Recently in Podcasting Category

Just next to where I'm sitting today, we've got podcasting training going on for the Estates Gazette, New Scientist and ICIS Heren teams, in our central London offices. It's all in the capable hands of Ewan Spence (who has made the odd appearance on this blog before), and going rather swimmingly, from the sounds coming from the room.

Podcasting is one of those things that feels like it has sneaked its way onto the plateau of productivity on the Garner Hype Cycle, and thus everyone has stopped talking about it as something special and exciting. It's a core part of my working day, as I listen to podcasts on my commute to and from work, using the time to catch up on the latest news and thinking in the areas that affect my work.

There was an interesting article published on GigaOm yesterday looking at the development of TWiT, one of the most successful podcast networks out there. Much to learn there, I think. Interesting video, too…

Clean layout, easy subscribe links for any service you could think of, and a nice integrated player. This is the way to do it.

Peter Whitehead, FT Digital Business Editor, said that they discovered over time that podcasts can't be repackaged content from the existing outlets, but something in its own right. Low quality "office chat" or high quality, radio-like atmosphere? Going for the latter, but a long way yet to go.

Trevor Dann, director of the Radio Academy: Podcasting leading the radio insustry. The FT's content is radio, delivered by podcasting. Once you include video, you lose portability — that's the great strength of radio, it's a secondary medium. You can do something else while listening to it.

Peter: not dangerous, not doing live, another channel to distribute our content. The listeners are niche audiences, but very valuable. iTunes putting FT logo on their podcasting homepage quadrupled number of downloads instantly.

Trevor: used to licensed, governed radio. The internet is a fantastic opportunity to converse abouit subjects with audiences. Radio has to be impartial. Podcasts don't. The audience won't want glorified adverts, they want authenticity.

Free vrs paid for:

At moment difficult to monetise. Will come. Might be slower than we'd like.

Time for closing drinks, I think.

While at Blogher, I was accosted by a mad Scotsman in a kilt. This was no an entirely unfamiliar experience for me. I grew up in Scotland, and have even been known to wear a kilt myself once in a while (but not for a long while).

However, this particular Scotsman forced me to talk into a microphone.

You can find the results at the Tech Conference Show, where I appear after far more interesting people, like Elise Bauer and Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central.

Based on a suggestion from Neil MacLean, here the same video on iFilm:

Vpod.tv:

I've been playing around with a few video upload sites, as I fancy doing a little more videoblogging, and want to acheive better quality than YouTube offers. A couple of sites have caught my eye, so I uploaded the same video clip to both to do a quick comparison.

This one is from blip.tv, which has nice things like an automated video podcast feed and the option to upload different versions for different players:

Click To Play

And this is from Vimeo, whose interface is beautifully clean and simple.

Port Al Kantaoui on Vimeo

I can't decide which I prefer...

On my morning commute, I catch up with my podcasts. And, on this morning's commute, I caught up with the latest Strange Attractor podcast, which had been sat on my iPod for a little while without me noticing. And, my goodness, what a corker. It's not often you catch me laughing out loud as I drive the Croydon flyover, but I did this morning. The pair's evisceration of both The Independent's "blogs" and Keith Waterhouse's laughable opinion piece in the Daily Hate Mail is just perfect.

And I strongly suggest my blogging journalist colleagues have a listen to it, just in case they feel the temptation to write "What do you think?" at the end of their posts...

As the podcast is hosted on Odeo, I can embed it here for your listening pleasure: 

The domain name screw-up that hit Podshow yesterday seems to have had worse implications than I expected. Over 24 hours after I spotted there was a problem, I still can't get the latest episodes of the Daily Source Code and Geekbrief TV.

It looks like the various subdomains the Podcast Delivery Network runs off are still hosed in some way, and most podcatchers are getting confused by it. iTunes certainly can't find the shows.

This is bad news for Podshow. Why? Well, as best I can make out, they partner with podcast creators, with the creators doing the actually making of the podcasts, and Podshow handling delivery (through the PDN) and monetising it, through selling ads and sponsorship. The two groups then share the revenue. The longer delivery of the podcasts stays down, the more Podshow is failing to uphold its end of the bargain.

Technorati Tags: podcast delivery network, podcasting, podshow

So, you know Podshow, the podcasting (sorry �independently produced media�) company founded by Adam Curry and Ron Bloom?

