, you drop your iPod in its cradle. . .

Read more at: Julia Set

I just chanced on this. Some really interesting reflections on the possible directions mass vidblogging and podcasting might take, particularly in the realm of protest and social action.

One thing that occurred to me while reading this is that blogging/casting from a mobile while at the scene has one big advantage over traditional newsgathering. There’s no film or tape to confiscate. However heavily someone may try to suppress the reporting, once something has been blogged, the cat is out of the bag.

Of course, in the cynical world of propaganda this may lead to fake or “staged” situations being set up as a kind of “honey trap” for blog/activists. Imagine what might happen if a smear team set up a lookalike for a political enemy in an apparently compromising situation, and waited for the gossip to spread.

Deep questions about what can you trust.

Read the article at: Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth: When Mobile Podcasting Leads to Mobcasting

I don’t use Blogger myself, but for those who do this looks like a neat tutorial on how to set up a podcast feed by combining options in Blogger and FeedBurner.

[blog.forret.com]: How to Podcast with Blogger and SmartCast

Following my article a few days ago about using bittorrent for podcast delivery, I found a site that claims to do just that: DownloadRadio.org Your Talk Radio Download Resource

He’s quick to make the distiction between podcasting about business, and podcasting as part of business. This blog entry is, of course about business. With that in mind , this article begins to cover some suggestions about delivery of time-sensitive, private information via podcast. Worth thinking about.

The Social Customer Manifesto: Podcasting For Business

Following my post yesterday about problems with licencing commercial music for podcasts, I thought I’d trawl around and find some of the alternatives that are available. This time, I’m concentrating on full tracks or albums sold as “royalty free” (also known as “copyright free” or “buyout“) - maybe another time I’ll look at Creative-Commons-style options, or loop-n-sample collections for making your own music. So, in no particular order, here are some places to look for music (and sometimes also sound effects) that you can buy for use in your productions (podcasts, natch, but also videos, powerpoints, training sessions, commercials, and so on) with no extra fees (*):

• AKM Music - wide range of CDs an CD-ROMs of music and sound effects, from GBP 29.00 per CD. Also do individual commisions.
• Royalty Free Music - wide range of CDs (or optional WAV or MP3 downloads) from USD 99.95 per CD or USD 49.95 per track
• Trackline -small range of “budget” CDs from GBP 19.95, wide range of CDs or CD-ROMs from GBP 28.20. listen to excerpts online
• NVM Digital - 20 albums of CDs and CD-ROMS from GBP 14.95. Claim “Video Camera Best Buy for three years in a row”
• Total Image and Sound - range of albums at AUD 82.50 and AUD 104.50
• Chris Worth Productions - range of CDs from USD49.99 to USD169.97, or tracks from USD 14.99 to USD 29.99. Horrible flash site that feels like staring through a letterbox.
• royalty-free.tv - range of individual tracks in various lengths and formats from USD 17.50 to 29.50
• Mad Hat Music - six one-hour CDs for GBP 27.00 each. some small samples to listen to before buying
• Flying Hands - range of CDs from USD 75.00
• 2B Royalty-Free - seem to have two CDs at USD65 each
• YoPo Music - various CDs at GBP39.99
• KJA - one “special offer” CD of ’70s guitar music at USD 25
• Shockwave Sound - this one’s a bit different, they offer only MIDI tracks rather than the more usual WAV, MP3 or CDA. Tracks priced at USD 29.95 each. On-line previews available
• Partners in Rhyme - wide range of short cuts and longer pieces. CDs seem to be USD 59.95
• The Music Bakery - wide range of variety CDs at USD 69.95 and specific topics at USD 149.95. Claim they were voted number one by “Video Systems Magazine". Long commercial/sampler plays every time you go to their home page.
• Opuzz - large range of short/medium tracks and cuts priced individually from about USD 3 to USD 15. Also available by the DVD-full for USD 599!
• IA Music - wide variety of categorized tracks at USD 55 each
• MagnaTune - variety of tracks with a complicated interactive licencing system, prices vary depending on what you wnat to do with the music.
• CSS Music - wide range, CDs from USD 59.99, discounts for buying bundles of CDs, or the whole library of 10,000 music and effects tracks on a firewire disc drive for USD 1995
• Unique Tracks - variety of CDs and small sets from USD 99, and bundles from USD 340
• RoyaltyFree.com - selection of 12 CDs of instrumental music from USD 39.95 per CD, discounts for bundles
• Stock Music - varietry of CDs from USD 99.95, tracks from USD 29.95, or the whole kaboodle on DVD for USD 599.95
• Crank City - Cds and sets from USD 99 or 25 CD bundle for 549.45
• Music 2 Hues - wide selection of production music in short cuts and longer track lengths, CDs from USD 48, sound effects CDs from USD 19.95, bundles up to USD 795
• Royalty Free Downloads - wide variety, even some with singing. Backgrounds from USD 5.99, Song tracks from USD 39.95
• Sound Ideas - large range of music and effects sold mostly in bundles ranging from USD 125 to USD 5995
• Fresh Music - wide range of whole-track CDs. Single CDs USD 59.99, or five for USD 99
• Radio Mall - sixteen CDs, som mostly full tracks, some shorter cuts. Single CDs USD 39.95, any four for USD 99, or all 16 for USD 299
• Primary Elements - selection of themed CDs from USD 39 to USD 69
• Media Tracks - selection of single tracks for USD 12.99, discounts for bulk. Some sound effects to download for free, too.
• Accent Music - MP3 single tracks from USD 4.95, CD collections from USD 54.95
• SoundFX.com - Primarily s source of sound effects (duh), but also have a selection of royalty-free music in a range of styles and prices. You’ll need to poke around their web site yourself to find out much more.
• Webtones Music - innovative self-publishing marketplace where composers/performers put up their own music and (it seems) set their own prices. Prices by track (with good preview facilities) but seem to be typically around USD 20.
• Pro Background Theme Music - 25 CDs in a varieties of styles from USD 79.95
• Liquid Cabaret - 20 various CDs at USD 59 each or USD 495 for the lot

