Northern Voice Conference Day

Post ImageWe just finished recording the keynote session with Anil Dash at Northern Voice 2007, and I am now in the “Blogging 101” session. The recording is going fairly well, and the audio recorders have picked up the presenters better than I expected given all the background noise you get when everyone has a laptop in front of them! We recorded the keynote in video, and it looks very good. Dickson is uploading it now I believe, so it should be up soon.

Yesterday was a little chaotic for us, as expected. Moosecamp is a very ad hoc kind of event, so we weren’t sure about what to record. For that reason we ended up recording more than we planned, though some of it sounds kind of random. Fortunately the schedule today is well defined and static, so Sharon took the initiative and helped us decide who is recording what. Audio episodes will be up very shortly after the session, video will take slightly longer.

Hopefully I’ll get to blog more today than in the last couple days, but at the very least I wanted to get this quick update posted. Also, if you want to check out the quick interview I did yesterday after Moosecamp with Darren Barefoot, you can watch it here.

The welcome message is up!

Let the podcasting begin! We just uploaded a very quick (under 3 minutes) welcome message to the Northern Voice podcast to introduce ourselves and our plan for recording the conference. Here are the most important links:

I should also point out that you can find specific episodes by browsing our categories and our tags. And you can find feeds for all the formats we convert to here.

Enjoy!

Read: Welcome Message

Vancouver Trip Day 1

I’m pretty tired – we had a packed day! Sharon, Dickson and I arrived here in Vancouver fairly early, landing just after 10:30 AM. After getting sorted out at Triumf House (which is where we are staying on the UBC campus) we went downtown and only just got back. We went for lunch, then Dickson and I had a few business meetings, and then we walked around a bit before we met Kim and her friends for dinner. We went to a greek restaurant on Robson and Burrard (I can’t remember the name) and while not very greek, it was pretty good!

We took a taxi from the airport this morning, but other than that, we have relied on public transit (and we walked a lot). It’s actually fairly easy to use, and similar to Edmonton’s transit system in a lot of ways.

The weather was very nice today, and it only drizzled for a few minutes this evening. Hopefully it stays like this! You can see a few photos I took today here, including one of the Olympic countdown clock!

Podcasting Northern Voice 2007

Post ImageI am leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for Vancouver – Megan, Dickson, Sharon and I are heading to Northern Voice 2007. It’s a conference I look forward to every year. I’m especially excited about this year because we have volunteered to record all of the sessions! Here’s what I sent to Darren:

We’re hosting at http://northernvoice.podcastspot.com, which is all decked out in the new Northern Voice theme. Currently we’re planning to record all of Saturday’s sessions in audio, and as much as of Moosecamp as we can. We’ve also got a couple video cameras to record some sessions and “roaming” footage. There’s four of us, so we should be able to get it all.

We’re probably not the only ones who will be recording stuff however – the people who attend Northern Voice are a creative bunch, so there will likely be lots of microphones and video cameras floating around. Bottom line: whether you can attend or not, you’ll be able to listen in.

We’re also offering a special Northern Voice promotion at Podcast Spot. If you enter the discount code NV2007 when you sign up, we’ll give you an extra 100 MB of upload quota for free! It’s just another way we’re celebrating our favorite Canadian tech conference.

If you have any feedback on our Northern Voice podcast, I’d love to hear from you. As Megan knows, I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, so I’ll be doing my best to make sure everything sounds and looks good. We should have our first “introduction” episode up sometime tomorrow.

Read: The Podcast

Wanna buy Odeo?

Post ImageHard to believe that just two years ago Odeo was a star. Heck, they even have a star in their logo! Over that period of time, they have slowly but steadily faded from the spotlight. And now even Odeo’s founders don’t want to keep it around:

It seems likely Odeo is worth more to someone else than it is to us at this point, so we’re looking for a new home for it.

We’re open to a variety of scenarios – from cash offer to an equity position. Our main concern is the ability to focus on Twitter and to see Odeo live on in some legitimate form.

All of my criticism of the service aside, I’d buy Odeo if I had the capital. The way I see it, Odeo has two main assets: a huge database of media and lots of “online presence” – that is, lots of incoming links, good search engine rankings, etc. Tons of potential.

