Daily Podcast News

Pod Channels should be up and running by the middle of July, it will be aiming to make podcasting more accessible to everyone.

For Listeners there will be a vast directory with gathered data from your friends to suggest podcasts you may be interested in.

For Podcasters they will be offering free hosting and also make podsafe music available to you for inclusion in your show.

For Musicians they offer the chance to submit their music for podcasters to use in their shows.

PodPay could be a new system to be placed on public transport and in restaurants. It’s basically a touch screen device connected by wifi and it has a podcast directory built in. People select their favourite podcasters and click download and listen to them to break their journey up.

The Spec is finally up and viewable over at PSWG.

One-Click subscription describes the method of subscribing to a podcast RSS feed by just clicking a link in a web page. An application installed on the user’s computer will be invoked by the user’s web browser when the link is clicked. The application is then able to add the selected podcast feed to the user’s subscription list.

Soon to be available at http://podspecwg.org/.

Subscribe in podcatcher

A number of podcast sites that could have massive potential are

Podkissed: Allow easy management of podcasts to mobile.

Podsafe: Registered late last year, will maybe have a database of usable content for podcasts.

PodcastAds: Dates all the way back to November. Is it now too late for this idea as podshow is aiming to push the same idea?

Podbat: All round tool, management system for podcasts, show notes and a podcatcher.

Podglo: Sounds interesting, but not fully sure what it will offer.

Odeo: Currently in beta, most people very keen to use this site.

I had so much fun at the Triangle Bloggers Conference at the University of North Carolina that I thought Podcasters needed their own event. So I set the ball rolling for PodcasterCon.org. My hope is that Podcasters will work together to make this event.

• Quote from Brian Russell

Here is the statement of purpose as of now:

PodcasterCon is a free users conference about podcasting. The focus will be on learning. In effect it is an anti-expo without swag, without product promotion, and a way to keep podcasting fun!

How will it work?

Another new site under construction is Podbat, which will be geared towards podcasters and podcatchers. This should really be a great for podcasters if it has all of the below functionality.

Base: login/register and get your podcast news and feed. Subs: manage your feeds and downloads. Box: manage you podcasts, shownotes, tag manager (recording area coming soon). Bat: upload you podcasts, update RSS feed and file manager.

Why not start up a podcast magazine? We have unlimited content to make it a success and build on it from there. We could have. I’m sure every podcaster would love to buy it to see what other people are up to and podcasting is starting to hit the average Joe on he streets so maybe a magazine may be the best medium to get them into podcasting.

News Section:

New podast websites. Segments on new podcasters. Latest information on podcasting.

Main Section:

Interviews with podcasters. Tried and tested podcast equipment (which is best for which situations). Review of certain podcasts. Podcasters: Who to watch out for. The latest gadgets available to help people out. Tutorials on how to podcast, how to listen etc. Podcatchers evaluated.

Interactive Section:

CD with magazine which features the best podcasts on it for newcomers to try out in their car. Readers write in with their problems; answered by podcasters themselves. People can send in an MMS of their set up.

Mobile Podcasting - MMS is now standard on all mobiles along with voice recorders, most of these recordings are in .amr but as I have noticed when you send a sound clip to your email it converts it automatically to .wav which is a handy shortcut, but what if there was the be a mobile podcast community? A place where you could get Podcasts delivered directly to your mobile, allowing you to stay away from your computer and never have the need to purchase an MP3 player.

For this to work for the whole community (e.g. subscribers through RSS) we will have to wait until Mobiles come with MP3 recorders that are affordable for everyone so they can be included in your feeds. When this happens it could be the first money making attempt to succeed from Podcasting. People can subscribe to your show which you record on the move on your mobile. They subscribe by topping up your mobile and you send them your latest podcasts for a month to their mobile. Another barrier which whas gone which helps the spread of mobile podcasting is that you can now send MMS messages from O2 to Meteor and visa versa, I’m not sure if Vodafone allows this at the moment.

Having just tried it out from my o2 Sony Ericsson (which allows for ten minutes of recording time) to my Meteor Motorola V300 the sound quality was clear to hear and of a good standard. If a podcast was to be a maximum of ten minutes people would get tried of holding their mobile to their ear and just listening to content. People don’t realise it as much when they are interacting with people over mobiles. So couldn’t there be and Bluetooth option that allows you to listen to podcasts. Just insert your headset, leave you mobile in your pocket and keep your hands free for the shopping bags.

Text to Speech is a great item which can help people with disabilities get to hear the content just like everyone else. Having used text to speech before it is very simple, you can just write in your content and choose which voice should speak it. The voice is clear and concise and something could hopefully be implemented on most blogs in a few years time. Bloggers can enter their content as usual but while their blog is updating it is also converting it to speech (at the moment it is converted to .wav). Once it appears on the site it also features a button for people to click and listen. Maybe in the future the speech synthesis will be able to convert to MP3, which could be added to your RSS file so they can connect their MP3 Player and listen to blog posts on the go. So they not only get to listen to podcasts but also blog entries.

