Podcast revolution was destiny in action

By Rob Greenlee, WebTalk Radio

I am writing this in response to a October 23, 2004 weblog post by podcaster / weblogger Dave Slusher of EvilGeniusChronicles.org then read my response below his post;

“It does seems like Rob Greenlee is torn and simultaneously understands why this new world of podcasting is exciting but is kind of bugged by it. That’s natural enough reaction - he and Dana spent a long time and lots of effort (and I presume money) climbing over the gates of the media system, only to find that they were swung wide open after they are already through. I like the guy and I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s one of the guys in the “this isn’t really an innovation camp.” I’ve been talking against that outlook, and now I’m going to be as blunt as I can be about it.”

My (Rob Greenlee) comments below from an article I published on (Oct 23, 2004);

“We are only seeing the very beginning of this time-shifting of audio movement. The truth is that most of this Podcasting news is new “old news” as many radio shows like WebTalk and KenRadio have been offering mp3 downloads for years. The content pioneers of downloadable spoken word content are Audible.com and KenRadio.com as they have been offering content for many years.”

Dave Slusher continues weblog post from (Oct 23, 2004);

“Yes, as I’ve said 1.7 gazillion times, podcasting has no technical innovation whatsover. Trying to figure out why the old- timers in internet audio are not getting their props is asking the wrong question. The correct question is “What have all the old-timers been doing so wrong for so long that a couple-dozen dumbasses writing open source aggregators in their evening and weekends and recording amateur audioblogs have created an excitement in the space of two months that these companies with far greater stakes in the game and far more resources to devote to the problem have failed to do in years of work?

Update: To make this clearer, despite the blunt wording above I don’t blame any of the old-timers for not having created podcasting or something like it previously. Like I’ve been saying, until recently it wasn’t “steam engine time” and now it is. However, appealing to seniority ain’t going to cut it. Despite the injustice of people newer to the party getting the attention, that’s the way it is. Time to learn the new dance steps,”

The founders of podcasting have not eaten any of the more established webcaster guys lunch and older webcasters are not looking for props. Webcasters and other radio broadcasters have noticed podcasting and they will be jumping on the podcasting bandwagon soon.

Podcasting is and will continue to be another growing way of distributing digital audio and soon video content. Yet at the same time other webcast distribution methods will still be strong and will continue to pull a larger listeners in the short term.

Podcasting growth will be driven by the quality of content available. Growth will also be based on how easy the RSS aggregator software tools are to use for the average computer user.

The content producers also need simple ways of creating RSS with enclosure mp3 or wma’s with bit torrent feeds.

I do respect Dave Slusher and the quality content he produces. I know what it takes to professionally produce audio content for the web. I also know that Dave’s talent and skill with his program is the exception not the rule.

Dave Slusher has prior experience doing regular radio programming on a nationally syndicated public radio program about science fiction. Most podcasters do not have a broadcasting or webcasting background, thus some podcasters will thrive and some will struggle to keep up with the difficult process of creating and distributing quality spoken word content. Even terrestrial radio broadcasters will need help and struggle to create an RSS feed with an mp3 enclosure podcast. It is just still too complicated for most to setup.

I am working to help some of the other non-podcasting webcasters to have podcast feeds (see DownloadRadio.org). I am an advocate of podcasting, but let’s not forgot how and why we have gotten as far as we have so fast with podcasting.

Webcasters are content producers and not RSS Aggregator developers. I know that Adam Curry and Dave Winer spoke many times with the RSS aggregator software companies about adding support and functionality for RSS enclosures feeds and mostly got zero response. This drove Adam to develop his own application and thus birthed iPodder software, but don’t dump the RSS aggregator software development responsibility on the webcast or broadcast content producer.

I think that the podcast revolution was destiny in action and Adam Curry was destined to invent this software because of his MTV celebrity and his hard work efforts around audio and video blogging. He is that rare breed of “on-air personality” and a true geek. Adam also has that “cool factor” needed to spark interest in the independent delivery of content to the also very cool and trendy iPod player.

I do also think that Adam Curry, Dave Winer and Dave Slusher deserve the attention they have gotten by inventing and promoting the iPodder software. Plus those guys are inspiring the creation of content that connected the dots between the podcasters and the iPod media player for thousands of people. Those guys have fostered the environment that has enabled others to jump in and create real and personal conversations that are not unlike some of the more popular NPR programming.

The other guy who has significantly contributed to the inspiration for podcasting is Doug Kaye at ITConversations.com. He was one of the first to create an RSS enclosure feed with long form spoken word audio. He was and continues to create discussion programming that has a remarkable amount of real and frank technology issue discussion that really fits well with the definition of today’s podcast.

