Looks like the podshow network has been the hardest hit of all after today’s release of iTunes 4.9. At the time of writing I cannot download any of their shows or gain access to their sites. On Saturday Adam talked about Bit Torrent being the future for distributing the shows as the number of subscribers increases to new heights. This latest outage makes it even more apparent we have a long way to go as I can’t see Apple adding Bit Torrent support in a hurry.
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I have tried to add my podcast feed to the iTunes directory but it may take a while to show up, I believe they may even check the content first. Good thing is iTunes doesn’t purely rely on the directory to add podcasts, just drag the RSS feed into your list and it will start downloading.
I will look into the new iTunes more when I get the chance but so far it’s looking very effective as a podcatching client.
Update: Grrr. You can’t import OPML files with your subscriptions in, Dave Winer won’t be happy.
The TWIT podcast is a nice weekly show about gadgets and technology produced by the old Screen Savers team from TechTV. For some reason after the first or second show Leo Laporte decided he wanted a cash injection and started to promote listeners to get a paid subscription or make a one off donation. Of course this is entirely optional but many people have pledged their support and paid up.
A few weeks later problems started showing up and they were extremely late (6 days) putting it together and releasing it onto the net. Now if you pledge to release you show on a certain day every week and ask people to pay, optional though it may be, you should abide by that promise and not keep coming up with excuses.
If this were a completely free arrangement then there would be no issue, they could release as few as they liked whenever they liked and no one would care. But by actively seeking donations they should be living up to their end of the bargain and not abusing the trust of the loyal TechTV audience.
Leo sparked this post by offering a full refund to anyone who wants one on the TWIT blog today. This is beside the point. They should have let the show run for several weeks to iron out bugs before even contemplating asking for money.
I listened to Dave’s Morning Coffee Notes where he explains what happend between him and Adam over Podshow. If Adam knowingly lied to him about going into business then that’s not cool and I would really like to hear what he has to say about that. It seems like Dave and Ron never got on and it was going to be one or the other who would become partners with Curry - not both. Unfortunately a verbal agreement on Dave’s side was not enough to secure a deal as Ron Bloom had already managed to put a wall between the two of them. It would be nice if they could patch things up as it would be great for the entire podcasting community, whether or not Dave is willing to forgive though remains to be seen.
Dave is really pissed after the Adam Curry interview for Wired, I guess everything in the media over the last few months has started to get to him. Their main point of contention is who wrote the first ipodder. Sure, Dave did write the first program to download enclosures from RSS feeds but Adam was the first to link that to iTunes and the iPod. It depends on what your definition of an ipodder or podcatching client is really, either way something is going down at Gnomedex.
I don’t see the podcasting trends that have emerged this week as black and white as Dave does, to me it seems there are three overlapping camps of thought.
There will be people who are so good at podcasting and hosting/producing audio content that they move to traditional radio just to secure an income doing what they enjoy (even if heavily commercialised and censored). Others will seek an income or small profit from sponsorship and schemes such as what Podshow provide. Finally the majority of people will be content delivering their podcasts to relatively a fewer number of people for no financial gain but just for the love of doing it.
Curry is an exception, which you must expect given he was one of the founders of the medium. He hasn’t used podcasting to get himself back on radio, but instead, will be using radio to get more people to get into podcasting. He has made it clear that in the past that XM\Sirius offered him a regular radio show but he turned it down because of his belief in podcasting. It makes more financial sense for him to attract large number of people to podcasting because he has a vested interest and holds the contracts to the most popular shows.
Well we had the big (and overly long) strategy cast from Adam Curry and Ron Bloom last night. On one hand I agree with Dave Winer that this Ron Bloom character has appeared on the podcasting scene out of nowhere and therefore can only be in it for one thing. Also Adam already was the ‘go to guy’ in the mainstream media for podcasting and by establishing this commercial business he will become the only tunnel through which other podcasts can thrive.
On the other hand we have the people like Dawn and Drew who will be benefiting the most from this deal apart from Adam and Ron. Long term, if their plans come to fruition, they should be able to become full time podcasters and not have to worry about being able to find the time or money to produce their show.
Boku as they are called want to give podcasting a kick up the backside and boot it into the mainstream possibly before it’s ready. I can’t help feeling if they had left it alone and given it time to mature and gestate we could have avoided this and had a fully decentralised network not reliant on one source of income or traffic. You only have to go back and look at Dawn and Drew to see they have been independently attracting sponsors to their show. I’m sure, given time, they would have snowballed and increased their listeners without having to resort to the over commercialisation of this medium.
You may not have been listening to podcasts but you will now, The Screen Savers is back in audio form with Leo and Pat reunited! Gonna listen to it on the way home.
The BBC are reporting on a new study to investigate human migration routes from our origins in Africa. This is a fascinating topic which raises so many questions about where we came from and why the human race has so much diversity in it. Some of my favourite questions from the article that I would like to see answered are:
- Did Alexander the Great’s armies leave a genetic trail?
- Who were the first people to colonise India?
- Was there any interbreeding with Neanderthals as modern humans moved into Europe?
- Did any of the migrations to the Americas come across the Pacific - or even the Atlantic?
One of the early shows I listened to when podcasting first started was Spencer Wells’ lecture at PopTech 2004 which was probably one of the reasons I got hooked on podcasting in the first place due it’s ability to entertain and educate unlike conventional radio. Wells had been going around the world testing people from different regions to determine, using genetics, where their ancestors came from with an end goal of discovering the paths ancient humans traversed.
Micheal Palin’s recent escapades in the Himilayas saw him meeting with the so called ‘Children of Alexander’ in the The Kalash Valleys. They have unusually light skin for the area and as Alexander’s army once passed through the area a connection was made. Maybe this new study will shed some light on that mystery.
I thought the recent Horizon programme on the Neanderthal would have mentioned the potential of interbreeding as a reason for their extinction but it never came up. Instead they claimed Neanderthals simply starved to death when they found themselves unable to adapt to the changing climate.
It’s nice to see IBM putting their weight behind the project, especially with all the anti-evolution sentiment that seems to be cropping up in the US in recent years, just ask James Cameron how stupid people are becoming.
Recently Eric Rice took over the helm on the Engadget podcast from Phil Torrone. Phil was great because he knew tons about gadgets and was obsessed with subverting the trends of modern law and consumer electronics. There was no DRM to tough and no law to strong to stop Phil from trying to break it. His schemes were always entertaining, his hatred for Wal*Mart legendary and his antics with lasers and TV be gone in Best Buy will never be forgotten.
So it’s a great shame that Engadget have hired the most commercial guy in the whole of the podcasting community to fill the boots of good old Phil. Not only does he sound like he should be presenting on that god awful TV channel Fox News, but he has a major sponsorship deal with Warner Brothers on his other show. Hardly the kind of guy who is going to be pulling fast ones on large corporations or sharing his true feelings about the latest products.
The quality of Engadget’s RSS feed is superb, they have some great writers on the team and it has always been a pleasure to have them in my aggregator but this latest turn of events leaves much to be desired.
There is some light at the end on the tunnel however as MAKE magazine maybe doing their own podcast as hinted at by Phil in a recent post (MAKE:Audio). C’mon Phil we all miss you!
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