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Sorry if this appears like I’m continuing to pick on her, but this Sarah Lacy interview with the Digg guys is a good demo of how NOT to talk over someone you are interviewing — on-stage, on-video or on-audio. Perhaps you can do so while conducting an interview for something you are writing (I’d practice avoiding it there, also), but (and this is something I’ve learned from radio reporters) when you are interviewing for “broadcast” (or podcast) never say “yes” or “uh-huh” or “right” or anything while someone is answering a question.
Why? Lots of reasons, some technical and others are just common sense.
Saying, “right” sounds like you are approving what they are saying — and that’s okay if it’s two tech people involved in a conversation, but not if it’s a “reporter” interviewing a “subject.” Don’t keep saying “uh-huh” as if you are the arbitrator of whether or not what they are saying is correct, or not.
But the most important reason not to talk over someone else, however is this: It will make you very popular with the person who is editing your video or audio. He or she will thank you for being such a pro.
The other day, I speculated-out-loud that Apple may have grounds to sue Universal for factors related to “restraint of trade” in not allowing DRM-free music to be sold via the iTunes store while opening up such an option to nearly all other online retailers of any heft. (I admitted — and still do — I have absolutely no knowledge of the law surrounding such an issue, but I do recall “restraint-of-trade” being a central-focus of legal and regulatory battles in the book-retailing industry whenever one channel of distribution appears to gain preferential treatment from publishers or wholesalers.)
However, after thinking about it some more and reading articles like this one in the LA Times that re-hash the conventional wisdom that Universal is using this as some type of warning-shot against Apple, I have thought about it some more and come to this conclusion: Why should Apple give a rip about how people purchase DRM-free music? They should be encouraging Universal to do this and hoping that Walmart, Best Buy and anyone else who can sell DRM-free music will be as successful as possible.
Why?
In reality, Apple doesn’t make that much money from selling music. I once wrote about 10,000 words pointing out how Apple’s podcasting strategy, in which they support the RSS-distributed delivery of what is, for the most part, free music and programming, is a winner for them because, duh, Apple is in the business of selling hardware that organizes and plays music — the “content” part of iTunes is not their business. I won’t repeat the economics of this, as I’ve covered it before, but believe me, the margin Apple earns on selling music is a microscopic fraction of the margin they earn on selling an iPod or iPhone.
In reality, Apple wants you to purchase DRM-free music any way you can. They are begging Universal to the throw them into the briar patch if they doth protest too much (to mix literary metaphors) Universal’s selling of DRM-free music through every other channel possible. Steve Jobs & Co. know that on iTunes, there is this little menu item called “Consolidate Your Library” that will automagically suck into iTunes all of that DRM-free music you purchase via other sources.
Steve Jobs & Co. know that in a few months, Universal will let them sell DRM-free music. Even I, who am observing this from so far away I have to squint, can see it is inevitable that Universal will cave-in on this after all of their “testing” is done.
 Apparently, there has been a debate going on for some time about whether or not “ghost-blogging” is okay. Shel Holtz recaps it here and then weighs in on the issue. Read it. Shel is not a fan of the notion of ghost-blogging: “Blogs aren’t just another business communication channel. In fact, blogs were created and popularized by people who were fed up with traditional business communication channels.”
I agree with Shel on this one, which may sound funny for someone who has ghost-written more words for others than I’ve written for myself. And while I have no doubt I could ghost-blog for someone else (I could get into their head and master their writing-style), I think my ghost-bloggee and his/her communication people would be missing the point — the opportunity — of this conversational media platform.
Shel makes an excellent suggestion for senior executives who are considering outsourcing their blog posts: “An executive uncomfortable with writing can opt for a podcast; talking may come more naturally. He can participate in real-time chats.”
That suggestion jogged my memory of a long-ago post I made on the day I first heard the term “podcasting,” in which I suggested that CEO-types might find “talking” more natural than “writing.”
Flashback:
“Stick a microphone in front of a CEO and say, ‘What would you like to tell your employees today?’ and you’ll get a much quicker buy-in than sitting a keyboard in front of them and saying, ‘blog a message for the world to read.’ A word of warning to corporate communicator-types: Don’t script it for the CEO…with ‘podcasting,’ voice is not a metaphor for writing in a conversational, believable fashion. Voice is actually voice.”
(via: Josh Hallett)
The New York Times has a story about Mignon Fogarty’s success at selling an audiobook version on iTunes of a book that will be released in print next year. The audiobook was put together in a few days using the equipment Fogarty uses for her podcast, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing, because she was scheduled to appear on Oprah.
