Odeo giving up on podcasting?

Post ImageMaybe it’s time everyone stopped calling Odeo a podcasting company. I’ve been critical of Google’s apparent lack of focus and direction many times in the past, but they’ve got nothing on Odeo. I mean here’s a company with some very smart people working for them, some substantial venture capital behind them, and yet very little to show for it. Perhaps the last notable thing Odeo did with regards to the core offering was redesign the website – and that was in December 2005. I have to agree with what Alex Williams said – “These dudes must have some pretty mellow investors.”

That’s not to say they are standing still. Odeo recently launched two new products, Hellodeo and Twttr. The former is somewhat related to podcasting, while the latter appears to have absolutely no connection whatsoever. Hellodeo lets you record a video message from your webcam to embed on other websites, and Twttr allows you to stay up to date with your friends using text messaging. Notice a trend? Yep, moving further and further away from podcasting.

I think it’s fair to say that LibSyn has done far more in terms of getting people into podcasting than Odeo has, and somehow I doubt that Evan Williams and crew have any tricks up their sleeve. Odeo, quite simply, seems lost. It’s a shame too, because they had the opportunity to do something great with podcasting. Maybe they should just purchase LibSyn?

You might recall that in May of last year, Fortune magazine named Odeo one of their 25 Breakout Companies for 2005. I wonder what they would say about the company today? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make the list again.

Maybe Odeo will come out with something amazing and I’ll be forced to eat my words, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I do however, think Odeo would be wise to read Dead 2.0 Skeptic’s 11 Suggestions for Not Being a Dot-Bomb 2.0.

Intel Keifer: 32 Cores

Post ImageBack in January I sort of predicted that by 2007, a common question won’t be how fast your processor is, but how many cores it has. I think my prediction is starting to look more and more like a reality. I don’t think I wrote about it, but we purchased new machines for the office a while ago, and they each have dual core processors. This last week saw the official launch of Intel’s new Core 2 Duo chips, and as the name suggests, they have more than one core.

But if you think two cores is good, wait another three to four years:

I have to say I can’t remember performance gains anywhere near 16x in only four years. Comparing a 2002 Pentium 4 3.06 GHz with a Core 2 Extreme 2.93 GHz will give you a two to five fold increase – if most. 16x more performance by 32 cores in 2010 versus today’s two cores, should it come true, equals linear scaling, which means that performance would double with the core count. Many of you will say this is utterly impossible, because even sustaining the clock speed levels at doubled core count might be difficult – and I agree, unless you start to think out of the box.

Yep it seems Intel is working on having 32 cores on a chip by 2010, a project code-named “Keifer”. According to some sources, each core would run at 2 GHz, which is slower than today’s fastest chips, but adds up when there’s 32 of them. No word on how much power this beast might devour.

Now 2010 is still a ways off, and Intel has been known to change course in the past, but if they get this project completed according to plan, the future for computing performance looks very bright indeed. That and AMD is going to have some catching up to do.

Read: Tom’s Hardware

Notes for 7/16/2006

I’ve been programming lots, which is why I haven’t posted as much as usual. Here are my weekly notes:

  • Here’s a really great video I came across from the Inside CBC blog. It’s the first news report CBC TV did about the Internet, back in 1993. I think it’s funny how they refer to it as “Internet” and not “the Internet”.
  • Went to Delux Burger Bar tonight, and had the grilled cheese. There portion was quite small, though there were lots of fries in these interesting little shopping carts (instead of say, a plate). The scenery is great, and they give you cotton candy with your bill!
  • Addicted to video games? You might want to visit the new rehab center in Amsterdam.
  • Mark Evans linked to the Canadian Tech Mob (basically a webring), which is an effort to show that “Canada kicks ass in tech and innovation.” I thought it was cool until I saw the website. No showing off tech and innovation here. Admirable idea, but seriously, the website looks like it was made in 1995.
  • YouTube serves over 100 million videos a day now. Staggering isn’t it?
  • Went to see Pirates 2 last night, and while it was an enjoyable movie, it is a complete setup for part 3. There’s lots of great action and stuff in this one, don’t get me wrong, but you’re left with that sense of “damn, now I have to wait a year.”
  • As you may have heard, Intel unveiled their new Core 2 Duo processors this past week. By all accounts, the new chips look amazing! And as an Intel nut, I am glad they have reclaimed the lead from AMD.

REVIEW: An Inconvenient Truth

Post ImageSharon and I went to see Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago at the Garneau. I thought the film was very well done, and unlike Sharon, I didn’t think it was too long. Gore is an incredibly engaging speaker, and he does a super job of getting his point across. I do have a few issues with the film though:

  • This is a very one-sided story. Which is okay, as long as you make the effort to find out about the other side.
  • Gore uses lots of numbered lists in the movie, which gets confusing after a while. Lists such as, “three reasons for this” and “four causes for this” and on and on.
  • A picture really is worth a thousand words, but I found myself wanting to know more about the flashy graphs Gore kept showing. I mean you could take them at face value, but how responsible would that be?
  • His self-introduction as “the former next president of the United States” is funny, but I have heard it a few times now, so it has lost that special ring.

