November 2nd, 2007 — Podcast
Microsoft and the Zune team are joining the podcasting evolution on Nov 13th, info on how to get listed has been released on the Zune Insider blog.
But here are the basics of what you are going to have to have plus some things that are not listed on their site. First a valid RSS Feed with album art linked correctly. If your show is adult in nature aka porn, or has hate talk or anything illegal you probably will not get listed as each show will be reviewed by a Zune team member.
If you are a podcaster you can do yourself a favor by reading both of these posts and working through any RSS issues you may have before their launch. Zune Insider
October 20th, 2007 — Podcast
This is a question that definitely causes people to get their dandruff up. But now that Podcasting is three years old many people still do no understand podcasting and many people think you need a iPod to consume Podcasts.
In a world where everyone could agree on terms my thoughts are that anyone individual, business or company excluding traditional media outlets that are largely household names are creating new media. Take for example people putting content on YouTube that they have created. This media is New Media. Whether it be Audio or Video generally media created for the purpose of consumption that is not mainstream media driven should be considered New Media.
Podcasting on the other hand is a medium largely associated with highly targeted portable media that you as a consumer can consume on demand. It is very similar to your DVR in your home. You subscribe to the content you want on your computer then that content is automatically loaded on your media device and you consume it when you have the time when and wherever you are.
Therefore while those creating the content are new media creators the media they create and distribute via the web and or a RSS feed is a podcast. The underlying technology though of podcasting is the automatic downloading and synchronization of that content that was downloaded and put on your mobile media device.
July 27th, 2007 — Podcast
Excerpted from Podcasting the Do it Your Self Guide with Permission printed initially in 2005
For some of you this short history will be a trip down memory lane. But many reporters have bungled the true history behind the evolution of podcasting. I want to give you the skinny and set the record straight.
The true godfathers of podcasting are Dave Winer and Adam Curry. Dave Winer (scripting.com) is a software developer, RSS evangelist, and developer of the popular weblog package Radio Userland, (userland.com). Today he produces Morning Coffee Notes and Trade Secrets (secrets.scripting.com), Adam Curry produces the wildly popular Daily Source Code (live.curry.com). Adam is well known as mid 80s former MTV VJ (live.curry.com).
Podcasting started, before the term was even invented, with an idea from a meeting in 2000 between Adam and Dave. The two were talking about automated media distribution. The conversation centered around video rather than audio. Dave was against the idea of a subscription-based system for video downloads.
Remember this was 2000 before the world-wide leap in the number of Broadband Internet connections. Dave felt the Internet simply had not evolved to the point where it would support large video downloads, not to mention the cost of delivering content. His analogy was that it was taking longer to download video than it was to play it, and many times the video was poor quality and you really did not know what you were going to get.
Adam’s idea was to look at Internet connections differently and to consider all of the bandwidth that goes to waste when you are not using your Internet connection. He wanted a software solution that could download items that he subscribed to. This really wasn’t a new idea, but there were no tools to do this in the fashion they desired.
Dave was already working on Real Simple Syndication (RSS). The site: http://webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro/ offers a detailed discussion of this exciting lightweight XML format. RSS is specifically designed for creating new stories. It enables you to share headings and other Web content across the Internet. Because an RSS text file can include dynamic content as well as static content, you can use it to distribute new content from your site to others.
Dave had made some revisions to the original RSS 0.91 specification developed by Netscape and formalized RSS 2.0 in 2003. The RSS 2.0 standard was released by Harvard under a Creative Commons license. More information on RSS can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rssVersionHistory.html
In the meantime Dave wanted to come up with a format to deliver content via a subscription system. So Dave thought the process would need to be broken into three problems:
1. What software do you use when creating the content?
2. What software reads the content?
3. Where do you find the content?
These three elements needed to come together to make the vision developed at that meeting in 2000 happen.
Until the summer of 2004 progress was slow and even though many of the individual pieces were there in place, they were not all tied together until Adam decided to try his hand at programming and developed the first rudimentary podcatcher application with Apple Scripts.
Dave initially thought that what Adam had created would not work, but with his hacked together Apple Script, Adam was able to capture and download Dthe audio post that Dave embedded in his weblog.
Then Adam’s program read Dave’s RSS feed and downloaded the audio file. You may be asking how Adam’s program knew what to look for. Adam’s podcatcher was looking for items within Dave’s RSS feed known as enclosures. Adam’s Podcatcher simply grabbed the file within these enclosures, downloaded it, and then utilizing the API released for iTunes, it put the file in his iTunes playlist, which then could be synced to Adam’s iPod
Dave and Adam worked for four years after that original meeting to make subscription and automatic file downloads of video and audio content easy for the masses. Things seem to always come full circle and by a little luck in that we had a quasi celebrity promoting what they had accomplished, Adam’s simple Apple script lit a fire for the development of podcasting which is in full swing today.
