Update on ZDnet Podcast
Thursday, July 28, 2005
John Carroll's blog feed now includes his podcasts.
Update: I listened to the podcast and recommend it... good run-down of digital media and his opinion on DRM.
posted by Russell @ 2:51 PM,
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indiepodder - the domain
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
So I mentioned in my earlier podcast that I had snagged a few variations on the name. More of a joke than anything else, and certainly not malicious. But the person who snagged indypodder.org seems to have higher aspirations. He opens Adam’s new indiepodder.org site within a frame and surrounds the entire content with Google Ads.
Fun is fun, but that’s just cheesy. So to show that I am not in that same class, I’ve redirected all of the variations that I registered back to indiepodder.org. And Adam, if you are out there, just say the word and we’ll get them transferred to you.
posted by Russell @ 9:22 PM,
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"Where Technology Means Business"
Sorry, but I just can't resist. I was browsing over at Carroll’s blog and saw that he had created a podcast containing his views on DRM. Interested in DRM, I tried to subscribe.
The page that has the blog entry has an XML button, but the feed does not contain the podcast. At the bottom, there is a link on ‘how to tune in’ – but that takes you to another very lengthly article which has no XML button, but has within it buried a small reference to the feed – which does not contain Mr. Carroll’s podcast.
Makes you wonder if they are not just throwing the word ‘podcast’ around for the google hits…
podcast podcast podcast pocast
posted by Russell @ 8:21 PM,
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Free Software for Counting Subscibers
Todd Cochran from geeknewscentral.com has been bragging for months now about the application they have written for techpodcasts.com to parse server logs and determine a "real" figure for subscriptions. Kevin Devin of In The Trenches has released the program to the public under an open source license. Check it out here.
posted by Russell @ 1:26 PM,
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Treo Podcasting goes International
Blogging And Podcasting Start to Take Off in Africa: First Mobile Phone Podcast From Accra?
Having written about the difficulties of getting bandwidth, Carvin met a local blogger at BusyInternet named Mustapha introduced himself. As Carvin tells it:"As we chatted, he saw my Treo 600 phone and he said that he just got a Treo 650, which has both video and bluetooth.
posted by Russell @ 1:06 PM,
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Podcast Commercialization
For those that are so upset about the commercial participants over at iTunes, how do you feel about the Target ads that have appeared on Podcastalley…
(Still think they’re not connected to Apple and Adam?)
posted by Russell @ 12:47 AM,
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07/25 TPC "Just Because"
Monday, July 25, 2005
New K7 voice mail number: 206–66–MOBILE
I predict the shuttle will go – just a feeling
Houston podcasting: Mikeypod on the Bayou, jkontherun
iTunes dominated by “commercial media” – who cares? Adam, that’s who…
Check out Scott over at Podcheck Weekly.
podcastingpodcasting treo houstontexas
posted by Russell @ 10:56 PM,
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Florida
Saturday, July 23, 2005
I swear, I’ve never even been to New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
posted by Russell @ 10:29 PM,
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Funny
This ad popped up while I was reading about the lawsuit against Apple and I just thought it was funny.
posted by Russell @ 1:26 AM,
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Apple sued
It seems that someone is claiming rights to the iTunes interface, and they are sueing Apple to stop distribution of iTunes. I would love to be on that jury...
posted by Russell @ 1:17 AM,
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SBC DSL Update
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
After seeing this post over on Laurence Simon's blog today, I thought I'd give a little update on my SBC DSL line upgrade. You might recall that last last February I received a call as well from SBC wanting to upgrade me from my current DSL circuit to a new line that promised speeds three times that of my current.
It involved connecting me up to a new 'remote terminal' that was recently installed in my area. This would take me off-line for about a day, but once service was restored I was promised incredible bandwidth. (Okay, maybe not incredible, but very good for SBC.)
So the installation was scheduled, the new modem was received and installed, and I waited. How long to the installation:
Notice that's a "T+" and not a "T-"? Yep, that's right. I was scheduled for March 17, 2005... and I am still waiting. I actually called today. After about 30 minutes on the phone (that's talk-time, not total time) listening to people tell me that "that work order's been completed" I finally got one SBC representative to inform me that "yeah... we're still working on that."
I hope, Mr. Laurence, that you have more success...
posted by Russell @ 2:29 PM,
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Pocket Tunes Deluxe 3.1 Supports DRM
Monday, July 18, 2005
The latest version of Pocket-Tunes deluxe, the best MP3 player for Palm OS (in my opinion) now supports WMA DRM. This means that it will work with any of the on-line music stores that support Microsoft’s “playsforsure” DRM.
posted by Russell @ 12:01 PM,
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Missed it by that much
Corporations are starting to see the benefits of podcasting. Well, corporations are still kicking themselves for not embracing blogging faster than they did, and this has given them a fear of being left behind – a blogos-fear.