If you want a good argument for “the other side”, I would suggest reading some of Michael Crichton’s work. He’s written some great stuff, such as:

Kill the wolves, and save the elk. Move the grizzlies, and avoid the lawyers. And on, and on. Its this simplistic, cause-and-effect thinking that must go.

And for that matter, who believes that the complex system of our atmosphere behaves in such a simple and predictable way that if we reduce one component, carbon dioxide, we will therefore reliably reduce temperature? CO2 is not like an accelerator on a car. Its not linear (and by the way, neither is a car accelerator.) And furthermore, who believes that the climate can be stabilized when it has never been stable throughout the earths history? We can only entertain such an idea if we dont really understand what a complex system is. Were like the blonde who returned the scarf because it was too tight. We dont get it.

I like that excerpt, because most of An Inconvenient Truth is focused on explaining how CO2 causes temperatures to rise.

There are some great non-climate-crisis gems in the movie. At the beginning, Gore shows some images of the earth, and explains how they were taken from space, and that one of them is the most commonly published photo in history. Fascinating stuff.

As a skeptic not of the earth’s temperature rising at the moment but of global warming, I didn’t leave the theatre preaching Gore’s gospel. I do think his movie is the best argument for global warming that I have seen though.

Interestingly, Sharon and I both had the same reaction when leaving the theatre – “I wish he had been president.”

Frogger on Xbox 360

Post ImageOne of the things I like best about my Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s about to get even better. Microsoft recently announced they will be releasing at least one new arcade-style game for the service every Wednesday:

At a trendy bar filled with gamers and video game press, Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled its lineup of retro hits like “Pac-Man,” “Galaga” and “Frogger” as part of its new Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays program.

Players will need to connect their Xboxes to an Internet connection in order to download the games, though they don’t need to stay connected to play them.

The first game is Frogger, and it was released yesterday. I downloaded the trial last night to see what it was like – it’s kinda neat! They have “enhanced” and “classic” graphics for the game, which is pretty funny. While the arcade style games don’t utilize any of the real power the 360 has, they are fun for a change every now and then. The games will cost between $5 and $10.

I can’t wait for Pac-man!

Read: CNET News.com

Paramagnus in AlbertaVenture

Post ImageIf you pick up a copy of the July/August issue of AlbertaVenture magazine, you’ll find an article titled Entrepreneurial Idol, which is all about VenturePrize. While I think that title is better suited to the upcoming Dragon’s Den on CBC, the article is still really good. Indeed one of my favorite memories from the entire VenturePrize experience was talking with Marina. She has a knack for asking the right questions.

Here are a few notable quotes related to Paramagnus from the article:

“Sitting in the front row of Steier’s class are Mack Male and Dickson Wong, 22-year-olds who look like they’ve walked into the wrong classroom. But looks are deceiving; these whiz-kid computer undergrads at the U of A have already raised a hundred grand to fund their baby, Paramagnus Developments.”

“Last to go is Paramagnus which, because of Male and Wong’s youth, is the judges’ sentimental favourite.”

Marina ends the article with a quote from yours truly:

“I can’t believe how far we, and our business model, have evolved since day one of this competition. We’re going to go all the way.”

That sentiment is still true, even today. The story isn’t over yet though, not by a long shot. We’re inching closer and closer with each passing day to releasing Podcast Spot. And when that happens, we’ll really have something to be proud of!

Podcasting is not more popular than blogging

Post ImageI want podcasting to be as popular as anyone else does (hey, my business depends on it) but at the same time, I am not naive enough to think that podcasting is more popular than blogging. That’s precisely how Podcasting News interpreted some recent Nielsen/NetRatings data however:

Nielsen//NetRatings announced today that 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast. 4.0 percent, or 5.6 million Web users, have recently downloaded a video podcast. These figures put the podcasting population on a par with those who publish blogs, 4.8 percent, and online daters, 3.9 percent.

The key word there is “publish” – not people who have read a blog, but people who actually create one. You can’t compare listeners for podcasting to creators for blogs and call it a fair comparison! When the number of people creating podcasts gets to be the same as for blogs, there might be a story.

You’ve really got to think about what you’re reading these days.

Read: Podcasting News

Giving credit where credit is due

Post ImageIf there is one thing that was drilled into my head in the last 8 years of my education, first in high school and then University, it is to always cite your sources. No matter if they are actually quoted from or not, if you used a source while researching something, cite it. Like so much of what I have learned at University however, that’s simply not the way it works in the real world. Case in point, a recent article on podcasting titled “Podcasting at a business near you”. It was written by Alex Dobrota, and published in the Globe and Mail on July 6th. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning:

Podcasting, which involves the distribution of personalized audio or video clips over the Internet to computers, laptops or digital audio players such as iPods, is becoming a new medium of communication in the corporate world. It’s being used to replace internal memos, blogs, e-mails and even trade shows. The up-and-coming technology is cost-efficient — in some cases, it requires little more than a microphone and a computer. And, as a marketing tool, it holds the potential of reaching a young and savvy audience, experts say.