I admit that I was a little slow to pickup on this RSS with enclosures distribution technology. I was only slow to roll it out because it took me many months to get my new WebTalkRadio.com website completed. I had the idea almost a year ago to support enclosures.

I am regularly amazed at how candid and honest the discussions are becoming in some podcasts. One recent podcast done by Dave Winer and Robert Scoble really stood out in my mind. Dave Winer was very open and brutally honest in his opinions and questions related to Microsoft. Give it a listen for yourself. It is discussion that I would feel uncomfortable doing on WebTalk. But, believe me it has me thinking hard about it. True reality radio has come to podcasting and it is safe to say that the FCC is not overseeing the content being heard in these podcasts.

Dave Winer’s questions about Microsoft dropping the ball with its Internet Explorer browser and other discussion topics had Robert Scoble from Microsoft a little concerned for his job at Microsoft. These podcasts can be very brutally honest and that can be a little unsettling, yet kind of refreshing as well.

My WebTalk program is still limited by the FCC as WebTalk Radio is still heard on broadcast radio stations. I must beep four letter words and recently got some angry calls from a local radio station about a recent WebTalk show that accidentally let Dave Slushers, EvilGeniusChronicles.com podcast segment air without beeping out some four-letter words.

The real innovation with the older webcasts programs like KenRadio.com and WebTalk has been producing content every week or every day for years that has evangelized and pushed for greater acceptance and recognition that time-shifting of radio like programs are possible. Audible.com has really been podcasting spoken word content and downloading audio files directly to portable players for many years and I mean many years. They have even been making money doing it and happen to even be a public company.

The real revolution of podcasting is that the light bulb has finally gone off in many peoples minds that they can do this too. It was the same light bulb that went off in my head almost 6 years ago when I started producing WebTalkGuys Radio Shows in a small talk radio station back in 1999 and then took that content out to the web and started webcasting it on Live365.com and then started offering mp3 downloads in 2002.

The other important thing that webcasters have mostly done is play to all distribution platforms and not just one device like the iPod. What really cuts to the heart of the difference between established webcasts and podcasts is the acceptance that podcasts don’t need to obtain a large audience to be successful in the eyes of the content creator because most podcasters are not trying to sell advertising or trying to also build distribution on traditional radio stations. Most webcasters have always strived to also be on broadcast radio. The reason for this is that credibility came from broadcast radio and not from the webcast.

The other major distinction between podcasting and webcast radio is that podcasting is really empowering everyone to think that they can be a webcaster or now a podcast content producer. While empowering and giving a voice to millions, is like what happened with personal webpage’s and weblogs.

Podcasting is a good thing and will revolutionize the overall content experience online. But, you and Adam Curry must admit that you are most proud of the iPodder innovation when you hear about old media adopting this new technology and publishing feeds with it. This is because Adam knows that the older media still reaches a huge audience and that media attention will spark other media attention that will drive grassroots level content production interest. While WebTalk may be somewhat of an exception as we are truly a hybrid media source, most other established webcasters just did not think they would see a short term audience gain with RSS enclosures to adopt it this soon.

I am different because I have always tried to play on all the new and old distribution platforms (you can hear more on this by listening to this 26 minute interview). Most of our WebTalk listeners are not webloggers, who currently are the majority of podcast creators and listeners. I do feel that podcasting is a revolution of sorts, but just feel that this revolution started long-ago. We are all getting to benefit from this revolution now because we are at the right time at the right place and all the innovation stars have aligned.

Power to the content producer, because without good content the technology would just be technology and would not inspire us to keep using the technology and creating more innovation.

Here is a link to a photo of the new Treo 650. This is a must have for anyone who is a PalmOne fan. Click here Source CNET

The media consumer in 2004 and beyond will want to have total control over how he or she use digital media and this struggle to control the portability of digital media will be the most difficult battle in recorded world history.

You think the 2004 presidential battle was brutal –you have not seen anything yet. The battle over digital media control will be the most important issue of this century. The war will be between big corporate interests and the people of whom many are the corporations. This battle may actually in the end bring big corporations down and give rise to the people. We are seeing this movement happen with open source software, independent films, independent music and then independent video.

I think the whole concept of TV will slowly vanish into on-demand and downloaded video in all forms. The distinction between TV and movies will vanish. TV and movies represented location and location is disappearing. Digital media is going to be viewable everywhere.

When you see Microsoft going public in such a big way about digital media everywhere and the evolution of the media center pc. It is hitting the mainstream and will grow fast from here on! But Microsoft’s ability to control digital media will struggle as they will not ever really win and will ultimately slow digital media’s growth. Digital rights management systems will be compromised over time by smart hacker crooks. I think digital media will be much more open in the future than we think it will be now.

