Pretty much the only non-Intel news in yesterday's WWDC keynote was the addition of podcasting features to iTunes.
Featured in the keynote was a short snippet from one of Adam Curry's podcasts. This morning I was curious, so I skipped over to Curry's site to see if he had any reaction.
Of course he did, but it was buried some undefined length of time into an mp3 file. After sitting through the sort of cheesy commercial-radio intro that makes me glad I listen to Triple J, and a few remarks about Curry's cats and living situation, I decided to give the whole thing a miss.
I guess, using the supplied index as a guide, I could have scrubbed back and forth through the mp3 until I found the right section. But seriously, why bother?
For the time being, I'm going to continue to file podcasting under "inaccessible and inconvenient".
Imagine this. Someone has never surfed the web before.
They read part of one site they don't like it and never surf the web again. Is this a worthwhile strategy?
(Comment edited to remove obnoxious formatting --cm)
You've missed the point. The problems I had with Curry's podcast were inherent in the medium. I knew there was information I wanted in there, but I had no way to retrieve it efficiently.
My take was much the same: it's like the web only slower and more opaque.
http://jameskew.blogspot.com/2005/05/on-podcasting-and-patience.html
Providing a transcript alongside the audio would solve a lot of problems --I wonder how many people would bother listening if they could read in text?
One of the projects the PodCast Alley guys are working on is a way to easily serve up snippets of an audio file via URLs, so that you can make hyperlinks to the segment that you care about.
Adam has mentioned this a few times.
Would this help solve your problem?
Robert: It would certainly be nice to have podcasts with chapter hints in them, but I suspect the mp3 format isn't capable of that. Even adding time-codes to the published table of contents would be a step in the right direction.
So yesterday I got me one of those TV thingies. THey said it had interesting stuff on to watch. But get this: You actually have to be in fron of the dang thing at a certain time! And you can't skip or anything, you just have to wait until the parts that interest you appear. Ties in with my very poor "radio"-experience, it's bascially like tv, but totally without _any_ visuals, but has all the same drawbacks. I don't know why anybody would use those things. I am returning my TV tomorrow.
Thanks, Sencer. I guess you were attempting sarcasm, but you've just described quite succinctly why the Tivo is so popular, and why I don't watch the news on TV. :)
The problem *I* have with Curry's podcasts is Curry himself. I cannot stomach the self-absorbed egotism that pervades his podcasts. His choices of subject matter are sometimes promising, and some of his guests have been interesting, but having it all filtered through the Curry-filter is tooooo much.
However....IT Conversations rules. These are podcasts done right.
http://www.itconversations.com/
> you've just described quite succinctly why the Tivo is so popular, and
> why I don't watch the news on TV. :)
Actually this only shows, that Podcasting is not adequate for news - which I would agree with. Just like a webpage is really useless, when I want to squash a fly or wipe my *ahem*.
There is no Tivo for Radio, yet I would say that Radio is doing quite well. You've been trying to do the wrong things with Podcasts. If you see it as part of the web and something you do in front of the PC, you won't find it of any use. I didn't either.
But when you're moving from a to b, or are busy with otherwise low-intelligence manal labour (like washing the dishes, ironing, driving a car etc.) podcasts do have an advantage to stuff wirtten on paper.
And I have never listened to more than 15 seconds of Curry. But I have listened to hours and hours of ITConversations. ;)
Add "quite often truly awful" to "inaccessible and inconvenient";
http://www.halfcooked.com/mt/archives/000970.html
ABC Radio National are podcasting some of their shows on a trial basis. As someone who can't frequently listen to a lot of their many interesting and varied shows I am availing myself of this service and it's *great*, I can finally hear many shows that I'd miss otherwise. All automatically downloaded to my computer for me to listen to when I have the time. It is fantastic.
The point about podcasting: really, it's radio - Tivo-for-radio.
I think it shows some promise as a way to distribute content like songs (or tv series episodes) in a subscription or for-free environment.
It's just a way to get some files onto your computer without you having to be there to do it everytime. The RSS 2.0 enclosure tag could also be used to distribute executables for example. For example you could use it in a software environment to get "releases" of software to a target server (which actually 'pulls' the software off your release server).
It's not limited to audio or video. And an information distribution medium it is as only good as the information format. Audio or video data is appropriate for structured information, which is all you've discovered here.
I meant of course, "Audio or video data is *INappropriate* for structured information ... "
Hmm, one of your comments along the lines of 'there is information in there that I want but I cannot access it easily' makes me think you are not really listening for the right reason. In fact, you are not really listening at all. Many, probably most, podcasts are not some kind of information resource to be used. They are much closer to traditional media then new media. Do you pick up a book, scan the chapter headings and then decide to read only chapters 3 and 8? How about a movie? A podcast, especially once such as Curry's (or even more one like Dawn and Drew) are *meant* to be like that. Or do you think all tradiional media forms are without use if they are not hyperlinked and have each section context free?
Hmm, how often do I read just one or two chapters of a book? Well, let's take the book immediately in front of me, "XML In A Nutshell". I pretty much mostly open it to read chapters eight, twenty, and twenty-three (in fact, I've got a bookmark sitting at the start of chapter 23 because I read it so often). The last movie I watched was "The Matrix", and I jumped right to the Morpheus/Neo/Dojo scene, and stopped watching it after that. Perhaps I'm not your average media consumer, but then again, maybe I am...
And yeah, without hyperlinking and indices traditional media forms are far less useful than they might otherwise be.
Also, for Sencer, I think that there is no Tivo for Radio, and it's called CDs (or directories full of MP3s, if you want to get new-school).
Ah, well, if the first thing that comes to mind for a book is a book about XML, then indeed podcasting -- or a good novel for that matter -- is not for you.
Nothing to do with podcasting but I had awesome fun today broadcasting over the office girls radio with my itrip, confused the hell out of them. 92.9 doesn't normally play psytrance! "Is that the x-files theme?"
It's friday.
I've enjoyed listening to IT Conversations away from the computer, but where the information is available as hypertext, that's a much quicker communication medium. Check Maciej's AudioBlogging Manifesto.
This is really about media in general, rather than specifically podcasting. Transplanting traditional linear media like radio directly on the Web is a step backwards. Use transcripts & HTTP Range and we might start moving forwards again.