We’ve been both sick, sick, sick. Croaking a broadcast would have freaked everyone out. *sneeze*

We hope you’ve escaped the virus. To those that have written us looking for a new show. Thanks for caring enough about us to miss us!

We are feeling better this week and will be back with a great show this coming weekend as we speak with the Founder and CTO of Blinkx.tv.

While you are browsing around PodcastAlley.com, please vote for us under the technology category and leave a comment about our show. Please help the show get back in the Top 10.
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Google’s Gmail email service has been beat in the storage and attachment file size transfer size. Who says size does not matter. Everyone.net is offering 1Gig storage, spam filtering and 25mb file attachemnts. Google only supports 10mb file attachments.

We at WebTalk get our email through Everyone.net and if you have not heard of them before you might want to look them up. This email service is not free and is enterprize quality. It does cost $19.99 per month and I know Google is kinda free. With Google you pay with your privacy. I must disclose that this endorsement is not an advertisment and we have not been paid for this post. We did get two free email accounts with them to tryout before we had the CEO on our show for an interview.

I was playing around last night and created a video slide show WMV file of this weeks radio show in MS-Movie Maker. Keep in mind this file is not a true video of us doing the show in our humble home studio. It is a format for the show that just could have a use in the continually growing and evolving distribution of WebTalk. This might be good for a portable media player that has a high quality color screen. I could even display a sponsor logo, but have resisted the temptation this time.

Please give me your thoughts on what you think of it and how it could be improved? Get WMA file (20MB 1-22-2005 Show)

Early in 2004, I was starting to think that the Web was becoming rather boring. But as the year rolled on, it became a more interesting place again thanks to events like Google’s IPO and all the new competitive energies growing out of Web search, desktop search, weblog’s, podcasting and digital online media.

I have thought all along that the Internet would come back with renewed energy. Indeed, it has done so with energy to spare. Even the 9th Annual Webby Awards for 2005 are going to have a physical awards ceremony again in San Francisco in May. The term Web 2.0 was coined late in 2004 by a successful conference by the same name to describe the Web’s turnaround. Even bloggers are making money blogging and have an awards event. The Web is maturing into a stable platform for its vast future as the home of all human knowledge and communications. The best example of this is Google’s effort in indexing the full text of library books and the Internet Archive. I believe that the Internet of today at the end of 2004 is just a tip of the iceberg for how important the Internet will become to the world in 2005 and beyond.

The predictions that I made in January 2004 largely occurred; most of them were multi-year trends that are continuing into 2005.

Here are my 2005 Global Internet Trend Predictions:

1. MOBILE DIGITAL MEDIA EXPLODES

The growth in the availability of wired and wireless broadband connectivity has really driven the availability of MP3 and Windows Media video and audio file formats. This availability of cheap bandwidth has triggered the rapid growth in content creation and transition of analog content over to digital media formats. The other two factors to impact the rapid growth of available digital content is the recent improvement in media file compression codec’s that have enabled small file sizes for very high quality playback and the rapid release of many inexpensive digital media playback devices. Smart phones and other portable media devices with large SD Cards, micro-hard drive memory and integrated Wi-Fi and high speed cellular data networks will become the primary way people view and listen to digital media in 2005 and beyond.

2. WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY GROWS FASTER

Wireless connectivity in 2005 will continue to grow in ubiquity and speed. Technologies like WiFi and WiMax rapidly evolve and get cheaper and more widely available. WiMax standards are still being established and will offer 30 mile wireless broadband range at double digit megabit speed. 2005 will see WiMax as an established technology standard that we will start to see in the market in 2006 with WiMax Mobile coming in 2007. Cellular data network technologies like CDMA; EDGE/GSM in combination with DSP has the potential to bring ubiquity to wireless data plans for cell phones and smart phones in 2005 and beyond. This is the most significant evolving development in my list of predictions.

3. MOST NETIZENS BECOME DIGITAL CONTENT CREATORS

We are currently seeing an explosion of new content creation going on online from the rapid growth of weblogs and citizen journalism. The New Year will see individuals and companies of all kinds view points and expertise create content online. This content will take the form of audio, video and the written word. The availability of inexpensive content creation and editing software and digital recording hardware will drive this content creation. We will see whole new online media entities formed in 2005 that will make citizen journalism opportunities available to all online citizens. Recommended reading: We The Media by Dan Gillmor.

4. MOBLOGS BECOME ALL THE RAGE

Mobile weblogs really are enabled by my third trend prediction for 2005. Mobile smart phones with powerful processors, memory and wireless broadband will enable digital photos to be taken, digital videos to be made and sent to weblogs and citizen journalism sites for real-time news and event coverage. For more information, visit Moblog Wikipeda Area.