Maybe the problem is that a journalist can simply put “experts say” and get away with it. In any case, I do believe I should be cited as a source for that entire paragraph. You see, Mr. Dobrota called me at around 1:30 PM on June 22nd to ask me some questions about podcasting (I remember this exactly because it was just moments after I got back to the office after the Oilers Tribute Event). He made it seem like I was being interviewed, which isn’t all that unsual given the publicity Paramagnus has received in the last few months. Evidently I was wrong. He started out asking what podcasting was, and the follow-up questions he asked made it seem as though he really didn’t have any idea what was so special about it, or why it was different than streaming audio.

After about ten minutes of covering the basics, he started asking questions about why businesses would get into podcasting, or if they already were. I mentioned the well-known case of IBM. I also said that basically, podcasting is great for businesses because they get an excellent return on investment – it costs very little to get going, and you can reach a huge audience fairly easily. I also mentioned that it was a great way for old stodgy businesses to seem hip and cool with the younger iPod carrying generation. Sounds kind of like the excerpt I mentioned above doesn’t it? Yep I thought so too.

I actually emailed Mr. Dobrota on July 1st, to ask if he had written the article. I never did get a reply from him, which makes this all the more aggravating.

Maybe there’s lots of reasons why he and other journalists can simply put “experts say”. You know, word count, page layout, that sort of thing. I just can’t help but think though, that with all the fuss about the blogosphere being a place full of unsubstantiated rumors, we’re missing that our so-called “mainstream media” don’t follow the rules either. Perhaps we should force journalists to publish a blog, properly citing their references, linking where appropriate? I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It might even have saved Dan Rather his job.

At the very least, had Mr. Dobrota kept a blog with his sources and references properly detailed, I might still have some respect for him.

Read: Globe and Mail

OpenDNS

Post ImageI came across OpenDNS today via Geek News Central. I have been meaning to look for something like this for quite some time. Basically, it is a DNS service, used by your computer to look up the IP address of a domain name. Whenever you setup your Internet connection on your computer, or router, or other device, you have to enter DNS servers that it can use to “resolve” domain names (convert to an IP). Until finding OpenDNS, I had just used the ones I was given from Telus six years ago, because I had memorized them. I always knew there was something better though:

OpenDNS makes the Internet experience safer, faster and smarter for you and everyone using your network. OpenDNS service is free. OpenDNS makes money by serving clearly labeled advertisements on search results pages where we cannot resolve your intent (i.e., not a known typo).

They have a big cache, and geographically dispersed servers, which should speed up requests. OpenDNS will also identify phishing sites and display a warning message. And finally, they will automatically correct spelling mistakes (I want this feature, though it doesn’t seem to be working for me yet, maybe I have to restart – I already flushed the DNS and restarted the browser…).

I just started using it this evening, so I don’t have much to report yet. I don’t think they’ll make any money off me directly, as I won’t click the ads on their search page, but they might indirectly, as I’ll probably start using their servers when I setup computers and networks for people. Give it a shot if you want.

Read: OpenDNS

Notes for 7/9/2006

Megan and I got back from Lisa’s party late yesterday, and I’ve been trying not to move around too much ever since. I learned a valuable lesson this weekend – sunscreen is your friend! Yep, my legs and arms got a little too much sun. Oh well, that’s what happens when you spend all day in front of the computer and then venture outside haha!

  • Here are some pictures from the party. Thanks for having me Lisa!
  • Zidane…what where you thinking? Italy won the World Cup today on penalty kicks, and Zidane was red carded in the extra time period for headbutting one of the Italians. The shot of him heading to the dressing room, walking right past the World Cup trophy, was very telling.
  • Montreal and Toronto are getting really fast fiber Internet connections to residential areas, similar to what has been happening in the US. I wonder when such great things will move west? They aren’t too expensive either.
  • If it’s true, I know what I want for Christmas/Birthday!
  • I think something needs to be done about the oil companies. There’s no reason that the gas I buy for my car, which is refined less than 40 KM from the gas station, should cost almost ten cents more than gas does in Toronto. And I wish the US would just get it over with and do something about North Korea, if only so that prices don’t jump every time Kim Jong-il wants to get his gun off.
  • Will there really be a talking iPod?
  • Big week for my parents this last week! They officially decided they are moving from Inuvik to Yellowknife, which I think will be great for them (even though it’s still in the north). Along with my brother and sister who are back in Inuvik for the summer, they had a garage sale this weekend. Apparently about fifty people lined up before it started yesterday at noon. I told my parents, “your reputation precedes you! everyone knows you guys have lots of stuff, and thus they’ll probably find something good.” Hopefully my Dad will post something about the move soon (as Megan noted, he seems to have taken a little blogging break).