So many are embracing podcasting, such as Houston-based BMC Software. They have their site up, with podcasts on everything from database administration to an interview with Ken Turbitt, BMC’s Global Best Practice Director.
They have links to the files, and even stream the shows directly from their web site. The have an RSS feed for the site. But guess what… no enclosure statement. No enclosure statements, no podcast. They are probably sitting around scratching their heads wondering what's the big deal about podcasting…its just an MP3 file, right?
posted by Russell @ 9:03 AM,
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Rain, rain... Go away.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Well, the rain has arrived in Austin. No lake. Guess we'll go find a bar...
posted by Russell @ 2:01 PM,
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Emergency vacation
Friday, July 15, 2005
Days and days of rain, and no end in sight. Time to get out of dodge. First stop: the ranch. We'll stay overnight and then its on to Lake Travis.
posted by Russell @ 6:07 AM,
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I just did a radio broadcast
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
So, when I asked for someone to inform the media that "its not a podcast if its not contained within an enclosure statement in the RSS feed" I was being rhetorical. But Charlie from Rip & Read answered the call. After slightly chiding Mr. Carroll for writing about podcasting when it's obvious he doesn't understand the basics, Mr. Carroll replied:
For crying out loud, I did a 31 MINUTE PODCAST (or audio file not linked to by RSS, excuse the hell out of me).
... and I just did a radio broadcast (or an audio program spoken into a microphone not connected to a transmitter).
(Thanks Charlie!)
posted by Russell @ 7:32 PM,
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Forum Spam
Sorry, but the spam in the forums was getting to be too much to keep up with. So now you'll have to register in order to post.
posted by Russell @ 4:35 PM,
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Is "The Plan" backfiring?
Adam Curry has really pushed podcasting into the mainstream. Some think this is great, while others don’t. Regardless, its always been known that his efforts were to the benefit of his Podshow venture.
But here we are a few weeks after iTunes 4.9, and the ‘podsquad’ is nowhere to be found. Instead the iTunes “Top Podcasts” list is dominated by Al Franken, CNN, ESPN Radio, and other “big media” companies. Podfinder, Adam’s new iTunes show is still listed, but its had yet to release a second episode, and Podfinder has had top billing in iTunes since the first day.
Dawn and Drew, Yeast Radio, even the new Podshow affiliate The Mommy Cast are gone from the headlines. Podshow.com seems to be stagnate, while Odeo and others are being given a chance to catch up.
And even Casterblaster, Podshow's answer to podcast creation has been slow to develop, while Apple has begun publishing instructions on how to make a podcast using their software.
Has Adam’s dream succumb to the same media giants that apparently are burying the “indie indie podcasters”? Is this what he meant when he preached of "taking back the media"? Or are there still tricks up his sleeve?
posted by Russell @ 12:50 PM,
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define nit-picking
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
john characterizes reports of rove as "nit-picking" the truth. i suppose. i mean, what is "nit-picking"? and while we're at it, how are we defining "is" today?
posted by clyde @ 8:45 PM,
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Updated Items: Display as New
If you use a news aggregator, then you have probably seen this setting, or something like it. Basically it means that you will only get the first posting of an entry, but not any edits if they occur. Usually I set this to "Ignore" knowing how many times I have to go back and correct my own spelling.
But for media sites, I like to leave this as "Display as New" because I like to see what edits occur. Its comical how some people out there so want to capitalize on blogs and their appeal to regular folks, and yet try hard to maintain their air of infallibility.
Case in point: this article that originally appeared on ZDNet on the 10th. In the first article, the author talks about his podcast. His blog has an RSS feed available on the page, and yet the feed has no enclosure statement and thus, no podcast. This of course was something on which I had a burning need to comment - which I did.
So today the same article appears in my Bloglines: an edit.
But no comments, no corrections... just the same article with the following lines added to the bottom:
Okay, cool. So he has a separate feed for his podcasts. One that he forgot to mention; one that's not even on his article about his podcast. Hey, it happens. I didn't know that when I left the comment. But of course, by re-writing the article rather than commenting, and leaving my comment there, he's basically trying to make me look like an idiot.
Not the first time. From here on out, and forever more I will be that "idiot who made the random comment on ZDNet." I can live with that.