5. MEDIA SEARCH & ELECTRONIC IPTV PROGRAM GUIDES CONVERGE

The New Year will bring us all access to true media search online as digital media finally gets searchable through work being done by Google and other search engines. The indexing will not initially be of the total content, but of extensive metadata and closed caption data. With the recent expansion of metadata via ID3v2, content producers will see increased attention given to encouraging the inclusion of more extensive metadata in media files like mp3’s. Many companies like Google and TIVO will integrate media search with extensive EPG’s or Electronic Program Guides which will finally give us the software tools to intelligently search and find digital media.

6. LOCAL / GEOGRAPHICAL WEB SEARCH

The promise and opportunity of locality-based search has been talked about for years with many companies starting up and then going out of business. The year 2005 will start to bring geo-based search into the range of real usability and value. While we will still be at the very beginning of the growth and development of location based search tools. I believe that 2005 will start to bring together all the features that will make local search valuable to everyday searches. Major brand search resources will rapidly fill out with local resources. In 2005, people learn of the value local search sites. The rapidly growing numbers of small business websites will propel free and paid location-based search listings.

See Yahoo’s Local Search beta, Google Local Search beta and Microsoft’s MSN City Search-based local search service.

7. WEBLOGS BECOME SPONSOR SUPPORTED MAJOR MEDIA SOURCES

The traffic to weblogs is growing as mainstream media draws attention to the importance and profound impact of grassroots weblog journalism. This boom of traffic to weblogs is drawing on the general distrust of the major media and the increasing quality of the people who are blogging online. In 2005, major media reporters and anchors become webloggers. See examples of media related weblogs with sponsors: MSNBC HardBlogger, PaidContent.org, LostRemote.com and AutoBlog.com.

8. EMAIL MAINTAINS “KILLER APPLICATION” STATUS AGAINST INSTANT MESSENGER FOR NOW

It is my prediction that in 2005 the Spam email problem will diminish and netizens rediscover email as the most important way of personal electronic communication. Spam filters will continue to get better at filtering spam and important messages will start getting into the inbox and read again. Many will get tired of and grow impatient with the constant interruptions that occur when using Instant Messenger services.

9. MOBILE WEB AND MOBILE STREAMING MEDIA GROWS

In 2005 we will see continuing growth of the smart phone OS platforms like Windows Mobile, Symbian and PalmSource. These smart phone platform devices are integrating faster processors, more memory, faster Internet connections and web browsers that enable access to the world wide web from millions of smaller color screens. The fast growth in the numbers of small screen smart phones with web access will push the website owners around the world to develop small screen website versions (see WebTalk Mobile Edition). We will also see an accelerated growth in streaming media on smart phones globally as high speed wireless data technologies mature and get greater integration into smart phone devices.

10. EMERGENCE OF UNLIKELY GEEK MEDIA STARS ONLINE

2005 will see the continued emergence of unlikely geek webloggers that gain national and international fame from being a well known blogger. While some of the names I am about to list maybe be unknown. Here are a few like Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, and Doc Searls. You can rest assured that these names are not unknown to people who are really into following technology. Here is a list of the Top 100 Weblogs.

Technorati Profile

Yahoo’s online video search offering is very much different than Google. Yahoo is actually searching for current streaming video online and actually linking to the media streams. The big three search companies Google, Yahoo and MSN have all taken quite different paths with video search. All three have mirrored each other up to this point. Video search has some very tough issue around rights that these companies must deal with in providing links to the video content. Google is only looking at broadcast TV content and Yahoo is looking at online video. Microsoft’s MSN is event taking another path. MSN Video is becoming a content aggregator and streamer of major content providers. Also see the MSN Video Download service.

While video is very exciting to search, we are still very early in getting a complete video search engine. I think we are years away from really having a worthy search tool. The big missing piece of the online media pie is audio search.

Technorati Profile

Google Video Search has launched and is another Google Labs Beta project. It is based on keyword search of closed caption data for each TV show. Search results display without links to the actual video segments it is really worthless at getting to actual video. It appears that the only content in the database is major network or cable TV shows. This is not an Internet search of online video content.

You do a search for any keyword and it shows a list of TV programs that had that keyword used in the closed caption feed and then also displays a screenshot from that program. The screen shots are not always consistent with the closed caption text displayed on the right.

It does appear Google wants to get approval to provide a link to the actual video stream, but they are not offering video links at all from what I am seeing in search results.