Quote:
“On March 26, the day the show was broadcast, iTunes’ home page highlighted “Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing,” an hourlong audiobook that could be downloaded for $4.95. By the end of that week, Ms. Fogarty’s presentation had bumped “The Secret,” the advice book that espouses positive thinking which also had been promoted by Ms. Winfrey, from the top spot.”
While no specifics are shared in the article, the one-hour book has sold in “the thousands.”
While isolated, this is quite similar to publishing deals that have grown out of blogging — books which have been published that either leverage the popularity and expertise of the blogger, or aggregate some of the “best of.” As audiobooks — and the sales channel of iTunes — are clearly in the mainstream of e-commerce, it takes little imagination to envision a new marketplace of podcast-marketed audiobooks that need no manufacturing.
Flashback: Back in 2005, when Apple announced it would be supporting podcasting, I wrote a series of posts (the most extensive one-topic effort ever on this blog) regarding what I thought the long-term impact would be. One of those predictions was this: “If you want to, it will be easy (one day) to sell your podcast through iTunes.”
February 25, 2005: “Compared with the other various approaches so far, Odeo (pronounced OH-dee-oh) means to be podcast central - an all-in-one system that makes it possible for someone with no more equipment than a telephone to produce podcasts and also makes it possible for users to assemble custom playlists of audio files and copy them directly onto MP3 audio players. The company plans to make money by selling audio content and advertising and, eventually, software for producing and editing podcasts.”
November 24, 2006: “The company was born last year amid much hype. It landed substantial financing — $4 million from Charles River Ventures and $1 million from a star-studded cast of angel investors. Yet little more than a year later, Odeo was going nowhere. Traffic had stalled and it was not clear how the company would ever make money.”
Technorati Tags: podcasting
Do what I say, not what I do: “How Odeo screwed up” as told by the, uh, well, guy holding the screw driver.
rexblog flashbacks: Podcasting needs no eBay (February 25, 2005) and here.
(via: Dave Winer)
Technorati Tags: podcasting
Colonial Williamsburg is podcasting: (Via AP) “Colonial Williamsburg is creating free weekly audio programs people can listen to on computers as well as portable players to find out more about those who work there, plying old trades and playing historical figures. The idea is to educate people and, hopefully, inspire them to visit.”
Thanks, Hudge
Technorati Tags: podcasting, july4th
Podcasting’s pundits suffer from macro-myopia: For as long as there has been a rexblog, I’ve been crediting Paul Saffo with helping me understand the phenomenon he calls “macro-myopia.” (Last year, he e-mailed me this background on the concept.) In short, for the past hundred years or so, wonks who study “technology diffusion” have observed that folks always tend to “overestimate short-term effects and under-estimate long-term implications of emergent technological change.”
If you want to watch real-time macro-myopia, follow the “overestimation, underestimation” of podcasting. Today, just 18 months into the era of podcasting, a Forrester research report suggesting that only 1% of people actually listen to podcasts is being treated as if such statistics mean something. They mean absolutely nothing.
There will surely be a “bust” of financial expectations related to podcasting (such is the law of macro-myopia), however, there is no way that 18 months after the word “podcasts” returned only 24 results on Google, that anyone’s research about its “acceptance” means anything about the longterm impact of those “notions” and “platforms” that combine to form the metaphor of podcasting.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. From day one, I’ve been ranting that podcasting shouldn’t be considered a “programming format” or use mass media metrics or metaphors. Sure, the early podcasts sounded like radio shows, but sharing audio is something we do all day long via the phone and I don’t have an opening theme-song before each phone conversation.
I believe podcasting’s greatest impact will be as a personal medium for small groups — as small as two. While they wisely do not use the word “podcasting” anywhere on the site and are, indeed, NOT podcasting, the dynamics of what is taking place at YackPack is where I think time-shifiting and sharing audio may be heading (watch their screencast “video demo” to get the idea). Again, I am not applying the term “podcasting” to what they’re doing — because it’s not — but clear your mind of “programming” metaphors and think conversations and what they’re doing at YackPack can help you understand the difference between personal media (conversation) and mass media (programming) as it relates to time-shifted audio files. Okay, you are now allowed to connect the dots between conversations and podcasting.
To quote myself, bottom line (as I will continue to repeat this again and again, no doubt): “Before the coming podcasting boom and bust, it was just a grassroots notion. Before we cycle through the inevetiable macro-myopic journey of over-expectation and disappointment, I want to say once more that podcasting is going to greatly disappoint lots of people who think it’s about the money.” But what podcasting will eventually lead to is way beyond our minds’ grasps.
Update: Dave Winer says about the phone call theme song: “Hmm. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could.”
Kevin Marks (in comments below): “…if I have a custom ring for you on my phone, you do have a theme song when you call.”
