Here’s a fun podcast! Boxcar711 Old Time Radio is a daily show from way back… and yes I means even further back than the way-back machine can take you! This is a collection of old radio shows from a time when people not only listened to radio, but gathered around the radio with a bowl of popcorn. Add Boxcar711 into your daily splice, it’s a lot of fun!
Marvin Suicide: Track 148;
SlashDot Review - SDR News: Apple Challenging Microsoft in corporate realm;
MicrobeWorld: Genetics and Flu Fatalities;
CNET daily tech news: Targeted Advertising;
CamaroZ28: Camaro Focus Group;
PC2Mac switch: Speech recognition;
Web Hosting Show: Choosing a Web Host for Blogging
With podcast audiences growing at about 20% per year, the number of podcasts available online is likely to soar. Although a rise in the growth rate of podcasts would be great for producers and advertisers, listeners would be faced with the same dilemma they have now: is there something in Podcastland for me and how do I find it?
Two major problems are preventing podcasts from entering the mainstream. The first and probably most serious is a misunderstanding of what podcasts are. Podcasts are seen as a niche media format, and for that reason many people dismiss it as too technical. Between 2006 and 2007, there was a huge increase in the number of people who have heard of the term ‘podcast’, but a substantially smaller increase in the number of people that began listening. This indicates that people have been introduced to podcasts, but for some reason(s) are not subscribing. I believe that this is primarily due to misconceptions about podcasts and who they’re suited for; we need to dismiss the notion that podcasts are too complicated, techie, or specialized. And no, Dad, you don’t need an iPod.
The other problem is finding interesting podcasts. In chemistry, there is a concept called activation energy that is defined as the amount of energy that must be overcome for a chemical reaction to occur. If the energy cannot be provided, the reaction won’t take place. I’m sure you’ve figured out my metaphor by now. Yes, finding podcasts is a time-consuming, difficult task, especially for the uninitiated. First, you have to browse a directory, find a bunch of podcasts that seem interesting, download them, sample them, prune and maintain them. The activation energy is too high.
Lots of people are giving it the ol’ college try. There are oodles of directories out there, but most simply aggregate the RSS feed’s contents and provide a play function. Newer services add some more advanced features such as organizing podcasts by production date or allowing people to create a playlist of their favorites. Unfortunately these directories do little to solve the more complex problem of reducing the effort required to get involved. They focus too heavily on organizing content in predetermined categories in a DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory fashion, which is helpful if people already know what they’re looking for, but for users that are just getting their feet wet, this kind of organization falls short. Newcomers must still spend a great deal of time finding interesting content, a chore that will become more and more tedious as the amount of content increases.
One of DailySplice’s main efforts is to ease the burden of finding good shtuff. DailySplice organizes its directory using a metric called Podrank, an algorithm that determines the popularity and dependability of a podcast. For any category, the directory will show the most popular and consistently updated podcasts. In addition, the directory derives some helpful information about a podcaster’s publication habits, including when new episodes are expected and the expected running time of an episode.
As the number of podcasts and listeners increases over the next few years, we will need more intelligent ways of providing would-be listeners with relevant content. The objective is to reduce the amount of clicks and time investment required to find a slate of good material and listen to it on a regular basis.
So one of the big stories I noticed this week was the release of Adobe’s media player. It looks slick, but what does it mean for podcasters? Well, Wizzard digs it, and we all know Wizzard is the lastest hot stuff in the podcasting industry. We had a look at it as well because we are working on some player ideas. Let me steal a rant from our CTO, Lewis Sobotkiewicz, who doesn’t think it means much to us podcasters:
…It looks like they’re focusing heavily on video, not so much on audio. It can’t load .AVI or .MPG files off of my hard drive, which is what all my personal videos are encoded as. I’ve read on the net that it can’t play back H.264+AAC files. That would be unfortunate for podcasters because that’s how video podcasts are encoded. Podcasters aren’t going to spend the extra $400 to buy Flash so they can encode as .FLV.