This is a strong example of how important metadata in media files will become. It is interesting that Google has not launched any audio search product beta yet. Audio is actually harder to index then video. Funny though that may seem, but audio typically does not have much metadata inside the media file to index. This is why podcasters and audio broadcasters need to place metadata (ID3v2 tags) in mp3 files so it is searchable in the future.

Mitch Ratcliffe of Red Herring “The Now” Blog and RatcliffeBlog.com joins Dana and I for this weeks show. We also speak with Pete Celano, VP of WeatherBug.com discusses his Barkyard Weather Station Program. Download 1-22-2005 show mp3 and stream link.

It is interesting the reaction that other and older people have to being in a major newspaper article, it quickly gives you credibility. Publishing the written word online never feels the same way or gets the same reaction as having your name in the newspaper.

WebTalk Radio has been mentioned again today (Jan 17) in the Seattle Times. They published a follow-up article that gives a “Where are they now”. WebTalk Radio is one of 20 companies that were featured again from a pool of 155 “Interface” articles of companies published over the past 3 years.

They used our old WebTalkGuys name in the article and they mention our small guest bedroom as our recording studio for the show. Yes, we do keep our costs down and the convenience level high. See our home studio.

The other dotcom type companies featured was GameHouse.com that has now been acquired by Real Networks in Seattle. We have had them on the show in the past and they have some very cool pc and mobile games. Also listed were a couple companies that have a loose connection to WebTalk. They are Chase Norlin’s FastAlbum and one of our former co-hosts Pat Scanlon at one time worked for MatchLight.

The podcast review site at PodcastReviews.net has posted a nice review of WebTalk Radio. It is always great to read feedback like this from a person who is dedicated to looking at and reviewing online audio shows. The online radio community has never had this until podcasting.

Many great things have come from the podcasting craze that is going on right now. KinRowan is the reviewer at PodcastReviews.net and he does a great job of looking deep within the content to share the important nuggets of info on each reviewed show.

The New, New Podcast Review site gets four stars from me as well.

Podcasters met in person last night (Jan 15th)at the Icon Grill in Downtown Seattle to discuss what podcasting is and to help layout the basic topics for the coming Podcast and Portable Media Expo.

The Chris Pirillo poked fun at the name Podcast and is still on the fence about calling his new Chris Pirillo Show a podcast. I can see his point as podcasting is currently a very small distribution piece for a radio or webcast show of any kind. It also refers to one playback device which is also a problem. We all had fun last night talking about it all any how. We all agreed that podcasting as a name was here to stay, but how really important that name will become is still in question. All I can say is that podcasting sure has brought a lot of talented folks out of the closet to get on the air.

List of Podcasters eating together in the real world:

Eric Rice, Chris Pirillo, Jake Ludington, Emile Bourquin, Tim Bourquin, Alex Williams, Michael Geoghegan, Doug Kaye, Phillip Torrone, Rob Greenlee, and Peter Yorke.

We even had a reporter from USA Today in the room during the whole dinner. He sure got a lot to think about from all of us.

See Chris Pirillo’s post on his blog about the dinner and watch the video he made at the dinner. Chris is such a personality. You must check it out.

I just saw a mainstream Los Angeles Times article about a woman who was so sick of Adware and Spyware that she just unplugged the computer and gave up. What is the deal with mainstream media? They are always so quick to feature a story about someone who has no idea what they are doing with a computer and creating this huge perception that this is what most people are doing because of the adware and spyware issue online.

Here is part of the article;

Now Seemayer, 50, is again on the cutting edge: Sick of spam clogging his in-box and spyware and viruses crashing his system, Seemayer yanked out his high-speed connection.

A small but growing number of computer owners are coming to the same conclusion. They’re giving up or cutting back their use of the Internet, especially at home, where no corporate tech support team will ride to their rescue.

This reporter has no evidence or facts that support his claim that a growing number of computer users are coming to the same conclusion. He contradicts himself by saying that Internet use is continuing to grow. We all know that adware, spyware and spam are problems for millions they are not problems that cannot be solved by educating yourself and doing a little research on available tools.

This reporter really does a disservice to us all by not talking about possible solutions to these problems. No he runs for the sensational facts about how bad the problem is. I am just sick of seeing uninformed journalists creating more of a problem then contributing to intelligent discussion on solutions.

I have 16 PC in my world and adware and spyware is not any problem at all. I run adware and spyware applications on all my PC’s. I use Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy and they do the trick for me.

I think if you look at the Pocket PC platform and compare it to the new Portable Media Center devices you see a missed opportunity to build on the Pocket PC platform and add storage and media center software just like the desktop PC.