Adam Curry says, “Podcasting is where developers and users party together”. This has been a profound battle cry and has resulted in amazing acheivments in a short time. The momentum behind podcasting is simply amazing. The number of people racing to make it easier to produce and consume podcasts is going on at a frenzied pace with at least a dozen teams bringing software products that are largely free to the market place. The Open Source community and the initial innovations and foresight of Adam and Dave were the keys to the explosive growth and initial creation of software tools that sky rocketed the growth of this medium. Today teams of individuals collaborate to bring new features to the software tools we are going to discuss in detail.
Note: This is an Excerpt from my book “Podcasting The Do It Yourself Guide” While this is the history as I published it in May of 2005 Todd Cochrane
July 20th, 2007 — Podcast
Content Consumers are always looking for great content and the largest part of the challenge if finding new media content that you can build a schedule around.
If your like me we all have a limited amount of time in a day. So what we have to do is plan on what we are going to listen to. Some of you may still listen to Radio Programming and I bet you have certain shows you listen to on a consistent basis because you know when the show is going to start and finish.
Finding new media content in podcasting is the same thing, podcasters that care about their audiences time will produce their podcast on a regular basis.
If the podcaster only creates a show once a month then you will likely catch the show when you can. But those that produce shows on a scheduled basis with at least a consistency of 1–2 shows a week all released at about the same time of the day allows you to plan what shows you will listen to.
The key to making this apparent to the podcaster is by either thanking them when the produce on a schedule. You can also comment to those that are not producing on a scheduled basis that it would help if they would.
June 29th, 2007 — Podcast
If you have a podcast that you like be sure to remind the host that the 3rd Annual People’s Choice Podcast Award Nominations start on Monday.
There is an opportunity for three shows to get some major exposure in a mini contest on the site. The top three sites that can drive the most traffic to PodcastAwards.com will get a free one year advertisement of a 120×120 banner on the site see this link for details.
Meanwhile get the word out and good luck to all shows. PodcastAwards.com
Todd Cochrane, Founder People’s Choice Podcast Awards
June 21st, 2007 — Podcast
My good friend Rob Safuto did a review of Songbird, and he demonstrated how easy it was to listen to video and audio podcast on our family of Podcasting sites using the Songbird browser. I really love this demo and the Songbird browser is a must for anyone that is looking for new media to add to their subscription list. Pay particular attention to the area where he covered the MyCast functionality and the power of Songbird.
Watch the Video Here!
June 21st, 2007 — Podcast
A great place to find out about some very good Podcast will be when the Podcast Awards websites post their slate of candidate shows. Over 200 of the best podcast in the podcasting space will be represented. PodcastAwards.com
June 4th, 2007 — Podcast
The easiest way to listen to Podcast today is via websites that have aggregated podcast content. Although their are a lot of sites that have podcast content very few of the sites are actively managed. In fact many have been abandoned and run on auto pilot.
Their is nothing more disheartening than listening to 3–4 shows in a podcast series only to find that the podcaster has not continued to do the show. Generally if podcasters has created a minimum of 7–10 shows, the likelihood that the podcaster will continue to produce content is much higher.
History has shown that a large number of shows never make it past shows 7 and even a smaller number continue beyond show 25. When picking a podcast series or show to listen to you may want to try and determine how many shows the podcaster has produced.
Sites that I recommend that actively maintain their podcast listings. Most of these sites allow you to click and listen to podcast through your web browser.
May 27th, 2007 — Podcast
It has been nearly three years since the word Podcast was thought up and today many people are still confused one what a podcast really is. While I would like to think that having wrote the first book on the subject, will qualify me to be and expert on the subject. Thus I will explain to you what I think a podcast really is.
First let’s point out what it isn’t. For years people have been creating and audio and video and putting it online. People have been listening to audio and video online via their computers for just as long. The act of creating, placing and consuming content online is not podcasting. We are missing a very important element and that is the automated downloading of that content.
What a podcast is actually very simple it is the ability to use popular programs like iTunes, Juice Receiver and others to automatically download the same audio and video media people have been putting online, and then automatically place that downloaded media onto a portable media device. The physical act of automatically downloading and auto synchronization is what has caused podcast consumption to explode. To date almost all portable media players can be automatically synchronized with Podcast.
This is what allowed podcast media delivery to become so powerful. Software on your computer can download new content that you have subscribed to while you sleep. Upload it to your media player and allow you to listen to that media the following day. I call this the power of walk away content. The ability to feed your brain with audio and video content that interest you.
The actual process is not important to talk about at this time, but as you time shift your TV watching today you can also time shift your audio listening as well. Sure some people still listen to media in front of their computers like they have for many years. But now you can through a automated process take that media with you, with no hassles.
Lot’s of podcast sites allow you to listen online today, simply listening to a few will get you started in understanding many of the other dynamics of podcasting that I will delve into over the next weeks and months see the second column for a link.
May 26th, 2007 — Podcast
Welcome to What’s a Podcast a resource site that will contain information of Podcast and what makes the content medium so unique. We will also be bringing you information on how you can create your own podcast and where you can host it.
Todd Cochrane
Author Podcasting the do it Your Self Guide