Looks like they forgot to renew their domain name:

Kinda ironic, given that Go Daddy is one of their sponsors�

UPDATE: As of 2.20pm UK time, it's all working again.

UPDATE 2: Mr Curry podcasts about the problem in the latest Daily Source Code

Technorati Tags: adam curry, domain names, podcasting, podcasts, podshow

The Farmers Weekly podcast interview with David Cameron feels like it should have got more publicity than it did, if only for the revelation that Cameron grows cucumbers outside his kitchen window. It's a nicely-done, fairly relaxed piece, recorded in the back of Cameron's car on the way to the Royal Show.

FWi interview with David Cameron

Hang on, shouldn't it have been done on the back of his bike?

[Disclosure: this is another bit of �employer pimping�, but only because I genuinely liked it]

Technorati Tags: conservative party, david cameron, farming, interview, rural life, tories

Such a tragic fall.

Technorati Tags: amanda congdon, video, vlogging

The poster child for the growth in video podcasting (or video blogging, or vlogging, or whatever you want to call it) is in trouble. Rocketboom's presenter, writer and producer Amanda Congdon appears to have had a serious falling out with her partner on the site, Andrew Baron, as her most recent posts explain.

Business Week has a good analysis of Rocketboom's financial situation. Business 2.0 examines the phenomenon of a business problem being conducted in public, which is an interesting development in its own right. And Jason Calacanis of AOL-owned Weblogs Inc has made a very public job offer.

Whoa. It's interesting that not only do the public feel enough of an ownership of Rocketboom that they're discussing this so much, as the Technorati Tag page shows, but the people involved feel that they can do business in such a public way, too. There's a fine line between transparency and washing your dirty laundry in public, and I'm not sure which side of the line this business is on yet.

But it sure is entertaining.

Technorati Tags: amanda congdon, business, media, rocketboom, vlogging

Well, well, well. Everyone's favourite outgoing Prime Minister has started podcasting via his constituency's local paper, the Northern Echo.

Sadly, it's a one-off effort, marking the launch of the paper's podcasting efforts, which aren't live just yet.

[via Podcasting News]

Technorati Tags: new labour, podcasting, podcasts, politics, tony blair

The Guardian has occasional moments of confusion. Despite being one of the leading big media proponents of podcasting in the UK, it's just published a piece mocking the whole idea. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Newspapers should have room for different ideas and positions within the covers. It's just that, well, it's so predictable. You could have picked out some of the 'jokes' in advance. For example:

The term podcast - coined and first used, according to most sources, by the writer Ben Hammersley in this very newspaper in February 2004 - distinguishes a certain sort of internet-borne audio (or, increasingly, video) content from all the other sorts, and specifically denotes an MP3 file that can be downloaded to one's computer automatically via RSS subscription technology and thence transferred to one's personal MP3 device for later listening. In short, it's like a radio programme that you listen to on your iPod. A podcast is not to be confused with a webcast, which uses real-time streaming to allow you to listen at your leisure, but not on the hoof, as it were. (You are free to regard this distinction as largely semantic or, if you prefer, wholly incomprehensible.)

The emphasis is mine. So, Mr Dowling, are you suggesting that the readers are free to regard your journalism as inferior, because you can't comprehensibly explain the the theory and technology behind it? Surely the distinction between something you have to sit and listen to at your computer or something you can listen to anywhere you take your iPod isn't that hard to express or understand?

Other podcasts make use of "podsafe" music, that is, music wholly owned and controlled by the artist, who has uploaded it on to something like the Podsafe Musical Network in order to make it available, for free, to registered podcasters. ("Podsafe", therefore, is well on its way to becoming a synonym for "homemade and/or of necessarily limited appeal".)

That's Podsafe Music Network, and do you really believe that "not picked up by the mainstream music industry" really equals "rubbish"?

Though the technology probably exists, my iPod has no means of fast-forwarding through a boring rant or a dreadful podsafe tune

And that's a pretty clear example of what IT support types call "user error". Mine can do that Mr Dowling. All iPods can do that.

There's a funny article to be written about this stuff, but it'll rise above "isn't technology so geeky?" and "all amateur material is laughable".

So nyah, nyah, nyah.

Oh, look. Channel 4 News is podcasting.

Interesting.