I’m sure there are others, but this lot should get you started!

(*) Of course I can’t say this with any authority. Please double-check their “small print” against what you plan to do with the music.

I know I’m never going to be a Hollywood big shot, but I’m really enjoying working through the podcasts at Filmmaking Central. I’ve listened to one about getting started with scriptwriting, and one about budget ranges so far, and I’ve got half a dozen more queued up.

There’s a real sense that the speaker knows what he’s talking about, even when he slips and hints that only movies with a budget over $5,000,000 are “real” movies :). My only small gripe is that the sound level of the introduction/title sequence is considerably higher than the spoken part, so I have to fiddle with my player to turn it up, then get blasted out by the next intro. This may have been fixed in later ‘casts, but if not, I suggest taking a look at the levels.

Hmm. I’m not sure if this is really a podcast or just some streaming audio attached to a page. I couldn’t find an easy way to download the audio, but I didn’t exactly try very hard.

Free Traffic Tips - the blog: [Audio Post of the Day]

In this mini-cast:

* Overview of Google Tuesdays
* Improving Keyword Rankings in Google at websearch.about.com.
* A GREAT podcasting site to visit.
* What special event starts tomorrow on Webmaster Wednesday?
* Huge update to Marketing Success with RSS is uploading as we speak - it’s almost double the size of the original.
* Will there be a video here in the next couple of days?

I’m pretty interested in web sites and traffic (and have strong opinions on some of the suggestions you find on the web), so I hoped I’d get a lot from this “mini-cast", but I’m afraid I found it really dull. Most of the audio seemed to simply be a re-reading of the list of contents from the web site, and the rest was an uninspiring slog through some stuff that would have made much more sense as text on a web page.

I’m not completely spoiled on this site - the narrator did hint that she was having problems with the audio on this one - but I sure hope the next edition has more to recommend it.

I’ve seen this reported in several places now:

About one in ten American adults now use a portable MP3 player, pushing the potential audience for podcasts up to over 22 million in the US alone.

