DIY Radio with PODcasting

Doc Searls has done a great job of pulling together many topics related to radio, iPods, audioblogs, RSS, the NAB and Ogg Vorbis.

PODcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.

Update: Dave Slusher is trying to set the record straight and make sure we’re using the terminology correctly. I think he’s got it right. It ain’t a PodCast (or even a PODcast) if it doesn’t flow automatically (automagically) from source to MP3 player.

The Audience is Listening

Dave Slusher has discovered the power of the audience. Make a mistake and you’ll immediately be corrected. I learned this early on from Dave Winer and even more so from Dan Gillmor. Dan has long pointed out that his readers know more than he does, and that’s true for all of us. It’s like writing a book and having hundreds of pre-publication reviewers. The only problem is that in this case the reviews are post-publication. The answer is humility. Be prepared to be corrected, and if you’re bold enough to correct someone, be prepared to re re-corrected.

So Many Bloggers, So Little Time

The problem with audioblogs is real-time playback. It’s not too bad…yet. I can listen to all of Adam’s shows, and Dave’s posts, but at 45-90 minutes a day, it already ain’t easy. There are audio blogs I want to listen to on a regular basis, but I just don’t have the time. (As it is, to produce IT Conversations I’ve got the headphones on for many hours a day.)

So what happens when we hit critical blog-mass? Are we already there? Like Scoble, I can use RSS to scan a whole lotta text blogs in a short period of time, but there’s no way (yet) to do that with audio. What’s the solution? Is it meta-blogging (bloggers who help us find the best-of other blogs)? Will excerpts help? I dunno.

IT Conversations at Gnomedex

Yahoo!, in association with Lockergnome.com, presents Gnomedex 4: Geeks Gone Wild! this week September 30th through October 2nd 2004, and IT Conversations will be there. Speaking this year will be Steve Wozniak (Woz), Robert Scoble, Chris DiBona, Jim Louderback, and Dan and Steve Gillmor. We will be streaming the audio all day Friday and Saturday including a special live edition of The Gillmor Gang. And for those who can’t be there or listen to the live broadcast, IT Conversations will PodCast all of the sessions beginning next week, so have your iPods linked to our RSS feeds. So head for www.itconversations.com and look for links to Gnomedex 4. And thanks for listening.

(The IT Conversations coverage of Gnomedex 4 is sponsored by Yahoo!, Limelight Networks, Magnatune Music and DecisionCast.)

Web Conferencing Survey

Alex Williams of DecisionCast, who will be part of the IT Conversations broadcast from Gnomedex next week, would like your help. He’s conducting an online survey with Wainhouse Research. It only takes 10-15 minutes and there’s a chance you’ll win an Amazon.com gift certificate or an iPod.

.NET Rocks

I don’t know what took me so long. Listeners of IT Conversations have been telling me about .NET Rocks for a long time now. I finally went over there to check it out…very cool. Carl Franklin and Rory Blyth produce an entertaining two-hour show every week. You can stream it live or download on-demand in MP3 or Windows Media format in a variety of filesize/quality options. Broadcast-quality audio, interesting hosts and first-rate guests. They’ve been producing the show for more than two years, predating IT Converations by three months. According to their on-line stats, .NET Rocks gets about 5x our volume of listeners. Mostly about Microsoft, MSDN and .NET of course, with humor and music thrown in. Notifications (but no enclosures) via RSS. Check it out.