Digital media in the home is only going to get better as we get better and smarter software, bandwidth and storage to manage all the coming digital media.

Microsoft’s Media Center is really on track to becoming very important for managing, recording and viewing all our personal digital viewing. Microsoft is really on track to beat out TIVO and on-demand set-top boxes. Media Center already is better than TIVO.

I am a firm believer that smart phones with wireless broadband, huge storage capacity and very fast processing power will rule. Smart phones will become the all important lifeline to all of our personal media in all forms. The coming few years are going to be very interesting as all this personal media gets portable and consumed everywhere on the network.

My bet is on the people to win more control of their digital media.

On another note — we also really need permanent and reliable long-term storage of our personal digital media that is more durable than CD’s and DVD’s as they decay. Storage hard drives fail all the time and have limited life. I know most long-term storage mediums have never been tested for actual life as most have only been in production for less then 5 years.

The Internet radio and video industry needs to start thinking about how to measure and value downloads as another opportunity to deliver advertising messages.

Presently, downloads are not viewed as equally valuable to marketers and advertisers. We as content providers need to start talking about how the technology can be improved to enable ad supported digital media downloads that extend beyond ad free subscription models.

With the rapid growth of podcasting and other radio content download services like AudioFeast, Audible, Microsoft’s Sync & Go and DownloadRadio.org.

We all need to start thinking about ways we can track actual listenership to downloaded content beyond just the download tracking.

We should explore developing downloadable audio and video formats that can dynamically deliver on playback commercial messages pulled from future world wide wireless broadband networks.

It appears that President George Walker Bush and John Forbes Kerry are blood family. They are family: ninth cousins twice removed to be exact. See their family tree at Ancestry.com.

Thanks to Electoral-Vote.com for the link.

Here is a very good site that I saw linked to on Dave Winers “Scripting News” site. This site shows graphically a state by state breakdown on Electoral votes for the US Presidential race at electoral-vote.com.

We should start a national campaign called “People for Political Truth” and start a signature signing process at the grassroots level that will legally get a law on the books that makes it illegal for a political campaign or any special interest group to misrepresent or slander another political candidate.

If a candidate lies and it is proved a lie then he or she is subject to a large fine and would be required to run the equal amount of Ad’s that retract the lie.

We also should move away from a party system and make Electoral College votes align proportional to the popular vote. Like is being proposed in Colorado right now.

Our political process must change or we will have a political civil war if Bush wins the Electoral College, but loses the popular vote to Kerry.

Watch CNN’s “CrossFire” Interview with Daily Show Host Jon Stewart - Watch 200K stream

Bob Sommers, founder and host of the Recognized Expert Marketing Radio out of Hawaii asked me to be the guest caller on his radio show to talk about Internet Radio and how we built the WebTalk Radio Show over the past 6 years.

It seemed funny to be on the other side of the conversation for once. I talked in detail about how Dana and I built WebTalk Radio show over the past 6 years and gave tips about how a new person can build a Podcast or regular radio show. Bob has a great lineup of guest expert interviews and now all he needs is a RSS feed with enclosures and he too can become a Podcaster. Listen: (26 minute) Windows Media Stream

Google has now released the long-awaited Desktop Search plug-in, but I was disappointed that it did not integrate with the Deskbar plug-in and that Google did not assure me in its privacy policy.

I would recommend that you scan the privacy policy for this desktop search plug-in as it did not read well and assure me of my privacy.

The plug-in must send keywords to it’s servers from my files to be able to display contextual sponsored links. Google needs to come clean on this application and what it is doing on our computers as this may be another Gmail example of Google pushing the envelope of search advertising that could get them in trouble again.

If you have nothing to hide then give it a download, but know it is not easy to use to use as it was not integrated into Googles Deskbar.

In the almost six years of making webcast radio shows. I have been consistantly inserting meta data into all my audio files and have been shocked at how many other audio and even video content creators do not take the time to insert complete meta data.

I have been thinking about wide spread online distribution of WebTalkGuys and now WebTalk. This has meant using every tool in my tool kit.

I have felt for years that one day will come that search of audio files will become important and those that built archives of content with inserted meta data will benefit when Google decides to index online audio files.

I have been seeing benefits from sites like Singingfish.com that is now owned by AOL. Singingfish is the largest audio and video search engine on the net. WebTalk is extensively indexed today by Singingfish and those search results are currently showing up in Windows Media Player and the RealOne player.