A recent poll of Internet users by Pew/Internet found that 11% of American adults have iPods or other MP3 players. Pew suggests that there are several million more MP3 players owned by teens, who were not surveyed.

This is an interesting report, but I’m wary of the casual way that it seems to equate owning an MP3 player with being a potential audience for podcasts. I’m sure these people count as a potential audience for downloaded music tracks, but as I point out at my main web site, most MP3 players are decidedly unsuitable for playing podcasts. Worse than that, though, is that it’s almost impossible to find out whether a particular player is a shining podcast star, or a dull black hole.

Based on my experience, most of the people surveyed would probably find podcasts so clumsy to transfer, play, and listen to that they’d give up and go back to their pirated pop songs.

Read more at: Podcasting News: Portable Media Player Audience Balloons to 22 Million

I love the variety you find on the internet these days. Early blogs were mostly about blogging, and early podcasts were mostly about podcasting, but now things are settling down and we can get podcasts about things people are actually interested in. Like knitting.

There’s an area of your work with fungi which has inspired you in your knitting - can you tell us more?

Fantastic.

Well produced, surprisingly intelligent and interesting, and nice to get a change from the American accents in most podcasts I’ve been listening to recently.

KnitCast: First Edition of KnitCast Ready to Download!

I have just been listening (or at leat trying to listen) to First Crack 30. More Washboard, Less Cowbell, a podcast from Garrick Van Buren. I’m afraid I gave up.

I’d normally be the last one to complain about “production values", but this was recorded while driving, in a noisy vehicle, with the car stereo on in the background. The external noise really is intrusive. If ever there was a case for a noise-cancelling mic setup, this is it. Unfortunately, the content didn’t seem to offer any hooks to keep me interested either. The accompanying post seemed to promise some hilbilly washboard playing, but none was in evidence in the bit I listened to, just a somewhat choppy edit of repeated sections from some sort of anecdote.

Back when there were only a very small number of podcasts available, I might have soldiered on, but not this time.

Sorry Garrick.

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about alternatives to searching as a way to find content on the internet. Some people prefer a rigid approach, and group things into predefined categories (imagine a library catalog, where every book is assigned a Dewey Decimal code). Others take a looser approach and allow arbitrary “tags” to be attached to items, assigning them with no particular meaning, but allowing easy fetching of all items with similar tags. The first, rigid, technique is often known as a “taxonomy” approach, and the second technique is sometimes also known by the new term “folksonomy".

Both these techniques have their advantages and disadvantages, but one of the significant advantages of folksonomies is that they are relatively easy to implement in web applications. With this in mind, it’s interesting to read that podcast.net, the self-styled “podcast directory” has implemented a combined taxonomy and tagging approach to categorizing its podcasts.

From the article it’s not too clear whether each feed or each individual podcast gets the tags, or whether there’s some sort of over-ridable “inheritance” of tags from feed to podcast. It’s also not clear whether they have embraced the full power of folksonomies by allowing arbitrary listeners/reviewers to assign their own tags to feeds or ‘casts, in addition to those assigned by the creator.

I think this could eventually evolve into useful stuff, but it seems a bit hazy at the moment.

Read the article at Podcast.net…now with TAGS!

Podcasting is still just a baby, and already people are put off from having a go by the quality of some of the stuff out there. Steven Phenix writes:

But I don’t want to podcast and that’s due to Shel Holz and Neville Hobson. For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report–the dynamic duos’ now bi-weekly podcasts, are so well produced that the barrier to entry is insurmountable.

I could never match the quality, so I won’t even try. 8-)

I predict we’ll see this more and more. With Blogging there are a lot of tools that let you just rattle your thoughts into a text box without worrying about the quality or complexity of the web site that results (hell, I’m using one to type this). But podcasting is still very “manual". As I’m sure I’ve said before, current podcasting is a lot like making a web site by typing all the HTML into notepad. People are working on the equivalent of FrontPage (or at least HotMetal), but until we get the likes of Blogger or WordPress, people will still be put off by the scale of the problem.

Read Steven’s article at Phenix Rising: Steven Phenix’s Blog: Hurray for Hobson and Holtz