Next week's lesson: link redirection.
posted by Russell @ 8:11 PM,
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Feedburner's latest offerings
Its strange how Feedburner does not make a big deal when they add features to their free service. Like in the case of their new BuzzBoost service. It allows you to do some cool things with your Feedburner feed, such as the new Mobilepodcast.org Mobile page for cells phones, or the listing of the last three episodes of the TPC listed on the right.
posted by Russell @ 2:15 AM,
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More love for myPodder
Monday, July 11, 2005
Rick Cooper, the PDA Pro, sees the potential of myPodder and podcasting. And if you are looking around for more PDA information, his web site looks like a good resource.
posted by Russell @ 10:22 PM,
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Podfather gives a little love
Today’s DSC mentions the “Podcatcher on a Stick” project… Christian said his server at the university could handle the traffic from the exposure, so I guess here’s the test. The expert from today’s DSC has been posted to the TPC Addemdum feed or you can download it from: http://tpc.podlot.net/addendum/mypodder__DSC_071105.mp3
posted by Russell @ 4:17 PM,
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Show Notes Update
It seems I failed to do my research when I mentioned Laurence Simon’s podcast in the last installment of the TPC. His “100 Words or Les Nessman” essay is actually his contribution to a collective blog. Sorry Laurence. But, thanks for mentioning houstonpodcasting.org!
posted by Russell @ 1:27 PM,
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It's not a podcast when...
Could someone please tell the media that its not a podcast if its not contained within an “enclosure statement” in the RSS feed? What you do have Mr. Carroll is an MP3 file available for download.
posted by Russell @ 10:50 AM,
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07/10 TPC "The Dedication Hour"
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Another "Man in the Woods" podcast... so, my notes are very incomplete. So you'll just have to listen. I do know that I talked about "Podcatcher on a Stick" that I mentioned earlier. I am very excited about this product. It's one of the most innovative ideas in podcasting to come along in a while.
Also, I played some tunes from Freddy Potts as dedications to fellow podcasters, the elected officals in Austin, and specifically to Jimmy Jett.
podcastingpodcasting treo houstontexas
posted by Russell @ 3:19 AM,
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Treo Podcatcher
Friday, July 08, 2005
One of the things that we’ve been searching for here for quite some time is a podcatcher that works well with the Treo 600. Up until recently, the best thing we’d seen was Quick News from Stand Alone, inc. It’s a great RSS reader and it does have the ability to download enclosures (it even calls them ‘podcasts’) but of course, over a PCS network, this is not great. Heck, it’s not even good…
A couple of weeks ago I was made aware of a podcatcher that takes a totally new approach: it’s a client that lives on your MP3 player, and it’s called Podcatcher on a Stick.
What I mean by that is, if your MP3 player connects to your computer as a drive, then this program, written in Python, actually lives on your player – complete with all of your subscriptions – and can be executed on any machine (Windows, MAC, Linux) without having to install anything on the machine itself.
Podcatcher on a Stick is an open-source project from Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. It was developed by Christian Rotzoll with support from Hagen-Christian Tonnies and a special thanks to Michael Grunwald.
I am going to be giving a complete review on my next podcast, but as it turns out that probably won’t be until Saturday evening here in Houston so I thought I would start spreading the word a little early.
In a nutshell, this podcatcher works well. It is just now being released in a beta form for public testing, but I have already replaced my Podnova client with this beauty – don’t worry though, I still use Podnova to create and manage my subscriptions, I just feed the Podnova RSS file to my Podcatcher on a Stick. I will warn you that the MAC and Linux operability is still “highly experimental” as described by Christian, so if there is anyone out there that would care to test this out on either of those platforms we’d be very appreciative.
Moving forward, I am going to be helping Christian with support by moderating the forums at http://mypodder.mobilepodcast.org. This is intended to be the clearing house for all of the questions, bug reports, requests, etc. Hopefully I will be able to take enough of the support work off of his shoulders so he can continue to work on his projects.
So stay tuned for a more in-depth review of this program to come shortly. And in the meantime, browse on over to http://mypodder.org and download a copy of the beta and see what you think.
posted by Russell @ 7:45 PM,
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New iPod Offering...
Thursday, July 07, 2005
This has been passed around a lot today… the iPod Flea.
posted by Russell @ 2:36 PM,
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Breaking News Blog
The Houston Chronicle put on-line today a breaking news blog: NewsBlog: London Blasts
posted by Russell @ 12:12 PM,
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Yet another podcast directory
Yet another podcast directory has joined the fun… how many directories is "too many?"
posted by Russell @ 9:43 AM,
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Mossberg on Podcasting
Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal weighs in on podcasting. Conclusion: still way to complicated for the average user to create and distribute a podcast.
Even though he did not consider using Blogger’s blog/audioblogger service with Feedburner, or Openpodcast.org’s “open mic” environment, I think he’s right.
Most folks won’t want to simply record themselves talking and post it to the world. They’ll want slick intoductions, music fades, sound effects, etc. And that right now takes more time, effort, and imagination that most want to commit.
Not mention the fact that most don’t even know where to begin…
posted by Russell @ 9:34 AM,
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WiFi at McDonalds
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
First DVD's and now WiFi? Winer talked about the lack of wireless network access has he had been traveling lately. And today pointed to a McDonalds page that talks about their WiFi plans. The thing that caught my eye was on McDonalds page describing how to get on:
Unless you already have a subscription or a prepaid card from Wayport, the only way to pay in the McDonald’s restaurant is online with credit card. Stores located in the following states also provide the option of purchasing a membership for the FreedomLinksm service online from SBC Internet Services: California, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Connecticut. (www.sbc.com/freedomlink)
You cannot pay for the service over the counter.
