Blogs and Feeds

Royalty-Free Music

The Music Bakery yet another source of royalty-free music for podcasts. As their promo says -- "you only pay for it once" and then you can use it for the rest of time. Hat tip to Dave Winer for showing us this one.

How Many Are Listening?

FeedBurner  manages feeds for just over 6,000 podcasts, so they have a pretty good handle on how many people listen to the typical podcast. According to Burning Questions FeedBurner's official blog:

"Podcasts managed by FeedBurner have an average of 33 subscribers, up from an average of 15 subscribers in February. If you discount the feeds with less than 5 subscribers, the average number of subscribers per podcast is 65.

In February, we managed 20 podcasts with over 100 subscribers and hundreds of podcasts with more than 10 subscribers. Now we manage about 20 podcasts with over 1000 subscribers and hundreds of podcasts with more than 100 subscribers. As we noted in our first podcasting report in February, a typical "long tail" is developing."

I'll take 65 subscribers on average for a medium that hardly existed a year ago.

Electronic Frontier Foundation -- For Freedom's Sake a Must Read

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published For Freedom's Sake: Legal Guide for Bloggers a must-read guide for bloggers, podcasters and others who write content. This online guide tells all -- what is fair use, libel, what are the responsibilities of bloggers for using content created by others? If you have ever wondered, if you, as a blogger, can get access to information or a press pass to cover events, this is the guide for you.

Ignorance is no justification for breaking the rules. In my opinion we as bloggers do ourselves a favor by knowing and paying attention to the such issues. Read it, if for no other reason than it is interesting reading.

Worldwide Blogs Number 60 Million or More

Even with BlogPulse is tracking 12 million blogs, the worldwide number is still much larger.  I worry a bit that we are trying to estimate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin and that measuring size is not the metric we should be using. I do believe that influence is more important. I want to know the influence on music and dance the angels on the pin have, not how many were seen dancing.

That being said have come on some additional figures for size of blogosphere worldwide. Duncan Riley, using an interesting build-up method of estimation, has suggested that the worldwide size is closer to 60 million than the 12 million posted by BlogPulse. This still begs the questions: How many are spam blogs? How many are active?

Prefer the approach taken by the very interesting wiki on SocialText that gives insights into the European blogosphere on a country-by-country basis. Living in the US we tend to be too US-centric, particularly when talking about technology adoption. It is a sort of provinicialism, so sites like this wiki really give a broader view. I sure wish there was one for South and Central America.

New Size of Blogosphere - 12 Million Blogs

Have been tracking the size of the blogosphere for quite some time. It is always one of the first questions that I get asked when speaking on blogs. I use BlogPulse to keep my eye on the growing number of blogs. The new count is in an the blogosphere has grown to 12-million blogs, up from 10 million just 6 weeks earlier -- now that kind of growth plotted carefully may actually look like a hockey stick.

Now, not all of the 12 million blogs are active. Blogpulse reports between 3.8-3.9 million are considered "active" (meaning new information has been posted) in the last 30 days, 5.2 million are considered active in the last 60 days and slightly more than half have been active in the last 90 days.

I can hardly wait to see when the next million blogs will tick by. I'm doing my best to add to them.

IRA Regatta Held on Cooper River

The annual IRA Rowing Regatta was held on the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Thursday-Saturday, June 2-4. I had the privelege of being one of the referees who worked this exciting collegiate regatta.

This schedule for the event is always at first blush predicatable, but then there is the weather. That is seldom predicatble -- skin searing sunburn (even with lots of sunscreen), rain or wind, all are part of the possible mix. This year brought 1.5 inches of rain during the Friday, heats and reps. If you have ever attended an all day outdoor event, you don't need me to tell you what happens -- the ground becomes saturated, muddy and slippery. Even with the rain on Friday, Thursday and Saturday were beautiful days.

The IRAs are very busy for referees. It all commences with the coaches and coxes meeting on Wednesday, evening. This is followed with a brief meeting for the officials -- we get our marching orders for the next day and any special instructions. We also get to greet our fellow officials -- lots of hugs and so glad to see you's! This year for me a wonderful late dinner capped off Wednesday. I really enjoy the company of my fellow crew officials. They are smart, fun and dedicated to the sport.

Thursday is the busiest and longest day. The officials report to the site at 6:00 a.m. -- and no matter how early I arrive, I've always found others there first -- who knows when they sleep. I was assigned a.m. duty on the finish line and p.m. duty on the water. Both were great assignments. I've seldom enjoyed working with a finish crew as much as at this year's IRAs. The entire staffing was Goldilocks perfect -- not too many, not too few, just right -- or so it appeared.

After coming off the water around 6:00 p.m., the officials and some members of the hardworking local organizers were the guests of Aldo Lamberti's restaurant. I'm Italian by heritage, and an admitted food snob, but this restaurant is in my personal pantheon of must dine places.

Can't linger over the food, a busy Friday awaits with lots of heats, semis, and reps to referee starting at 6:30 a.m. and lasting into the mid-afternoon. Again my own assignments were finish and water. Alas! The sky opened, and the rains came. I've seldom been wetter or colder. The competition was hot so, it was a grand day even though it was very wet. The late afternoon was spent drying gear and trying to warm up and rest. A brief get together and a light dinner were enough to fill the agenda. Dropped into bed and slept soundly.

Saturday was truncated for me by the need to get down the road to a family gathering in honor of a very special high school graduate -- my nephew. So I did not get a chance to see the finals in some of the events. They are a spectacle.

Another set of IRAs are behind us. We'll have to wait another year to see quite such thrilling crew racing.