Pocket HD Video Recording

By Mack D. Male · February 2, 2007 at 11:54pm

In the marketing presentation I gave on Monday I mentioned that podcasting will increasingly take advantage of advances in mobile devices, as well as high definition recording. When I put that idea into my presentation, I was thinking about the mobile and high def parts separately, but if this little video camera is any indication, they might come as a package deal:

The research kids in Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute just announced a tiny new video camera capable of shooting at a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and a variable frame rate up to 60 frames per second.

Pretty damn intense. The camera will be on display at CeBIT in March. I can just imagine the possibilities a small, high quality camera such as this would make possible. Bring it on!

Read: Engadget

Marketing Presentation Audio

By Mack D. Male · January 30, 2007 at 5:44pm

Last night I gave a presentation on podcasting & marketing to students taking MARK 450 (Electronic Marketing) at the University of Alberta. I covered “what is podcasting”, Podcast Spot, some podcasting statistics, podcasting and its effects on marketing, and finished with some final thoughts. The presentation went very well and the initial feedback was very positive, so I hope the students got something out of it. I enjoyed talking to them!

We recently purchased some digital voice recorders and they arrived just yesterday afternoon. They are Olympus WS-100′s, and last night we tested them for the first time by recording my presentation. In general I’m pretty happy with them. We had one at the back of the room and one on the table in front of me. The far away recording isn’t so great, but the close range recording is quite good.

So if you’re interested, you can listen to my presentation here. The only editing I did was to remove the questions (as I didn’t have permission to post them). Otherwise it’s a straightforward recording. You can look in the show notes to see the time codes for the major topics I covered. I don’t know why, but it sounds like I was sniffling quite a bit – apologies for that!

If you have questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. I’m not going to post the slides here, but if you’re interested in them, feel free to email me.

Read: MasterMaq’s Podcast

HillaryClinton.ca Podcast

By Mack D. Male · January 28, 2007 at 6:39pm

Today I am launching a new little project of mine – a podcast about Hillary Clinton and her run at the White House. Each Sunday I’ll post a new episode with a recap of the previous week’s Hillary-related headlines. You can listen to the first episode here.

I’ll also use the podcast to test and demonstrate some of the features available at Podcast Spot. For now it’s just audio, and the weekly recap will likely remain that way, but I might do some additional episodes in the future. As I mention in the first episode, there’s about 92 weeks to go until the election. Wouldn’t it be cool if I got to interview Hillary Clinton herself during that time? Highly unlikely, but you never know.

The first episode was recorded pretty quickly this morning, so production quality might not be spectacular. I’ll work on it though. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear it!

Read: Episode 1

Thoughts on Digg Podcasting

By Mack D. Male · January 27, 2007 at 7:03pm

Over at Geek News Central today Todd Cochrane had some harsh words for Digg’s newest feature, their podcast portal. Most of his argument is based on the traffic he apparently isn’t receiving from Digg:

Lately though I have come to the conclusion that for all the traffic Digg gets very little if any of that traffic in the way of downloads or pure referals [sic] comes from that site.

He goes on to offer some advice to podcasters:

My advice to podcasters is this, look at the directories you are listed in and figure out if they are doing anything to build your audience or giving you equal exposure on the front of their respective websites. If they are not find sites that are and support them in your shows.

That plan of attack might have worked when podcasting was just getting started, but we’re beyond that now. I would suggest that podcasters do in fact add themselves into Digg’s directory, flawed as it might be. Why pick one directory over another? The idea isn’t to play favorites, it’s to help the audience find what they want, wherever they might be looking. There’s more to being in a directory than just getting listed on the front page.

As for Digg’s podcast portal, here are my thoughts:

The way you add a podcast into the directory sucks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and the feedback you get is really unhelpful.
Only iTunes-compatible feeds may be added into the directory. Why Digg felt the need to perpetuate Apple’s hegemony is beyond me.
It would be better if episodes had a “front page” as well, instead of just podcasts. Right now you can only look at episodes for a particular podcast.

The podcast section of Digg hasn’t been around very long, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be making changes over time. There’s definitely room for improvement, but the directory is not useless.

Read: Geek News Central

Podcasting will win big thanks to the iPhone

By Mack D. Male · January 9, 2007 at 8:16pm

The iPhone has already had a big impact on the technology industry, what with the stock prices of both RIM and Palm falling sharply today, and it will continue to have an impact over the next couple years. Certainly when it launches this summer, we’ll find out if all the hype is justified. And there will most certainly be copycat designs.

In any case, I think the launch of the iPhone bodes well for podcasting.

Apple describes the iPhone as “a breakthrough Internet communications device” thanks to its support for Wi-Fi and EDGE. We know that it runs OS X under the hood, and that it supports Widgets. It isn’t entirely clear just yet if it’ll be possible to get a podcatcher running on the iPhone, at least from everything I have read, but the idea certainly seems plausible.

