Author: Tim

Podcasts in education

I was chatting with someone over this beatuful holiday weekend (Happy Memorial Day, to one and all in the US!) about the wide application of podcasts for businesses and public interest groups. It’s alos exciting to see how much podcasting can be used by universities… check out this article originally published in the Bergen County Record… the content out there is amazing.

Upgrade your passwords

Not sure how many of you are Linkin Park fans, but a member of the band just had a nasty run-in with someone who figured out his too-easy-to-figure-out password. Read more about it here. Word to the wise… make your passwords extra tricky to figure out. Forget birthdays and names of kids… forget using your middle name… use a combination of letters and numbers, upper and lower case.

If you want to test out the relative strength of a prospective password, a lot of companies have integrated in tools to help you out when you sign up for their services (Gmail comes to mind). You can also try online helpers like securitystats.com’s password strength meter. Whatever you do, make your sensative data and email accounts a little safer!

Podcast gear for beginners

A lot of people ask me what kind of investment is needed to start a podcast… if you already own a computer and have an Internet connection, the answer is “anywhere from $0 to $10 on the low end.” The great part about modern computers, whether you run a PC, a Mac or even a Linux box, is that they can handle almost all of the audio recording and editing you need for a basic show. Check out Todd Cochrane’s excellent rundown from Podcasting: The Do It Yourself Guide for some of the great free and low cost software options for the beginner. If you have a built in microphone, a free recorder and editing program like Audacity plus a free FTP program to transfer your shows up to a server will make you a podcaster for no additonal investment. No microphone? For beginners, I suggest starting with a low-cost ($10 or so) USB microphone, then advancing to a better microphone later on.

For those of you interested in an advanced set up, remember that most podcasts are so compressed that getting a super high end set of gear is probably not going to make much difference in the audio quality of your show. For most people, spending about $250 is about as much as you need to get the gear for a high quality, professional sound. More on that in future posts!

Google rumored to buy Feedburner

Valleywag has posted a rumor that Google may be buying Feedburner for about $100 mil. Interesting news for podcasters and bloggers alike since Feedburner is probably the easiest way to create RSS feeds out there. I think it’s good news from a podcasting perspective, so long as Google leaves Feedburner’s ease of use alone. Hopefully, if this is true, the transition will be smooth…

Podcast numbers

Wizzard Media just released some interesting numbers that have been fun to play with… Wizzard owns some of the bigger podcast hosts, including Libsyn, so they probably have a decent sample size. They report:

[I]n the month of April across the entire network of shows, we fulfilled over 83 million download requests for audio and video files. The system logged and processed well over 100 million downloads in total; however we filter out image downloads and other files that aren’t MP3, MP4, M4V, MOV, WMV, AAC, M4b, FLV and AVI files.

So, that’s a pretty huge number. Rob Walch at Podcast 411 did some number crunching, and he estimates that this data translates to roughly 10 million podcast consumers. Now, compared to TV and terrestrial radio, that’s small potatoes, but considering that this a medium that hit mainstream accessibility sometime within the last two years, it’s pretty impressive.

One other piece of cool information from the Wizzard post… the top ten cities where they are delivering podcasts. Notice it’s not just the top 10 cities in terms of population here in the US… Sacramento at #2!

  • New York
  • Sacramento
  • Los Angeles
  • Washington DC
  • Atlanta
  • Chicago
  • Minneapolis-St. Paul
  • San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
  • Philadelphia
  • Louisville
  • Salt Lake City

Paid video downloads soon to go extinct?

A new report from Forrester Research says that pay per view downloads are soon to go the way of the do-do, replaced by ad-supported videos. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people who prefer to wait to watch a show like Heroes online at NBC.com or Veronica Mars on the CW’s website rather than pay $1.99 for an ad-free (and higer resolution/sized) version through iTunes Music Store. Still, I think it’s premature to signal the end of pay-to-own videos… the Forrester report is $775, so I’m going to go ahead and pass on buying and reading it cover to cover. Maybe they need an ad-supported version? Hmmmm…

What does this spell for video podcasters? It’s not clear, to be honest… podcasters seem to find more success monetizing their shows through merchandise and ad revenue rather than through “premium” feeds anyways, but that may change. To be continued…

U.S. Blogging Laws

Great stuff on blogger law from Aviva Directory… hat tip to Politics and Technology for the pointer. Topics covered include:

* Whether to Disclose Paid Posts
* Is Deep Linking Legal?
* The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails
* Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content
* Domain Name Trademark Issues
* Handling Private Data About Your Readers
* Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
* The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
* Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
* Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
* Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
* Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws

Microsoft drops its Portable Media Center

File this under, “this just in… sky: blue, water: wet.” When MS announced the Zune I was surprised they decided to keep on the venerable Portable Media Center. Welllll, it’s over. Hasta la vista baby. Maybe they needed to sell a few more out of the warehouse before pulling the plug? How’d you feel if you were the last person to buy one of these? Probably a lot like the last guy to buy a Newton (that would be me… ouch).