Category: podcasting

Podshow adds Dvorak

Podshow has added on “controversial” John C. Dvorak to its tech podcast lineup. I say controversial because I think he decided long ago to try to tick off every Mac owner in everything he says or does. Fine by me… it gets him mad coverage. Of course it makes him the butt of a lot of flack (mixed metaphor?), particularly from Valleywag. It feels like Podshow is the network that’s easy to rag on… perhaps as far back as the big contract revelation on Keith and the Girl. It continued when they had the strange notion that having their own unconference during last year’s Podcast Expo would be a good idea for community relations… it didn’t. In fact it backfired. We’ll see if adding Dvorak will add numbers through the tried and true method of adding a “controversial” podcaster to the mix…

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.

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…

Sirius and Podshow divorce

So satellite radio will no longer broadcast a select number of podcasts. This news broke a few days ago, but I honestly don’t think it demonstrates much other than Sirius and Podshow decided that the experiment was over. Does this mean podcasting is waning? I doubt it… I have to question the original premise… content that has a major feature of being freely available 24/7 on the Internet via an RSS feed, and playable on demand was also being featured in particular time slots via a subscription service that required additional equipment. Hmmm. Wonder why that didn’t take off? Siriusly (heh)… I have to believe most listeners were shifting towards the on-demand content rather than waiting with bated breath for the next episode of Dawn and Drew to come through the satellites. Why wait? If you had a satellite radio, I’m guessing you had access to a podcatcher and a computer.

Let’s also face it… the shows that were featured on Sirius may have been too niche for a broader audience, as some have suggested. Bottom line… the satellite market probably is not the next logical place for podcasting growth. If podcasters are looking for over the air distribution, the best bet may be the continuing conversion of mobile phones with MP3 players.

Ahhhh, yeah… I believe that’s a semi-unintentional iPhone reference. I keep thinking that faster data transfer, plus vast networks, plus great players means effortless wireless delivery. There are (bad) methods where this works now, but I think the days of needing a computer to sync a podcast to a player may seem quaint in the not so distant future. And the (failed?) Sirius-Podshow experiment will be a distant memory then as well.

School grants

Olympus is doing something nice to foster podcasting in schools:

For schools looking to explore the frontiers of podcasting, Olympus and education software developer Tool Factory have launched a new grant program specifically for teachers. The program supplies mixing and recording hardware and software valued at $3,000.

Details are here. I’ve never used any of their equipment, but there are certainly a lot of deserving schools out there that could put some podcast gear to good use!