Apple’s iPhone will let you walk around with Wi-Fi Internet access in your pocket. Even if it can’t podcatch all by itself, other device manufacturers and future editions of the iPhone most certainly will. The iPhone will open up the “pocket Wi-Fi device floodgates”, so to speak.

Heck, maybe it will even prompt Microsoft to open up the Zune’s Wi-Fi capabilities.

It might not be apparent for quite a while, but I am confident that the iPhone will have nothing but a positive impact on podcasting.

Thirsty for Podcasting News in 2006

By Mack D. Male · December 19, 2006 at 6:06pm

Google released their annual zeitgeist for 2006 recently, and the top searches proved to be quite different than those found on Yahoo’s annual listing. Google’s top ten terms are mostly technology-related, while Yahoo’s are entertainment-related.

Also different were the news searches. Coming in at number four on the top searches for Google News is podcasting! Who knew so many people were interested in learning about what is happening in the podcasting industry!

Here are my favorite podcasting news sites:

I also subscribe to a bunch of search feeds, and news feeds from individual companies too. And every now and then you get some news from more general sites like TechCrunch or Digg. I thought this list would have been longer though. Perhaps there is room in the news space for podcasting?

Read: Google Zeitgeist

Boring podcasts are not the answer!

By Mack D. Male · December 12, 2006 at 8:37pm

Another day, another educator fighting podcasting because she fears students will not attend class. Liz Dreesen is a general surgeon lecturing at the University of North Carolina, and her students have asked her to podcast her anatomy lectures. She doesn’t want to do it:

I want the medical students also to learn the importance of presence, to attend our anatomy lectures, to see us in the flesh and not podcast, so they can begin to be doctors, not just technicians and knowers-of-facts.

She makes a really good argument about medicine being a “contact sport” that requires physical presence. So what to do about the attendance problem?

Podcasting consultant Leesa Barnes says the answer is to make the podcasts “boring as heck”:

In other words, make the video podcast so boring that students will use it as a backup and not as a replacement. That’s the way to provide convenience for students without sacrificing class attendance.

Sorry Leesa, but I think that advice is just plain dumb. Lectures are boring enough as it is.

I don’t know about you, but when I shell out hundreds of dollars to attend a technology conference, I do so because of the people I will meet, not the content being discussed. Sometimes the content is boring, sometimes it’s interesting, but the interaction with other people is always worth paying for.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of shelling out hundreds of dollars for a university lecture. I do it because I am required to in order to get that piece of paper that says I graduated. Things could be different though. In my six years of post secondary experience, I have learned that more often than not, lectures are simply boring and don’t allow for much interaction. This needs to change.

The answer to the attendance problem then, is to provide for interaction in the lectures. I don’t mean reading lecture notes and then allowing students to ask questions at the end, but real interaction. The same kind of interaction I pay for at the technology conferences. And of course, podcast it all. Make the podcasts as interesting as possible, so that students who watch them later can’t help but wish they were there.

With all that interaction going on, there will be less time to get the boring but required information across. So record it ahead of time, and make the podcasts (boring information + class interaction) an integral part of the course. If they are considered required material, they won’t be seen as replacements for class. Tell students to watch the podcast and then come to class and discuss it.

For the most part I think the way our education system works is, for lack of a better adjective, crappy. Podcasts and other emerging technologies might enable us to make some positive changes, but only if we use them correctly.

Read: Podonomics

Google tests Audio Ads for radio…but why?

By Mack D. Male · December 8, 2006 at 12:27pm

Google started testing their radio advertising service, dubbed Google Audio Ads, today. It’s one of the hottest topics in the blogosphere right now. We have known about it for a long time, and it sounds really great (in terms of the technology), but I still don’t get it. Let me explain.

Given this:

The radio industry won’t want to hear this. Advertising dollars are shifting online faster than analysts anticipated. In fact, advertisers will soon spend as much money on the Internet as they do on the airwaves, according to a newly released eMarketer study.

Why this?

Google Inc. has started testing a long-awaited radio advertising service…[that] will help sell advertising on more than 700 radio stations in more than 200 U.S. metropolitan markets. Google hopes to eventually sign up more than 5,000 stations, according to documents shown potential advertisers.

I can think of two potential reasons:

Google wants to ease the transition for traditional advertisers looking to move online.
I don’t know how good an argument this is, given that so many companies are already advertising online. It does make a certain amount of sense though.
It’s not about radio at all. This is really Google’ first baby step towards rich media advertising on the web.
Obviously, this is the reasoning that I prefer. Bring on audio ads for podcasting!

I suppose another alternative would be that Google feels there is still enough money to be made in radio advertising that it’s worth trying. My gut feeling though is that Google Audio Ads are destined for something far beyond just radio.

