The wireless here seems to be quite speedy and reliable, so I am going to post pictures throughout the day instead of waiting. Check them out at Flickr!
Notes on Structured Content
Time for another session – Dickson and Megan have gone to a different one this time. Oh, and I notice Scoble’s tablet is actually a newer model than mine (I think…larger screen too). Here are some notes on Bryan Rieger’s session on structured content (this is essentially a Semantic Web concept):
- Very interesting use of lego to represent how structured blogging produces blocks. Say a block for the title, one for the text, one for tags (which are already a microformat), etc.
- Microformats: designed for humans first, machines second. Keep it as simple as possible. Solve a specific problem.
- Developers: support both commas and spaces!
- Typically a structured blog post looks the same as any other post, which is good for users.
- Why bother? Some reasons: search, commerce, and many other things we haven’t begun to think of yet…
- Current structured content types: licenses, tags, reviews, lists, calendars, events, media, people, organizations, etc.
- Some places to check out are http://microformats.org and http://structuredblogging.com.
- The tools have to support these formats, and for the user, entering these things has to be quick and easy!
- We’re creating this content for humans, so why the effort in creating something for machines? Well, one person says it makes presentation much simpler, across various machines and interfaces.
- Boris Mann suggests this is all about accessibility, and again, the tools have to support it.
- Bryan says a larger problem than tools support, is why would people do this? We need to get people to want to do this!
- Are we extending blogging or RSS? Bryan says neither.
- Someone mentioned that there’s a project to create a structured version of Atom, so you wouldn’t need an RSS feed, as it would essentially be built in. I assume you just throw a stylsheet in front of the Atom document for browser rendering.
- Interesting discussion about how HTML has already gotten us so far, perhaps the solution to structured content is simple…
- Scoble thinks the “way in” for structured content is with maps, allowing a blogger to put a review on a map at a specific address.
Finally at Moose Camp – notes on Journalism
So we slept in a little this morning, and we took our time. Compared to past trips, this one has been relatively relaxing thus far! We finally made it to UBC’s downtown campus (entirely underground in case you didn’t know) and got our lanyards. Kind of neat idea – in addition to your name and web address on the nametag, there are four lines for “tags”.
We’re in Mark Hamilton’s session called We’re all journalists now. Right next to us? Robert Scoble with the same tablet pc as I am typing this on. Here are some notes on the session:
- Some people in the room seem to think that there is great power in having tools that make publishing very easy and always on, while others thing that creates a larger problem of filtering and managing new information.
- Scoble makes the point that he can write about a product and a week later 3000 people have signed up for that new product, and that this method of distribution did not exist ten years ago. Others disagree, saying the scheme has always been here, we’re just confused with “blogging” being new.
- Someone mentions the long tail – noting there are three or four bloggers for every topic, and this has a huge impact on commerce.
- Mark says the democratization of media is very confusing…there are so many different perspectives. He also notes that he has 3.7 days of podcasts on his iPod, and that the creators of those podcasts are not going to stop and wait for him to catch up, they are going to continue producing content.
- Mark touches on the fear of not being connected – you feel like you’ve missed something if you don’t keep up, or if you forget your camera, etc. Some conclusions he’s had: in terms of mass media, we have never been as well served as we are now, but it still has a whole bunch of flaws; there are so many different and new types of journalism like video blogs and sites like NowPublic; journalists are starting to realize that collectively, the audience is smarter!
- Journalism right now is messy, just like tagging. Things are changing. Maybe it’s going to be messy forever?
- Chris Pirillo is wondering whether “amateurs” should be called journalists? What about journalists who go through formal training and that sort of thing? Mark notes that strictly speaking, there is no credential for a journalist, anyone can walk into a newspaper and become a journalist. Chris says, “if I can apply a bandaid, does that make me a doctor?” People are fighting him on this one, but I tend to agree…just because you’re a blogger doesn’t mean you’re a journalist.
Thank goodness for wireless 🙂
Off to Northern Voice!
We leave tonite for Vancouver where we’ll spend tomorrow at Moose Camp and Saturday at Northern Voice. Megan’s flight is a little earlier than mine and Dickson’s but that’s okay. I know I have mentioned this already, but I’m really looking forward to the conference – last year was great, so I have high expectations for this one too. I probably won’t be bringing all the audio equipment like I did last year, but that’s okay, because Podcast Spot isn’t ready yet anyway!
The next few days will be very much related to the conference in terms of posting, so be prepared! Happy Birthday to Andrea and everyone else that I will miss this weekend, hope the party is lots of fun and rated G! In case you’re wondering, we get back into Edmonton late on Sunday evening.
Read: Northern Voice
Podfading
Wired has a new article up today which talks about one of the down sides to podcasting, known as podfading. Ryan and Jen Ozawa, former producers of the popular Lost-themed podcast The Transmission are the latest example of podfading:
Podcasting has drawn thousands on the premise that anyone can create an audio program, build an audience online and even vault to stardom. Less celebrated is the fact that untold numbers of shows just wink out just as suddenly as they started.
The phenomenon has earned its own label, “podfading,” coined by podcaster Scott Fletcher in February 2005 when he gave up on two podcasts of his own.
Podfaders’ motives vary wildly, from those discouraged by their lack of listenership to, in the Ozawas’ case, a success that overwhelmed them.
This story both saddens and motivates me. Podfading will always exist, but there’s no reason it should be any different than blogging, where millions of blogs are abandoned. The difference is that the effort it took to create those blogs in the first place was negligable – not so with a podcast, at least not yet. Brian Reid sums it up:
“There was no money in it and it did nothing to push my career forward. I’ve got a lot of other things in my life, paying work being one and my family is another. It’s not like blogging, where you can do it for 15 minutes at a time and get away with it.”