To his credit, Evan Williams says that Obvious will continue to run Odeo if they don’t get any attractive offers. Not sure if that’s the right thing for Odeo, but at least it proves that Evan and his team still care about it.

Read: Obviously

Podcasting is just getting started!

Post ImageAlex Nesbitt wonders over at Digital Podcast if podcasting is podfading. I don’t think it is, and I don’t think the graphs that Alex presents prove anything. Scott Bourne wrote a response today, but I think he sorta danced around the big point. He says:

Another reason that I think podcasting is still going strong is the confusion over the word. While people may not be searching the word “podcasting,” as often as they were a year ago, they are searching other phrases such as “online media.” Podcasting has never been a good word to describe what we do.

I do think it’s important to admit that podcasting, regardless of what you call it, is TEMPORARILY slowing down.

Scott is exactly right – the name is the root of the problem. Podcasting as a word is becoming both more encompassing and less unique. For example, we use podcasting at Podcast Spot to refer to audio and/or video, as long as it has an RSS feed attached. I have seen people use it more liberally than us too. This is quite different from 2005 when a podcast meant an MP3 file inside an RSS feed.

The heart of the issue though is not the name confusion itself, but the fact that because of the name confusion, we don’t have a good way to measure the growth of our industry. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, unless you try to measure it.

As a result, I have to disagree with Scott’s assertion that podcasting is temporarily slowing down. I don’t think it has slowed down at all – it has just become much more difficult to measure. Any “slowing” is merely an illusion.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the metrics to back that statement up. It’s an educated gut feeling at the moment.

All of that said, I think we’re just getting started. There’s tremendous potential for growth, and 2007 could be the year that it really takes off.

Read: Scott Bourne

Notes for 2/18/2007

Here are my weekly notes (this is probably the earliest in the day that I have ever posted them):

Co-Inventor of the TV remote dies

Post ImageSad news today for all you couch potatoes out there. Robert Adler, co-inventor of the TV remote, has died of heart failure at the age of 93. He had a pretty amazing career:

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

And no, he isn’t guilty about possibly contributing to the rise of couch potatoes:

“People ask me all the time — ‘Don’t you feel guilty for it?’ And I say that’s ridiculous,” he said. “It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television.”

Well said. Thanks Mr. Adler – I don’t know what I’d do without the remote.

Read: Yahoo! News

Ringtones are a complete rip-off

Post ImageI’ve never purchased a ringtone for my cell phone, and I don’t ever intend to – they are just too damn expensive. How expensive? On Telus, ringtones cost $3.50 CDN each. With Bell, they range from $2.50 to $4.00 CDN each. And on Rogers, comparable ringtones start at $3.00 CDN each, excluding a 75 cent download fee.

So after a little math we get an average cost of $3.50 CDN for a single ringtone. What else could you buy for $3.50?

  • My favorite – two items from the McDonald’s Value Picks Menu. And for 49 cents more, you could get one of the Value Meals.
  • You could purchase three complete songs from iTunes.
  • Two 710 ml bottles of Gatorade at Wal-Mart.
  • Almost two Grande coffees at Starbucks, or two Extra Large coffees at McDonald’s.
  • You could store 20 GB of data at Amazon S3 for a month. Or 1 GB for 20 months. Or you could transfer up to 15 GB in a month.
  • Any one of the 63,275 items available on eBay in just the DVD, HD-DVD & Blu-ray category that are less than $3.50.
  • A breakfast sandwich from Tim Horton’s.
  • And of course, three items from pretty much any dollar store!

Can you think of a worse deal? Cupcakes are expensive. Perhaps gas – you could only get 4.3 liters in Edmonton today for $3.50 CDN. Transportation in general sucks actually. One trip on ETS costs $2.50 CDN.

The high price of ringtones is just sick. Why pay Bell $4.00 for a ringtone when you could pay them $5.99 and get an entire movie streamed to your phone? It’s absurd.

Please don’t buy ringtones – it only encourages the wireless carriers to charge such ridiculous prices.