I have no idea where downloaded episodes are saved. They go to some mysterious folder on my hard drive, and I have no idea how to get rid of them.
And yes, their interface is very slick and easy to use. I, like everyone, love crossfading transitions, but that’s not enough to convince me to download this thing so I can watch 3 episode of CSI New York. That’s the only thing they seem to be adding to the already full media player bandwagon. My impression is that Adobe has a lot of work to do before this gets widespread adoption.
So there you have it. Maybe it’s not all that hot if you’re a podcaster. It was just released the other day though, so we’ll see how it pans out for us.
Podington Bear: Radiohead - Au Naturale;
Icebox Radio Podcast;
NPR In Character: Eric Cartman;
CNET Tech update: CBS says that music availability on last.fm has improved their online sales;
Slashdot Review: Lifebits;
Podcast from Paradise: Christenstead Opportunities;
Tri Talk Triathlon Podcast: Focus your period training
I used to work for a company called ChinesePod. I bring it up a lot because I enjoyed working there and learned a lot, but also because I really believe that they were using podcasts for a practical and beneficial purpose: Education.
When it comes to education, podcasting has a lot to offer. They’re easy to record, so anyone who has something to teach can do it. They can be distributed to all corners of the planet at zero cost, so the world is your classroom. They are extremely portable, so you can learn anywhere. You can pause or rewind, so you can learn on the go whenever is convenient for you, and stop to think whenever you need to. They don’t take any storage space, so students can store all their lessons forever. They are usually released along side a blog, so all the learners can converge and discuss the material. And, particularly with bite-sized podcasts, you can learn in small chunks and pick and choose what’s important.
I’m reading more and more about universities, high schools, and even elementary schools getting into podcasting. One of my favorite examples is the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast. At Stanford they have weekly seminars with some of the worlds most exciting entrepreneurs. All they do is record the seminars and put them on an RSS feed and voila, a podcast! But now instead of being a cool seminar that students of Stanford can attend IF they happen to have the time on Friday afternoons, these seminars become a way for the entire planet to learn and grow from an archive of lectures taught by the best of the best. It’s also a now a easy reference for anyone who went to the seminar and wants to refer back to something that was said. It’s also a historical record of great business men and women speaking about their ideas and dreams for the future, like the one from Marc Zuckerberg in 2005 before anyone in Canada ever knew about Facebook. It’s also a way for Stanford to get the world excited about their school.
Another great example is Grammar Girl. This is an example of just a regular girl who knows a lot about grammar, now teaching thousands upon thousands of learners every day with bite-sized, easily referenced, grammar tips, and making piles of cash from ads. Now you’ll find all sorts of Grammar Girl style podcasts, branded with “quick and dirty tips” almost like the “for dummies” of the 90s.
Coming back to ChinesePod, language learning through podcasts has really taken off, and for good reason. Not just the “lesson” style language podcasts, but any bite-sized English podcast makes a great tool for English language learners. Whenever I introduce our site to someone who has English as a second language, one of the first comments I get is how great these are as a free resource for practicing their English listening skills.
If you have a great bite-sized learning podcast, be sure to submit it to our directory and leave a comment here! I’ll be happy to put it into my daily splice and review it in our podcast!
MPR Current Song of the Day: Tokyo Police Club - In a Cave;
Mashable Conversations: A Conversation with Aux’s Eric Litman;
ESPN the best of Mike and Mike: Tennessee Wins Second Consecutive Title;
tech5: EU approves Mobile phones on airlines;
Los Angeles Weather Podcast: Clear, Highs in the mid 70s;
Medical Minute: Medical Mistakes;
NPR Car Talk: To Muffler or not to Muffler
If you’ve been listening to our podcast, you know I’ve brought up the Medical Minute more than a couple of times. I’m always interested in the latest medical and biotechnology research and statistics. Unfortunately my brain can’t handle more than a few minutes of it at once. Too many big words, I suppose. The Medical Minute podcast is very short so my chimpanzee-like attention span isn’t an issue. The information is condensed, topical, and always interesting. It’s worth taking a listen.
