I take the bus every morning, and for some reason I’ve developed this habit of looking at people’s ears while I’m sitting there. No, I don’t have any creepy ear fetishes; I just like to see how many people are listening to iPods.

I’ve started to realize something. At least on my morning bus route, the vast majority of people who have the white earbuds dangling from their ears sit in the back of the bus. The people in the front are usually chatting with their friends, powdering their nose, or just staring blankly ahead. Nearly everyone in the back is listening to their iPod.

I’ve even started making a game of it. I call it “check-the-ears, predict-the-seat.” Ok, I don’t actually have a name for it, but I have found that if I look at a person’s ears when they get on the bus, I can usually predict if they’ll make their way to the back or dump themselves into the first available seat.

So who cares? Well, some day in the future I may be interested in throwing some ads up inside buses. The kinds of ads I want to put in there would specifically be targeted to iPod listeners. So, if I can get them into the back somewhere, at least if it were on Route #7, they’d probably be more effective.

DISCLAIMER: Although my data collection methods may seem foolproof, sitting on a bus and looking at people’s ears isn’t actually considered a scientific process. It’s probably not safe to base any million dollar ad campaigns off these findings quite yet.

I’ve noticed a few stories this week out on the web talking about putting ridiculous amounts of music on an iPod. Podcasting News reported that IBM has developed a chip that can hold 500,000 songs. Ya, that’s a lot, but if I listen 8 hours per day I’m going to run out of music in 12 years… and heaven forbid I have to listen to the same song twice. But not to worry, the Scottish Scientists can do better. How about… 100 Million songs [insert Dr. Evil style smirk here]. Now you can have enough music to keep you going for 100 lifetimes, all on 1 iPod. Since I plan to live 100 lifetimes, this is good news to me. I think it’s only fair that the warrenty should last as long too.

But according to the Scottish Scientists, if you plan to live more than 100 lifetimes and want to listen to non-stop music on your iPod for the entire time, your going to be out of luck. Apparently at that point we will have reached the limits of what is physically possible. We can only PREY that by the year 3000 we will have reliable and affordable wireless globally so that we don’t have to store our music on our iPods anymore.

Remember the days when we referred to any personal portable audio player as a “Walkman.” It didn’t matter if the cassette player was a Sony, or even a cassette player. If someone had headphones on when they were walking around, they were listening to their “Walkman.”

This is because Sony was first to the market with the idea, and they did a really good job of marketing. The term has been a part of our language for 20 years.

But after 20 years a new company has come along that, again, was first to market with an innovation and has even stronger marketing skills. Personal Audio players now are referred to as “iPods.” It doesn’t matter what the brand is, or even if the device is an mp3 player or another portable device that you can listen to music on. If someone has headphones on when they are walking around they are listening to their “iPod.”

It’s hard to imagine that this will ever change again, but clearly Apple has proved it is possible to change people’s language if you’re good enough. Will it ever change again?

Traditional broadcasting technologies such as radio are being displaced by more personalized services. Broadcast radio, television, and even modern satellite radio are all suffering from a decline in listeners. What’s the reason? Computers and portable media players are more advanced and easier to use than ever before. Sure, portable radios, walkmans and Discmans have been around for years, but they never offered people the degree of customizability as products like the iPod do. When I was a kid, making a customized CD or tape was very time-consuming or too expensive, at least until 1999 when I was able to afford my first CD burner. Today, I can do the same thing with a few clicks of a mouse and in way less time.

These days, more and more technologies are being supplanted. Last Christmas, I got an alarm clock/radio that doubles as an iPod dock and player. Instead of waking up to a screeching siren, I can start the day with my obnoxious teenage angst music.

The car is where traditional radio is making its stand. Very few cars have an iPod or USB connection, so radio is still the most convenient distraction when behind the wheel. A few years ago, cars’ AM/FM radio dominance became threatened by the satellite variety. The two main satellite radio services, XM and Sirius, claim they have a combined 17 million subscribers in North America. Not a bad figure at all, but the rate of new subscriptions has leveled off.

Even so, will portable media players be able to retain their market share? Satellite radio can be transmitted into your pocket as well. There are portable players from XM and Sirius, even devices that can record audio for playback later. So far, they haven’t been able to replace many iPods. Adoption of satellite radio has waned as iPods and portable media players have become more popular, suggesting that people would rather listen to their own playlists instead of stations designed for mass consumption.

And now for something completely different…

Any media platform has to be able to pass the adolescent girl test. Think of a user that doesn’t know and doesn’t care how something works. It just better work and better be cool. Radio achieves that because it’s so darn easy to use. Discmans were easy and were all the rage in their day. iPods are straightforward, and have the cool card in their back pocket. Podcasts fall short on both fronts. They need a lot of explanation up-front, and users need to be relatively skilled with the web to get value out of them.

I like to describe our website as “a service where you can create your own radio show. Not only with the music you want, but also the news, business, sports, and any other topic you want to know or be kept in the loop about.” I steer clear of describing what podcasts are because I find that in doing so, I use long words (e.g. syndicated) that only make people feel very confused.

We are designing the service so that it is very easy for people to get started. Then we’ll hook them using our wit and charm, and possibly a few high-rated podcasts. Keep coming back to dailysplice.com to see the changes we’ll be making over the next few weeks. Our mission is to make podcasts easier to use and to expose podcasters to a larger audience. No, not just adolescent girls.