Tag: podcasting

Notes on Everything Casting

Post ImageBack from lunch (we went to Quizno’s in a nearby mall) and I am in Eric Rice’s session titled Everything Casting. Here are some notes:

  • “everything”casting: doing whatever you want, for whatever reason, in whatever medium.
  • your thing, your product, your “it”, your epsilon
  • Four primary elements or categories: content/concept/purpose, medium/materials, audience/behavior, sustain/making money.
  • Content: personal/intimate, art, informational, performance/rock star. You need to have at least one, sometimes you can do all four!
  • Medium: text, audio, video, photos. For all the religious opinions on the medium, it doesn’t matter. Some are better than others, depending on the context, sometimes you can mix them together!
  • Audience: passive, active passive, participatory, active participatory. You can be in any of these moods, and it depends on where you are, the type of medium available, etc.
  • Sustain: zero, fame, barter, cash. It’s perfectly okay to not make money, and in fact, it’s usually hard to make money from things you love doing – think of sports, or playing video games, etc.

More good discussion! Eric will be posting the audio of this session, as well as the slides. Everything is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re encouraged to use it!

Notes on Podcasting & Video Blogging

Post ImageLunch is a meal I generally skip, so I got to spend some time talking to Robert Sanzalone during the break. He’s presenting a session on podcasting and video blogging – here are some notes:

  • Robert says podcasting kind of came from Apple…I disagree, but I see where he’s going with it. Apple has the iPod and rolled in support to iTunes, so they give the impression of being the first.
  • Blogger is a great tool to get people blogging – all you have to do is link an MP3 file. I suppose in the most simple terms, sure, but there’s more to that. You need the enclosure tag.
  • Robert suggests using Audacity for recording and editing, some other audience members suggest using GarageBand if you’re on a Mac.
  • Sounds like Robert likes video – he has used MovieMaker and says it works quite well. He suggests that if you have a digital camera with video capabilities, you can produce videos. I suppose…but the quality there is not so good.
  • Who is your audience? Robert says that’s a problem with the “tech” community, they don’t always consider the wider audience.
  • A video tool/service he likes is vimeo.
  • Another service he likes is YouTube, because it transcodes the video for you. In a way I suppose, but it’s not like you can download the video. A service that does have downloading is Revver – looks like they transcode everything to MOV format.
  • Robert says a service that does some more of the pieces is blip.tv. You can connect it with Flickr too. It still stays in the format you upload it in though.
  • The service that does the best job, according to Robert, is Dailymotion.
  • If Flickr does video, none of the other services will matter – is the general feeling it seems.

Lots to think about with video, I still don’t think we’re ready for it.

Podfading

Post ImageWired 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

PodcastUser Magazine

Post ImageIn 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

Mobile Podcasting in China

Post ImageStan Sorensen at the Mobile Podcasting blog notes that Melodeo, a company that provides music and podcasts to cell phones, has formed a joint venture in China:

Melodeo has gotten together with ACCESS China to form a joint venture in China. The JV will deploy the first secure mobile network for digital content in China. This is a huge opportunity for us. The 2 largest carriers in China represent 350m users. Each one is accustomed to using their mobile phone as a computer – it’s the primary device for communicating, accessing the web, downloading data.

Stan also notes that “this is a first for mobile in China.” I’m not exactly sure what it means for mobile podcasting, but presumably a larger presence and user base for a company like Melodeo will only help.

Read: Mobile Podcasting

ID3 Podcast Magazine

Post ImageA pretty interesting development happened in the podcasting world in the last couple days – a magazine was announced! Yes, a real, printed magazine all about podcasting. Here’s what ID3 Podcast Magazine is all about:

After months of many milestones, we’re adding another to the list – the unveiling of ID3 Podcast Magazine. Named after the podcast data tag (an insider’s term for an insider’s magazine), the international trade publication will be dedicated solely to serving podcasters with extensive editorial coverage about all things podcasting.

Starting with the first May/June issue, ID3 Podcast Magazine will be delivered bimonthly to subscribers in four formats – online, electronic (PDF), podcast, and/or print. Yes, print! It’s about time podcasters have a full-color print magazine they can call their own – a magazine that packages all the excitement and fascination we’ve discovered in podcasting.

I’m less concerned with having something physical to hold, but it’ll be neat nonetheless. I assume most of the content will not be “news” as things happen too frequently, but I’d love to read some interviews with people from the industry.

I don’t know that much about publishing a magazine, but I am willing to bet that such an undertaking is not cheap, so I hope this actually does get off the ground.

