Back to the future

I'm back where it all started. The very first podcast I ever produced was for my former employer, Alliance for Justice… Today, I'm returning to kick off the new version of a revamped podcast for their judicial program. It's fun to be back as a part of Nineball Media. Funny how you actually CAN go back "home" sometimes!

Zune dump


It’s been all over the Internet… Zunes for $99 on Woot. It’s a good thing from a podcasting perspective, since they support podcasts about as well as iTunes, but considering Zunes have – so far – made nary a ripple in terms of social or industry impact, I’d say the flood of Zunes entering the marketplace at bargain-basement prices won’t register too terribly much in podcasting stats. Still, you can’t sneeze at any device that makes it easier to subscribe and listen…

I love the Internets

So, I’ve been suffering all day doing audio editing with an Apple Mighty Mouse that suddenly decided not to scroll down. Frustration mounted until, in a pique of anger, I googled “mighty mouse wont scroll” (I couldn’t be bothered to use actual punctuation). The result? This blog post… which solved everything… all I had to do was press real hard. Who knew!?

It’s times like this that I love the Internets.

iTunes podcast category pages

I was just on iTunes to check in on some client podcast rankings, and it looks like the category pages are all down… it used to be that clicking on “Government and Organizations” or “Health” (for instance) would bring one to a nicely laid out page that included featured podcasts and a top 20 list for that category… some subcategories got the same treatment. Now, it just takes clickers to a verrrrry bland three window text-based page. Hopefully this is just temporary (I suspect it is)… if not, that’s a huge loss for podcasters.

UPDATE: Sigh of relief… three hours later, and some of the pages are back. I suspect the ITMS team is doing some page updating, so I suspect everything will be back up in due time.

Whirlwind

As you may have notice from the dearth of posts, it’s been a bit of a crazy week here at Nineball Media. I’m currently working on a major recording project that I hope to finish up by the end of the week, plus I’m off to Boston today to do some work with one of Nineball’s newer clients, Boston University. Thankfully, the news on new media and tech has been pretty slow lately (comparatively), unless you want to read more stories about iPhones bricking, or AOL’s massive layoffs (coming Friday, allegedly).

Anyone in the DC area interested in supporting a good cause… I’m on the board of the Tranquil Space Foundation, and we’re holding our first gala tomorrow night. Come on down and support a great cause… details at tranquilspacefoundation.org.

Friday ouch: iPod catches fire in dude’s pants

WSB in Atlanta reports an unfortunate case of the dreaded “pants on fire” variety… apparently his Nano caught fire for 15 seconds in his jeans pocket. The good news is, glossy paper is now a serious shield to burnage. Good to know.

Apple is going to replace the unit as soon as possible… file that under “duh.” I’m kinda bummed the guy didn’t take a picture of his newly crispy nano, as it forces me to use a picture of some other nano that went all Human Torch on someone. Thankfully, it took .0003 seconds to find.

Have a good weekend!

Wifi iTunes Store and PME

I just had an interesting experience with the iPhone… One of my clients sells CDs through iTunes, so I plugged her name into the wifi store search on the phone. Within 2 seconds her entire library (minus podcasts alas) popped up, complete with samples. Very cool… If you've got an iPhone or an iPod touch, give it a whirl!

I'm hearing some interesting things fromthis year's PME (the podcast expo)… I'll read up some more and post thoughts later this week…

Everything goes kaplooey

Even the lauded AppTap installer for third party applications on the iPhone has reportedly been disabled. When the price drop was announced Rob at Today in iPhone went on a rant of gargantuan proportions… given his love for AppTap, I’m thinking he’s going to need some lozenges for the next post-show recovery unless the AppTap folks can counter this update.

This, by the way, is the game that will play out for a while… Apple will disable, outsiders will re-hack. Then, Apple will disable… etc., etc.

Have a great weekend!