This post is in response to the high profile debate raging between Dave Winer and Audible’s Mitch Ratcliffe. I believe this is an important debate that exposes all the sores that exist with podcasting of today. Here are the links to the heated comments from Mitch’s post and Dave Winer post.

Guys, let’s look at the big picture. Podcasting is not currently at its end state and needs to evolve towards better delivery and listener tracking. The other needed technology piece is dynamic audio segment insertion for archive files.

We need to also keep in mind that the listener and the podcaster generally do not care what the media format is or how it is distributed. We are all interested in the format and distribution technology because we are all the pioneers of this podcasting process, but podcaster and listener will not really care. The listener only wants to listen to good quality programs and some of the podcasters will want to make a living creating podcasts.

I spent many years as a content provider and listener of the now closed down Microsoft Sync and Go audio and video podcasting application for Win XP and the Pocket PC platform. It is sad that Microsoft let this technology die. What it did show me was that as a podcaster and a listener, it is all about the content and easily getting the content that I wanted in an easy way. Sync and Go did a very successful job of removing media format and distribution issues from the listening experience.

I believe that Dave Winer thinks that he and Adam Curry created a podcasting ecosystem that is at an end state at the beginning of the medium. This is a fundamental misunderstanding on how past media has developed. I ask why podcasting can’t be all things to all people and work with the needs of the major broadcasters and grassroots end of tail content creators?

I believe that format standards, software and good user interfaces will solve and eliminate all the technology and format issues that are being debated here.

I think Audible is helping this new podcasting industry evolve and solve some serious business issues that are getting in the way of it moving to the next level. It should be our goal to make formats and technology platforms that meet the needs of podcasters and listeners at all levels of the production, format and distribution.

The mp3 format does not meet the long-term needs of podcasters and listeners. Many think it does from a purist view point. Dave, we can have commercial and non-commercial interests in podcasting.

I strongly hope that we can totally remove this format debate from the conversation and focus on moving the industry into supporting both mp3 and .aa better. I do hope that the mp3 format standard can be improved to support better metadata and listener reporting. I do not totally think that DRM is the enemy as it can be used help give podcasters the information that they need to get sponsors and can give listeners book marking and other more advanced media search indexing.

Let’s focus our discussion on how we can make this technology disappear from the listener and just make it as simple as clicking the play button.

Rob Greenlee
WebTalk Radio
http://www.webtalkradio.com