I decided to put my previous post into action. I got my Sony Ericsson T630 just before Christmas it was only yesterday that I actually recorded something and sent it to my inbox. With a recording time of ten minutes I felt it was long enough for a mobile podcast that could feature updates or little tips/news stories. So it recorded in .amr format but when I checked my email it had transformed it into .wav which was strange. But on hearing the recording it was very bad quality a buzzing sound played loudly in the background which was a disappointment. If my sound seeing tour of Clonmel is to happen I need to test out my old Moto v300 and check its quality.

Update: I recorded a quick 20 second snippet on my Motorola v300 and sent it to my Irishfree account, it remained in .amr so I needed to locate a zip file which I had earlier used on another podcast. Luckily I located it and converted it in seconds. To progress with this I will need to delete some applications and images to increase its recording time.

Having an iPod means alot to me, I can store my entire collection of CD’s and over 80 podcasts (many of which from openpodcast) that are updated daily. An MP3 player to most people means you are listening to music, expect this becomes a problem when you’re listening to Dawn and Drew or Armando and Sara and you start laughing out loud in public as people watch in dismay and wonder “How could a song be so funny?”.

We need some company to build a MP3 player dedicated to Podcasting (a great market ploy to get new podcast enthusiasts thinking: “Do I need one of these to listen to podcasts?”) The publicity would help podcasting grow and also warn people that if someone is laughing out loud it doesn’t mean they are mental.

When travelling to other countries what’s the first item we purchase? No it’s not a bikini or a pair of sun glasses or maybe it is? What most people buy is a travel companion guide with information about the region. So why not take Podcasting to another stage and make a sight-seeing tour from where you’re from. You could talk about the area, buildings, items of use to tourists like shops, prices, best places to stay, what the weather is like and what monuments you need to see. So before you leave for your destination go to (for example) sightseeingtours.com, search for the location you will be visiting and download the podcast to your MP3 player.

You could also record a podcast while on your holiday (a perspective from a tourist) and upload it to the website through GPRS or get to an Internet Cafe. This means a database should fill up for the most popular locations, best places to visit and areas to stay away from.

With the launch of the iPod shuffle last night, the more I think about it the more I see what a great tool it is for Podcasting. If you load this iPod with songs you can’t control in which order they are played meaning if you love playing a song over and over it’s not the device for you.

You don’t have a display and thus can’t easily choose which mp3 to play, so if life really “is random”, why not load it up with your favorite podcasts.

But with Podcasts you only want to hear a Podcast once and get rid of it. No one wants to listen to a 40 minute show or even a one minute show more than once. You know you’re going to be listening to Podcasts which you are subscribed to and listen to regulary.

Several Irish companies have IVR services that work like a champ. Imagine working with one like Globetech and then setting up a service that reads your podcast feeds, download them onto a server that you could call with your mobile phone. You would use the IVR commands to flip through the new podcasts, all the way down to specific minutes inside the podcast. You could listen through earbuds or with a Bluetooth headset. Or just with phone-to-ear (but that will fry your brain).

We’re going to create a podcast channel that delivers 15 - 30 minutes of content once a week into the iPodder community. Some initial themes include:

• One minute tip: covers mastering hardware, software and firmware
• Crunch Notes: five minutes at a time of things you need to know to write answers to exam questions.
• Dementia: wacky and short
• Around Ireland: no more than seven minutes of short takes of the online Irish landscape. This could be a survey of irishblogs and the online news sites.
• Inside View: reading of technology column, no more than 1200 words.
• Sustain Yourself: coffee chat with hands-on practitioners who live off the land in a sustainable way. Lots of ecology, organic tips, and an undercurrent of 21st century pastoral Ireland.

MSN have just put their blog service live, the eagled eyed Bernie Goldbach has quickly noticed and set up a blog space dealing with “Podmedia“.

I’m using it to talk about our Podmedia project from my perspective as a technologist interested in accessibility and a critic committed to narrating visual art to the blind.

This is a fantastic idea, most art we see is untouchable, except for the odd few exhibitions that allow for interaction. During these installations the blind person can get an understanding for shape, texture and interrupt the art for themselves. The trouble with masterpieces such as The Birth of Venus or The Tribute Money by Masaccio is that they will never know what they look like. It would be interesting to see how my sister (an art teacher) could describe vividly ‘Soft Construction with Boiled Beans’ (about The Spanish Civil War) by Salvador Dali or to explain any works by Piscasso and podcast them.

This site is and will be fantastic as it grows. It has great links, resources and is regulary updated for you.

Podcast Research

Takes the form of a blog and podcast that examines the podcasting phenomena and studies it with an academic eye. There are various themes the study is interested in such as whether it can be considered a serious medium as blogging has become, and whether commercialization (like it or not) has to happen before it can reach critical mass.

Looking for new podcast sites I came across podcastexpo.com will be a new trade show, according to the site it will have wide-ranging exhibits and conference sessions devoted to developing, producing, editing and podcasting unique audio and video content. The complete conference program will include four different high-interest tracks during both days of the show, each featuring a combination of keynotes, expert panel discussions and other informative sessions - including audience Q&A.

They will upload podcasts of each of these programs.

You will be able to investigate new products and services, view demos, pick up literature, white papers and meet representatives from companies ranging from software to hardware .

If you are interested in RSS feeds with enclosures, hardware to podcast interviews, generating revenue from your podcasts or just learning more about this new phenomenon, this convention is for you.

It’s all happening in the Spring of 2005