If that’s the case, when someone who is not in my directory calls me, my phone “theme song” is the Simpsons: I guess that puts a smile on my face before I start talking.
Technorati Tags: davewiner, docsearls, podcasting, forrester
Podbop.org: They podcast bands coming to your town. It works in this brain-dead simple way: Type in a city, get MP3s, discover a band you like, and go see them. Music-lover Taylor McKnight (and blogger-friend of mine) is one of the creators and explains it on his blog. For those who want to know such Web 2.0ish things, it’s a mashup that uses the Eventful API and a database Tayor and co-creator Daniel Westermann-Clark have built over the past five months. (I’ve been a fan of Taylor ever since I ran-across his “Steal this Button” project a couple of years ago.)
Technorati Tags: mashup, podcasting, podbop.org, web2.0
 Rexblog mashedup up as a “botcast” — a new cure for insomnia discovered: After I mentioned the Washington Post’s new mashup initiative, Post Remix the other day, in a comment on the post, Ted Gilchrist said he was using the rexblog RSS feed in a mashup. (Sidenote: the Creative Commons deed I use here makes it fine to use my RSS feed for such non-commercial purposes.)
Here’s what he’s doing (I think):
Ted has set up a process that takes the rexblog RSS feed and converts the text of each post into speech through an open source speech sythesizer, Fesitival. He then distributes an RSS feed of the resulting MP3s of each post. He calls these feeds “botcasts.”
For example, here is a link to the RSS feed of speech-synthesized (is that a term?) versions of rexblog posts.
Other than as a cure for insomnia, it’s hard to think of a reason someone would want to listen to a Hal-sounding
robot read the rexblog. Warning: do not listen to this blog while
operating heavy machinery. (Weirdly, however, I think if I were a
monotone robot, my voice would sound exactly like the way his feed
sounds.)
Ted has several more feeds listed on the Botcast Network website.
On a related note, John Musser (programmableweb.com) has a round-up of early mashups that have come in response to the Post Remix announcement.
Update: Almost as soon as I posted this, I saw where Doc Searls has linked (later clarification: someone on Doc’s IT Garage blog, not Doc, actually linked to it) to another service, RSS DJ, that’s doing something that sounds similar, I guess, if I’m following this corrrectly.
Technorati Tags: mashup, podcasting, web2.0
Geez louise: NPR is podcasting lots of programs (even some from PRI and other public programming sources). I wonder how the local NPR affiliates are reacting? I don’t think the podcasts will “compete” with the local affiliates, but I think it will take an enlighted local station management to understand why. Much of the programming, however, is not available in a one-public-radio-station town. In Nashville, we’re lucky that WPLN has both an FM and AM station that provide complimentary programming and podcasts local news features (although they now seem to be hiding the fact as I had to really dig to find that page).
(rexblog podcast wishlist: Bluegrass Breakdown. p.s. I know it’s simple to hack the MP3 stream, however, I’d prefer the RSS-enabled podcast subscription method)
technorati tags: npr, podcast, nashville, public radio
Lost is podcasting: ABC has started an official podcast for those of us who are obsessed with the TV series Lost.
Sidenote: I found last night’s episode rather lack-luster except for the “big thing” that happened at the end.
Warning: The comments on this post include some “spoiler” information about what happened on the most recent episode (what were you thinking, Laura?). So, if you haven’t seen the episode, don’t click on the “comments” link or you’ll be eaten by a giant polar bear.
(Thanks to Shannon, no not that Shannon, for the link.)
Matt’s idea for finding new music: Matt McAlister suggests a way he’d like for “letting obsessed music lovers create recommendations” for him: “Show me the Top 5 music freaks in my Top 5 favorite genres. Then give me the Top 5 most-listened to tracks amongst their followers. Throw in X random tracks per 100. Flag the ones my friends like for context. Readjust monthly. Now that would be a kick ass music station to listen to.”
Flashback: If you scroll down through this post I made before Apple added podcasts to iTunes, you can read how I suggested that certain podcasters could become purchasing agents for people like me who would trust them to discover the music I’d like, but don’t have time to find.
What Dave Winer said: (From the NY Times) “I love podcasting because it turns us all into investigative journalists of our own lives.” A great story on podcasting being created by real folks (and the equipment they use). Not the cliché story on how podcasting has been taken over by big media companies. Also, it seems to have more outbound links embedded in the story than a typical NYT piece.
Speaking of the NY Times, they also have a rather long story about Google and, guess what, Google “wants to dominate Madison Avenue, too.”
I suggest the NY Times keep that headline handy for any number of future stories: “Google wants to dominate (INSERT WORD HERE), too.”
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