With the growth of webcasting because of the recent podcasting craze many more content providers are coming online. Very good podcasters like Dave Slusher’s Evil Genius Chronicles and Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code show are not being found yet in Singingfish audio search engine.

Podcasters have the opportunity to expand distribution by using online syndication techniques like website marketers have been doing for years and getting links from as many places on the net as possible. RSS distribution is great but it is only going to scratch the surface for a year or more.

Meta data is today very important to all webcasters and podcasters as they develop show archives. Now and in the future getting your content found whether you are using mp3’s, wma’s or rm’s will be important.

The meta data file storage capacity does vary between formats. Native mp3’s have the smallest amount of space, but some tools exist to expand this capacity to include even full transcripts and images. All you need to do is download Mp3 Tag Tools v1.2.008.

The other major hurdle is monetization of these podcasts and webcasts. My vision is that commercial free downloads of very high quality content will be via paid subscription in the future. I am seeing trends pointing to this all around me. Now I must admit that this recent upstart called podcasting may push this back a few months. This subscription based downloads was started by Audible.com years ago and now we have seen new audio download service AudioFeast launch with a subscription model.

I think we will see the cream of the webcast and podcasting content make this transition to paid downloads, but most will maintain some sample version available for fee with commercial ad support at some level. P2P technology like Bit Torrent will also enable low cost delivery of these downloadable webcasts and podcasts that will help keep subscription rates low, but all will need to stream to mobile devices as wireless Internet radio grows. Not everyone will want to download.

The buzz around the iPodder software and Podcasting is a remarkable example of how pent up demand for easily time-shifted listening of spoken word audio content can be released by the coining of a long needed catchy name.

The other interesting thing about the newly coined term “Podcast” is its connection to the iPod player as it still has small market share of the overall mp3 player market.

Though the iPodder software is a simple yet effective tool for completing the last few feet of the delivery of media files to a mobile device like an iPod. We are only seeing the very beginning of this movement.

The truth is that most of this Podcasting news is new old news as many radio shows like WebTalk, KenRadio have been offering mp3 downloads for years. I am hoping that the true pioneers of time-shifted radio do not get forgotten in the hype around iPodder and Podcasting. The true content pioneers of Podcasting are Audible.com and KenRadio.com. Now it is interesting that neither of these pioneers is offering RSS enclosure feeds at present (except KenRadio.com via DownloadRadio.org).

While I am a supporter of the Podcasting trend it is good that we finally have a good name for time-shifted radio. I have struggled to come up with a good name to describe time-shifted radio. I would never have thought of Podcasting as iPods are so focused on music. Regular mp3 players seemed the true market for time-shifting talk radio shows.

The concept of delivering these mp3’s directly to the mp3 players is also being done by AudioFeast.com, Microsoft Sync n’ Go and Audible.com.

The question is how content will be differentiated in this new Podcast marketplace? Will it be based on quality? What defines quality? Does quality mean professionally produced or is reality radio going to be embraced as popular. Will successful content in the Podcasting market be entertaining or informational? It may need to be infotainment.

I am just not convinced that very many bloggers talking into his or her laptop microphone will gain enough of an audience. Just like what has happened with weblogs, large numbers of podcasters will publish content and some will gain a strong foot hold on audience numbers.

Podcasting is just like old fashioned broadcast radio and will need online syndication to develop very quickly as increasing distribution will become very important to podcasters. Then we will see Podcaster aggregation sites like DownloadRadio.org and the directory at ipodder.org that will help people discover new Podcasters.

WebTalk is starting to change as a result of Podcasting as it seems like we will need to add more entertainment to be competitive. Look for much more wild and controversial shows. You will notice a difference in this week’s show.

Mount St. Helens has grown a new lava dome the size of the old Seattle KingDome in just a few days. See this amazing photo of the inside of this active volcano.

I have hiked in the same spot as the new small lava dome and you cannot really understand the huge size of objects in this photo. The mountain is doing some “Dome building”, to eventually fill in the crater with fresh rock.

To see more photo’s.

You can watch the archive of the webcast launch of SpaceShipOne from monday morning. It was a successful flight and won the $ 10 million dollar X Prize.

BREAKING NEWS: Steam explosion erupts in the crater of Mt. St. Helens. See Live WebCam

Search Engine technology company Vivisimo launches consumer search site Clusty.com beta. This new site is in response to the fact that Vivisimo has long needed a name and brand that a person can spell and easily say.

Vivisimo has developed great clustering search technology that could be the next major evolution of search usability. Clustering groups results into folders based on related keywords and phrases. I think Clusty.com will struggle, but we will see the clustering of search results appear in all search engines very soon.