Read: ID3 Podcast Magazine

Podcasting at the University of Regina

Post ImageThis is just too cool for words! Via Tod Maffin’s wonderful blog I came across what might become the world’s first university course on podcasting! It seems that Michael Bell from the University of Regina’s School of Journalism really likes podcasting and wants to take such a course:

When I first made the decision to come to j-school, I was excited about the possibility of combining my interest in practicing podcasting with my studies of journalism. Especially enticing was the impression I got from j-school instructors that it would indeed be possible to podcast within the j-school’s program of study. But it has to start somewhere, right?

Via this proposal, I hope to outline a way to continue to study journalism and combine my study with the practice of podcasting.

Michael is a full time student, not a teacher, so the idea uses something called “directed study”, which he explains is a way for a student to gain credit for learning something of interest. There is an instructor to suggest readings, assignments, etc. His entire proposal is pretty interesting and worth a read.

I think a course on podcasting (and blogging for that matter) would be a really unique offering at my own school. I admire Michael for taking the initiative to get something started. I’m definitely going to have to look into this “directed study” thing – I wonder if we have something similar at the UofA?

Read: Podcaster Canadiense

Podcasting at IBM

Post ImageI ran across an interesting article today in The Journal News about podcasting inside and outside IBM. Sounds like Big Blue really likes the idea of time-shifted audio:

IBM started to encourage employees to read and create the online journals known as blogs last May. Shortly after, IBM started pushing podcasts — subscription-based audio downloads that can be listened to on laptops, iPods or other MP3 players.

Inside the company, about 50 podcasts have debuted. There have been 15,000 downloads in the past two months.

In addition to making work more fun, there are numerous cost savings that can occur at a company like IBM who adopts podcasting. Take for example a conference call in which one or two people simply dispense information to dozens more, perhaps explaining some documents or figures. That’s the kind of thing that can be very cheaply turned into a podcast, and according to the article, such a podcast saved IBM hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Could 2006 be the year of corporate podcasting?

Read: The Journal News

Predictions for 2006

Post ImageWith the new year fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time for predictions. Not resolutions, but predictions. If you’d like to see some predictions from around the web, Alex Barnett has compiled a very interesting collection. Here are some of my predictions for the coming year, some specific and some more vague, in no particular order:

  1. Canada will win both the World Juniors Hockey Championship, and the gold medal in hockey at the Olympics.
  2. RIM will prevail in their legal troubles and will find success beyond the corporate market in 2006.
  3. The Indianapolis Colts will win the Superbowl.
  4. 2006 will finally be the year of Internet connected devices that make sense, are inexpensive, and are adopted widely. I am thinking of devices like digital cameras, little tablets for living room access, etc.
  5. Toyota will overtake General Motors as the world’s largest automaker, and GM shares will continue to plummet.
  6. Sony will launch the Playstation 3, but due to incredibly high prices, it will not match the success of it’s predecessor, nor the Xbox 360, except in Japan.
  7. The Ottawa Senators will win the Stanley Cup (at least I hope so, if Edmonton can’t).
  8. Windows Vista will RTM in September. Apple fans will claim too much is copied from OS X, and Linux fans will come out with roadmaps to copy all the functionality found in Vista.
  9. We’ll see a new Halo game (Halo 3 maybe) for the Xbox 360 sometime around November.
  10. iTunes and iPod will begin to lose their grip on the digital music market.
  11. Apple will successfully launch their Intel based machines and their market share will reach 6%.
  12. Michael Schumacher will win his 8th world drivers championship and then retire.
  13. A major security/antivirus/antispyware company will launch a lawsuit against Microsoft over Windows Vista, Windows OneCare, or other competing products.
  14. Movies, television shows, and other forms of video content will be sold in big numbers online in 2006, with almost every major content company taking part.
  15. Someone is going to buy TiVo before the year is over.
  16. The Liberals will once again win the upcoming Canadian election.
  17. It’s not really my prediction, but I agree with John Battelle who thinks Google will stumble in 2006.
  18. The Da Vinci Code will be in the top three movies at the boxoffice.
  19. The United States will invade Iran.

And in my final prediction, I am going to disagree with Jason Calacanis, who made the following prediction on December 27th:

12. No podcasting company will have any significant success in 2006, but a number of podcasters will be offered great jobs at Sirius and XM Radio.

I am going to predict that at least one company will be successful in 2006, and I fully intend to have Paramagnus be that company!

2005 Google Zeitgeist

Post ImageTis the season for year end lists and reflection on the year 2005. Darren has a pretty good collection of lists, but I particularly like Google’s Zeitgeist. Here’s what it’s all about:

It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.

This year’s zeitgeist appears to be much better organized than in previous years. Britney Spears was popular once again, while “weapons of mass destruction” fell quite drastically. Podcasting still lags behind both ipod and mp3, and judging by the graph Google provides, it doesn’t appear to be growing very fast either. Looks like 2006 has lots of room for improvement!

Read: Google Zeitgeist