The opportunity centers on consumer value and function. The Pocket PC platform is much more flexible and like the Desktop PC in its ability to be expanded and run other applications that better match with user choice. If we want to run media center software on our media capable Pocket PC then you should be able to do it or buy a Media Center Enhanced Edition of the Pocket PC. Why force us to buy another device? This is the core reason why I don’t think these Portable Media Center devices will sell very well is that they are not expandable and are very limited in function. In 2003, Microsoft released synchronization software for Windows XP that synchronizes audio and video content to the Pocket PC platform called Sync & Go. People have said that Sync & Go is DOA and has been forgotten by Microsoft because of the new Portable Media Center and the Windows Media Center player 10 synchronization functions. See screen shots of how Sync & Go works. WebTalk Radio is a content provider on Sync & Go.

The main reason for limited uptake on Sync & Go is the fact that it was only distributed in the Plus Digital Media Pack. Most people who buy a Pocket PC do not know about the software. It would get much greater pickup if it was included on the setup disk that includes Active Sync. I think it was a mistake to develop a separate operating system (Portable Media Center CE OS) instead of building a more capable sync & go application on the Pocket PC platform. There was nothing to stop Microsoft from promoting a Pocket PC device that had large storage hard drive space, better screen and media center integration. See what Dell is doing with its 50v Pocket PC with 3D graphics. Why would I buy a Portable Media Center Device when I can or could have got all that ability with the great value of the Pocket PC device? Think about it - we are taking about a Pocket PC, which is the same principles we see with the desktop PC. Offer a platform device that supports other software and can support add on abilities. I ask you which is the better value? $400 Pocket PC from Dell or a more limited function Portable Media Center device for more money. Hands down Pocket PC is the better and more flexible value for my money. It is simple just add a 20 gig hard drive and add on media center software to this new Dell Pocket PC 50v device and you have a product that I would buy.

While many have said that the Pocket PC platform would die because of the Windows Mobile Smartphone platform. We are seeing new smartphone devices coming that have increased storage and computing power that will support the Pocket PC phone platform. See the coming MPx smartphone by Motorola. I think the Pocket PC platform should have been the platform that all of these devices were built on. Sync & Go is a content delivery system that could be driving needed value to all these devices in combination with Media Center software.

Yesterday (Friday, Jan 7th) was an interesting day as I was on Seattle NPR station KUOW talking about podcasting and then I was lucky to be able to spend an hour and a half with Robert Scoble of Microsoft Blogging fame.

I sat in his office and I thought about how much more virtual space he takes up versus his small 12 foot by 12 foot office. I think we all look at Robert from a mind share basis and not as a physical person in the real world. Though Robert is a really considerate person and is a great guy, I sense he may struggle with the enormity of his virtual world and ponder how he as a physical person can ever match his virtual presence and reputation. That is the struggle that I see everyday when I meet face to face with famous online stars like Robert. They are people first, but yet in the online world they can seem and be much larger. He was very frank with me about the unique position he is in at Microsoft and that he may be part of a significant culture change going on at Microsoft and thought that the open source movement was really behind the change.

I noticed today that Robert posted on his blog about our conversation. I very much enjoyed talking to him about podcasting and the technology conference that I am organizing. Robert sees the big picture of the online world and podcasting, but yet I found that even Robert Scoble does not know all and is reliant on others to help him learn about software that has been around for years at Microsoft. I felt a little strange demonstrating Microsoft’s own Sync n’Go for Pocket PC’s to him and saying that Microsoft had years ago developed an audio and video podcasting like application for Windows XP. While it was not really a big deal, it just demonstrates the enormity of the job Robert Scoble has and that he needs all of our help. The good thing is that he is open and welcoming to all who are interested in sharing ideas and ways Microsoft software can get better. I just think we all need to make sure we respect the position he is in and help him navigate the difficult waters of being one of the 3 go to spokespersons at Microsoft.

Rob Greenlee

Podcasting was the topic at local KUOW.org NPR station at the University of Washington in Seattle featured Glenn Fleishman (Wi-Fi News and Seattle Times), Phillip Torrone (Engadget.com), Ben Tucker (Openpodcast.org) and me.

KUOW aired the extensive podcasting segment on the Weekday show with Host Steve Scher this past Friday, Jan 7th, 2004 at 10:20am. Here is the direct mp3 file download of the Podcasting segment.

Glenn Fleishman has generated an Unofficial RSS feed for KUOW’s Weekday Show. Here is an on-demand streaming file in Real.

Rob Greenlee