Notice the SBC link in the paragraph. I knew that SBC was going to try to place WiFi spots all over the city, but I did not know they were going to be associated with McDonalds.
posted by Russell @ 2:36 PM,
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Feedburner supports iTunes
FYI: Feedburner's 'smartcast' option for creating podcast feeds now supports the iTunes 4.9 tags.
posted by Russell @ 1:10 PM,
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Poor ad placement
Monday, July 04, 2005
I was helping my father-in-law on his computer today, and saw AOL’s new VoIP service listed, so I clicked the button to see what would happen. On the same screen as the sign-up was an ad for Vonage…
posted by Russell @ 8:06 PM,
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Adam's plans become more transparent...
Sunday, July 03, 2005
…and a lot of folks are very upset about them. Todd over at Geek News Central has posted an opinion piece calling for Adam’s full disclosure.
The thing is, podcasting is now a business. There are a lot of people out there that conduct business in a way in which I do not agree… but they do, and that’s that. I’ve been talking about this day since last December. Not that I am any soothsayer or anything. It’s just that I have seen it before. And no doubt I’ll see it again.
The bell has been rung… and you can’t un-ring it. Podcasting is never going to be what it was 6 months ago. Do I wish that weren’t true? Sometimes. But ultimately it just seems that rules have changed a bit, and currently Adam is “winning”. We can develop and grow our business models, we can try to get on with Podshow, we can just plug along having fun, or we can go off and do other things.
We can too, try to hamper Apple and Podshow’s efforts. But if you don’t like what Adam is doing, then you are probably not going to like what it would take. The hundreds of podcasters who have had their copyrights and licenses violated would have to take action against Apple and Podcastalley. It’s fine to complain amongst ourselves, but it won’t help. The message has to be taken to the press. And yes, lawyers have to get involved – and that costs money.
posted by Russell @ 11:26 PM,
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Feed for Forums
Just letting everyone know that I've added a feed for the forums section...
posted by Russell @ 10:04 PM,
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You GO Phil
Saturday, July 02, 2005
I just got a message from Phil at the “Cornish Pasty Blog” – the first person I know of to start using the ‘go.blogger.com’ service I tested out last week. Looks great!
posted by Russell @ 2:30 PM,
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Netflix pays 2100 salaries at the Post Office
Saw this on Hacking Netflix. It’s an interesting site to visit from time to time even if you are not a Netflix customer as I have been for the last three or four years… a very happy customer, I might add.
posted by Russell @ 2:19 PM,
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Any Wil Wheaton fans out there?
Friday, July 01, 2005
Wil Wheaton has just finished recording his book, Just a Geek, and it will be available in MP3 starting July 5th over at David Lawrence’s site 10 Quick Steps.
posted by Russell @ 8:05 PM,
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MP3 licensing
I knew that the developers of programs that encode and decode MP3’s had to pay a license fee. But I didn’t know that the distribution of MP3’s is subject to licensing fees as well… But don’t freak out yet.
Note: No license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00.
...not generating revenue... guess I’m safe.
posted by Russell @ 3:55 PM,
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Winer's Morning Coffee Notes: RSS
If you have any interest in RSS, you might want to give today’s edition of the Morning Coffee Notes a listen. Winer, the father of RSS, gives a brief history of RSS development, Netscape’s approach to its implementation, and Microsoft’s approach.
Winer thinks Microsoft is getting right – working with developers to make sure that it does what it is suppose to do without breaking anything that already out there – working with users to make sure they understand it and how it works.
Contrast this with Apple’s approach: release the new specifications and the product on the same day and leave the developers to scramble.
posted by Russell @ 1:45 PM,
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Microsoft and IBM settle lawsuit
And Microsoft is paying IBM (in part) with Microsoft Software. Ha!
posted by Russell @ 12:50 PM,
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Houston Radio Station Podcasts
Several weeks ago when I talked to these guys, they had no interest at all in podcasting. The comment was had somethng to do with being “a 20–year veteran of radio…”
Now, it seems, their weekly radio show is being distributed via RSS, which I guess makes it a podcast. Although I have to admit, it would be a lot more exciting if the Houston media would create original content for podcasts…
baby steps.
posted by Russell @ 11:26 AM,
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Houston Podcasting Group
There is a new mail list group set up on Yahoo for Houston area podcasters. If you are interested, go check it out.
I should also mention that there is a forum configured for Houston podcaster's here. And if you would like your own regional forum section, just let me know!
posted by Russell @ 10:55 AM,
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