I know it varies quite a bit, but one survey found that the average time spent producing an episode was just over four and half hours! That’s a long way from fifteen minutes.
At Paramagnus we don’t expect to cut the amount of production time to fifteen minutes, but we do hope to significantly reduce it. The reason we started working on tools and services for podcasters was precisely this problem – the pain involved in creation right now is too great. Too much time, too much effort, too many requirements.
I really wish I had some numbers to share, but we’re not quite there yet. We’ve obviously been doing our own testing, and we’ve found that it’s a lot less work to produce an episode than it used to be (when I was doing BlogosphereRadio “by hand”, for example). Podcast Spot really goes a long way to reducing the pain of publishing audio to the web, adding appropriate metadata, generating an RSS feed, promoting the episode, and gathering feedback and statistics. We’re working hard on Podcast Wizard too, which we hope will reduce the pain of actually planning, recording, and mixing an episode.
I feel sorry for the Ozawa’s – it sounds like they had a great show going (I’m not much of a Lost fan, so I never came across it). Maybe after we’ve launched they’ll find it easier to podcast and who knows, maybe they’ll even decide give it another go!
Read: Wired
Gmail Chat
For years Hotmail and Yahoo Mail have showed the connection status of your Messenger buddies in the web mail interface. A simple icon depicts whether they are online or not, and a simple click can launch a chat window or do other things. Google has taken that idea one step further, enabling conversations to take place inside the browser itself:
Google on Monday was set to launch Gmail Chat, which will let users send instant messages with one click from their e-mail account, see when contacts are online and save the chat history like an e-mail message.
The application’s Quick Contacts list is synchronized with a user’s Google Talk friends list and automatically displays the people a user communicates with most frequently and shows their online status. Clicking on a contact listed as being online opens a chat window in the browsers.
I think this new Chat feature will be played up as “Google innovating in the email space yet again” when really, it’s a poor man’s version of MSN’s Web Messenger. I mean, when you cut through the crap (read: beta label) that’s all it is! And even then, a web messenger is really only useful if you’re on a public computer or something.
Considering I don’t use Google Talk, this new feature is pretty much useless for me.
Read: CNET News.com
Detroit: The Host With the Least
I’m sure the mood was jubilant in Detroit yesterday as the Super Bowl went off without a hitch. I have to wonder how long it will last though, after reading a very interesting Slate article which examines the city and the sorry state it appears to be in:
Local architects have set up displays in seven abandoned buildings and more than 20 eye-level store windows near Ford Field so that passers-by won’t be greeted by gated or boarded-up shops. In addition, the city has spent money to turn some vacant buildings in the area into temporary memorabilia shops. They will most likely return to their previous state once visitors—and Super Bowl retailers—have left town following the game.
Sounds like a lot of patchwork right? That’s the general vibe the article gives – that Detroit is almost a city in ruins, and they have no idea how to redevelop it. The Super Bowl would have been a great chance, but it seems they missed the boat on that one.
But the main explanation for these missteps is Detroit’s perennial problem: Suburbanites don’t need the city. The resources that most cities offer—high-end restaurants, movie theaters, retail, museums, hotels—are located in the suburbs instead of the city core.
When people talk about the city of Edmonton, there is much of the same – too much development has occurred in the suburbs, the downtown core is dying, etc. Fortunately our city has seen a great revival of the downtown area in the last few years, so maybe Detroit can too one day.
Read: Slate
Notes for 2/5/2006
Some notes for this fine Sunday evening:
- Went for coffee with Megan tonight who I hadn’t seen in forever! Looking forward to Northern Voice this week.
- Cool news story today about Nunavut – no not where I used to live…this is the new territory – and how the Airbus A380 will be travelling north for weather testing!
- I think the plan to charge for “priority email” is completely dumb. Then again, I haven’t given it any serious thought yet, but that’s my gut reaction.
- I didn’t mention it last week (during my “disappearance”), but on Tuesday my group presented to our English 304 class on podcasting. I thought it went very well! We covered the history, the technology, the implications of adult podcasting, the effect of podcasting on education, and we did a “future” segment too. Initial feedback was very positive, and the mix of students was about what I expected – a select few who knew what it was, a few more that had heard of it, and the rest were introduced for the first time!
- Looking for virtualization software? VMWare is giving away their GSX Server, starting Monday.
- Who’s my hero? This guy, who was too lazy to move five feet to open the door to his office so he hacked together a software/hardware combo to do it for him. Pretty interesting actually!
- In the middle elevator (there’s 3) of our building tonight I discovered piles and piles of broken glass, yet all the mirrors inside the elevator are fine. It’s like someone took glass into the elevator and smashed it, and this isn’t the utility elevator which would normally be used for transporting stuff either. Needless to say, I am still trying to figure out how it got there…any ideas?
- Ahhhh high school…
Superbowl Commercials
Do you care who wins the Superbowl? Or are you more interested in the commercials? That’s what I thought! Here are some sites to check for the infamous ads for 2006 (most will appear after the game):
Enjoy the game!
PodcastUser Magazine
In January I wrote about the new ID3 Podcast Magazine, which I figured would be the one and only magazine devoted to podcasting. Today I noticed at Podcasting News that there’s a second such magazine called PodcastUser, though it appears this one will only be published in PDF and not as a physical magazine.
The first issue is now available for download, and at 24 pages, there’s quite a bit of information packed into the magazine. I haven’t read it in great detail, but there’s reviews, some news, quite a few “how-to’s”, and as far as I can tell, no advertising.
From the first issue:
Podcasting has a great community feel to it, and that is precisely what this magazine celebrates; a thriving community of people, discussing and providing different content by using the same medium.
The second issue will be available on March 1st, so check it out!
Read: PodcastUser Magazine
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