Pluggd is cool, but not yet perfect!

By Mack D. Male · December 7, 2006 at 11:47am

Exaggerations make for good headlines, but often are less than accurate. VentureBeat ran a post last night about audio and video search startup Pluggd, announcing that the company has raised $1.65 million in funding. The post also says that Pluggd declared it has “perfected the user experience” for audio and visual search. This morning, I came across this NewTeeVee post that sets the record straight:

While we like what Pluggd is doing, that’s a bit of an overstatement.

Video search is often attempted by analysis of the soundtrack, rather than the picture, and we expect that’s what’s going on here. But mainly, we take issue with the claim that anyone has “perfected the user experience” in this area, because a big part of user experience is having a product that works.

Writer Liz Gannes goes on to explain the obvious – that speech recognition technology is far from perfect (though it is getting better). I’m fairly certain that audio and video search will be perfected eventually, but not we’re not there yet.

To their credit, Pluggd commented on the NewTeeVee post:

Matt’s coverage of our technology on venturebeat.com is one of the most thoughtful and complete descriptions of our technology that I’ve seen, but I was also a little startled when I saw the word “perfected”.

While they have lots of work ahead of them, I am sure the new funding will help Pluggd improve their offering! I am looking forward to their technology going live.

Read: NewTeeVee

Podcasting Metrics: Complete Downloads & More

By Mack D. Male · December 5, 2006 at 1:01pm

Podcasting consultant Jason Van Orden has been writing an interesting series of blog posts on podcasting metrics. In part 4 of the series, Jason tackles the issue of measuring complete downloads, and says that he doesn’t think measuring complete downloads is “absolutely necessary” and that something “more sophisticated and qualitative” is needed in addition to download numbers.

From part 4b of the series:

Scott Bourne and Tim Bourquin provided interesting and relevant responses. They both emphasize that podcasters have a responsibility not to let advertisers hold podcasting to a higher standard than other media (i.e. magazines and newspaper) that can’t measure complete content/ad consumption.

I have to respectfully disagree.

The way that magazines, television, radio, and other media sell advertising is flawed. Everything is based on assumptions (circulation numbers in the case of magazines, random sampling in the case of TV and radio). Don’t think for a second that advertisers are happy about this system – I’m sure they’d love to know exactly how many people watched or heard or read their advertisement. Why do you think everyone loves AdSense? Cold, hard numbers. The problem with magazines, TV, and radio is that the technology to accomplish this is prohibitively complex and expensive.

Podcasting doesn’t suffer from this problem. Measuring exactly how many people have downloaded an episode is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, and while not 100% accurate, it is fairly close. I think the strategy that Scott and Tim suggest would be bad for podcasting. As the saying goes – you’re only as strong as your weakest link. Podcasting needs to be stronger than other media.

A Better Strategy

I think podcasters who wish to generate advertising revenue should provide as much data as possible, even beyond complete downloads if such data is available (more on this in a second). There are a number of reasons for doing so:

There would be less waste, as advertisers could spend money only on podcasts that generate views or listens of their ad.
More data could also allow advertisers to more appropriately target their ad, making it more effective, enjoyable, and useful.
In the long run, advertisers would move more dollars away from media that uses flawed assumptions to media that provides useful data. That is, podcasting’s piece of the advertising pie will grow.
The valuation of a particular podcast will be much more realistic.

I am sure some podcasters are bristling at my suggestion. They think that if they have to provide actual numbers, they can’t make as much as if they sold ads based on assumptions like the other media do. This idea is wrong too. Providing more data will allow advertisers to spend targeted dollars. Unlike general advertisements, an advertiser will pay much more for the ability to target an ad. The podcaster may actually end up making more money!

Podcasting’s enemy (if we need to have one) is not the advertisers as Scott and Tim suggest, it’s the other media. Give the advertisers what they want, and podcasting will prevail.

Beyond Complete Downloads

I think complete downloads are quite important. We are putting the finishing touches on a big update to Podcast Spot, and one of the new features we have added is complete downloads. We parse the request logs for you automatically, so you’ll see the number of complete downloads for each episode, usually within two hours of the download. Right now these numbers are best effort, meaning that we aren’t yet at 100% accuracy. We’ll continue to work on it though.

As I mentioned above, podcasters should strive to provide as much data as possible to advertisers. There are the obvious things like complete downloads, page views, geolocation stats, demographics, etc. There are also the less obvious things. What if you could determine if someone actually listened to or watched your entire episode, or if they skipped parts of the episode? That kind of information would be extremely valuable.

These are the types of metrics that podcasters should strive to measure. Podcasters don’t have a responsibility to hold podcasting to the low standards of other media, they have a responsibility to set the bar higher and higher.