Blogs and Feeds

Podcasting at Weekly Insight

When Jeff Molander asked me to join in a weekly podcast, Weekly Insight  with a group of affiliate marketers, I had no idea what to expect. I knew that I had always found lots to talk about with Jeff and never enough to cover all of the topics of mutual interest. Little did I know that I would join a weekly call with such a fun group. It is a blast. We seldom keep it short, but some of the conversations are too good to end. I find myself looking forward to these calls. Download the podcast and join the fun.   

PodcasterCon.org -- A Surreal Experience

Went to PodcasterCon in Chapel Hill, NC, over the weekend. It was a surreal experience. First, the venue was Murphey Hall, perhaps the building most freighted with history for me. It is the home of the Classics Department, Greek, Latin and such. Since it took me six plus years to complete my Ph.D. at UNC in Classics, I saw a lot of Murphey Hall during those years, spent many an hour in the department library, in the grad student offices and visiting faculty in their offices. The building has a solid bank of memories. It is not the same though. The university has renovated the building beautifully since my day when it was truly a wonderful dowdy old classroom building with lots of charm and not much else.

At first it seemed so off kilter for a meeting of some 300 or so individuals chasing the newest of the new media waves to be getting together in Murphey, . . . but then as I pondered the circumstance I couldn't help but remember that Homer's poems were spoken (so to speak) after dinner entertainment. Would Homeric poems have been released as a podcast -- more strange thoughts?

Overall, PodcasterCon.org was a splendid, fun event. It was not a round-up of the usual suspects, although they would have enjoyed it. It was a nice opportunity to meet a lot of new folks, some with lots of experience in podcasting and others with lots of enthusiasm but no experience. The energy level was very high, making way for lots of learning.

An Edirol R1 -- My New Podcasting Equipment

Guess Santa really wasn't looking this year; otherwise, he wouldn't have put an Edirol R1 under my Christmas tree.

The Edirol R1 will let me record high quality audio for my podcasts. Since it records to a compact flash card, it does not pick up any noise from the device itself. This is a problem for those who record use a traditional microphone and computer set up for recording podcasts. The Edirol R1 will record both WAV and MP3 formats and has an effects processor that will let me enhance my audio. I can hardly wait.

I am surprised at how many capabilities are packed into this recorder. It runs on two AA batteries and is so light that I'll hardly notice that I am carrying it around. I'm still learning how to use it -- note nose is deep in manual every time I fire it up. And -- bonus the manual even makes sense.

Santa thanks -- I always knew you could be bribed.

VCs and Podcasts - More Takers

Last week I wrote on how VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has begun accepting podcast elevator speeches from those eager to present their business ideas to him. Katherine Heires of Business 2.0 offers an expanded list of VCs who are listening to podcasts. So, would be entrepreneurs do be sure to add them to your next VC distribution list. They include:

• David Hornik, a partner at August Capital in Menlo Park, CA
• Rick Segal at J.L. Albright Venture Partners, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Try Podcasting Your Elevator Speech

Want to get the attention of a VC. Maybe you should try making it a podcast and pitching it to the VCs for their listening pleasure. According to The Boston Globe, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures invites entrepreneurs to upload their pitches to his blog, so that he can listen to them on an iPod as he bikes to work. Now, you do not have to worry about bobbling the ball or shanking your one and only chance to score those VC dollars. Now, you can just upload your pitch and maybe, just maybe, it will be heard.

Now let me get up on my high horse for just a moment -- about the biking and listening to the iPod. As a cyclist who persists in threatening my life and limb by biking in areas where cars dominate, I consider it an act of hubris to bike while listening to anything. I don't care how wonderful the tunes are or the elevator pitch is. Listening simply shuts out too much of the sound -- the potential warnings of danger. Exit high horse for now.

Digital Audio Player Market Tops $4.5 Billion

According to a study done by In-Stat the market for audio players is expected to reach over 104 million units by 2009, up from 27.8 million units in 2004. Although Apple has a 30.2% share of this market, other leading manufacturers such as Rio, iRiver and Creative. The the percentage of US respondents owning a digital audio player has increased from 16% in 2001 to 25% in 2005.

This data suggests to me that the market for digital audio is just moving from early adopters to growth. We can expect to see the number of users and uses to expand at a near exponential rate. Every day I read of new applications for digital audio. The real limiting factor is imagination.

Podscope - Podcast Search

TVEyes, a monitoring service for TV and broadcast, has been on my personal radar for almost two years. In April, they launched Podscope, the logical extension to their product line. Their monitoring tools for broadcast are very powerful. If you are interested in having returned to you every on-air mention of your company, TVEyes is for you. You don't have to believe me, just sign up for a demo account. You'll know that Big Brother has arrived.

Podscope crawls the web and looks for podcasts. It creates an index against every word, creating a searchable indes of the contents. Using Podscope. you can search on a term, generate a list of results ranked by a variety of methods to find the most relevant podcast and click to play or click to download. This is very powerful technology. Full search of audio content is no small feat.

If you are a podcast creator, do note that you can submit your podcast to Podscope.

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.

The End Gets Closer Still - Uh Oh!

Another sign that the end is truly near -- and that we all need protection. Durex, yup! you got it, the condom folks have decided to stretch their advertising into podcasts. This move will let them test the limits of the new medium as they try to connect with a younger audience. In fact it will allow Durex to imore freedom in its messaging than in other media monitored and controlled by FCC regulations.