Author: Doug

Trying to Crack YouTube Videos

~ Doug ~ 1 Comment

Anyone out there have an idea how to solve this?

Over at SpokenWord.org we’re trying to figure out how to scrape YouTube pages (or pages with embedded YouTube players), then hack a video or ShockWave URL that we can include in the <enclosure> element of RSS feeds. We’ve been able to do this for programs in YouTube EDU such as this page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XpTc1-lh0), which we convert to this media-file URL (http://www.youtube.com/v/Y1XpTc1-lh0&f=user_uploads&app=youtube_gdata). The latter URL can be played by standard Flash players, so we can include it in RSS feeds. But this only works for certain special cases such as YouTube EDU, not for mainstream YouTube pages.

I’m a TWiT Again

~ Doug ~ 4 Comments

Had a lot of fun Sunday. Drove up to the TWiT Cottage in Petaluma to be on Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) episode 199. (Wow, the last time I was on was over a year ago!) Leo and the chat room seemed to think it was a pretty good show. The big treat for me was to be able to meet Wil Harris who was also in the studio instead of his usual participation via Skype. Leo is a real pro, and it’s always an honor to be invited to join the show.

Happy Birthday to You

~ Doug ~ 2 Comments

Today is the 6th anniversary of the first IT Conversations program, which pre-dated podcasting by about 15 months. And who was our second guest? None other than Phil Windley, who is now Executive Producer of the channel. What you may not realize is that Phil has actually presided over IT Conversations for longer than I did — he began his stint in April 2006 — and has certainly published the majority of the channel’s 1,895 programs to date.

Behind Phil is TeamITC: our worldwide gang of 40 audio engineers, website editors and series producers headed by Paul Figgiani (audio) and Joel Tscherne (producers) who do all the heavy lifting to bring you new high-quality programs every day. The same team also brings you Social Innovation Conversations, in collaboration with the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Bernadette Clavier, Executive Producer) and soon to be launched, CHI Conversations (Steve Williams, EP).

We’re so used to doing this day in and day out, that it’s easy to forget our own history. For example, as Ian Forrester pointed out this morning, we were one of the first (perhaps *the* first) to publish conferences online for free. It began with our live audio streams from the O’Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In and Emerging Technology Conference in Ferbruary, 2004.

Here’s a special thanks to everyone on the team including those who have helped us and moved on to other endeavors. Approximately 145 people have been members of TeamITC at one time or another. And thanks to all our listeners, fans and particularly donors and supporters who help us pay the bills.

Happy Birthday to You.

Airplane WiFi — Isn’t This Old News?

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Everybody (well, Joe Sharkey in the NY Times and lots of bloggers and Twitterers) are foaming at the mouth about the trials of WiFi in commercial airliners. I must be missing something here. I flew on Lufthansa from San Francisco to Munich three years ago with a terrific WiFi connetcion. I believe they discontinued the service because of the cost, but there certainly didn’t seem to be any major technical glitches. True, I did expect in-air WiFi would be more commonplace by now, but I think the press and blog coverage is missing an important fact that this isn’t something new.

Terms of Service

~ Doug ~ 1 Comment

I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Someone submitted a hard-core porn video feed to SpokenWord.org. (No, don’t go looking for it!) Maybe we’ve just been lucky thanks to keeping a fairly low profile. We do accept RSS feeds with content tagged as ‘explicit’ but there’s explicit (perhaps just audio with adult language) and then there’s really explicit. I’m thinking of dealing with it in a few ways.

  • No content tagged as ‘explicit’ on the home page.
  • Content tagged as ‘explicit’ is invisible to those who have not opted-in via their profiles.
  • In order to opt-in, you must read and agree to the Terms of Service *and* you must claim to be 18 years old or older.
  • You can register without explicitly agreeing to the Terms of Service, but the first time you submit content, you’ll have to explicitly. (Sorry for the re-use of the word ‘explicit’.)

I’ve got no experience with this, and I welcome suggestions. In particular, if you can recommend another site that handles occasional explicit content well and/or has good Terms of Service, let me know.

Ratings Now in SpokenWord.org RSS Feeds

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All RSS feeds generated by SpokenWord.org now include program rating data according to the conversationsNetwork namespace. If a program has been rated, the <item> for that program now includes the ratingAverage and ratingCount elements. If the feed was requested with authentication (identifying a particular SpokenWord.org member) it will also include the ratingIndividual element. The ratingTimestamp element has not yet been implemented. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s worthwhile and whether it should reflect the last rating by the authenticated individual or by anyone.

Users Tell Us What’s Wrong

~ Doug ~ 1 Comment

You can always count on loyal website visitors to tell you what you really need to hear. I emailed a survey to the registered members of SpokenWord.org this morning and already have some great responses. Here’s a sample of the answers to “What do you NOT like about SpokenWord.org?”

  • collections
  • No Comment
  • Not sure I totally understand how it works.
  • I do not understand how I am supposed to use SW, and the web pages don’t make it manifest. What is “collect” and what does “subscribe” imply? Unclear. Yes, I can spend a lot of time clicking “help” to “FAQ” to “Advanced: Collection” but I still feel that I’m using a Swiss Army Knife as a club. Awkward and unfamiliar.
  • – the search is annoying; I wish it would search both feeds and episodes, without having to go to a separate page. – the look is quite cluttered and visually messy – it’s not good for discovery; I don’t find the homepage content useful — it’s rarely something that I want to listen to, and doesn’t change frequently enough. I haven’t looked at other’s collections much, maybe that would be helpful.
  • Jason Ponten
  • Too early to tell
  • Too much data entry required to add a single program. The feed reader should be more forgiving. I’ve tried to add several feeds that failed, but I assume they work find with iTunes or other feed readers.
  • Removing individual programs from collection (that was added trough feed) was not working, but now that seems to be fixed.
  • Removing individual programs from collection (that was added trough feed) was not working, but now that seems to be fixed.
  • Nothing
  • I’m not so sure about the Stack Overflow-type badges and such, though I’m always a late adopter in the social media thing.
  • I used to get these emails from ITC, and I just manually downloaded each one and put it in a directory. Now, I don’t know where to find that stuff. there seems so much, it’s confusing to a simpleton like myself.
  • Same as above
  • not friendly for new users. not clear what should you do there..
  • I am not sure how to use it.
  • – No audio podcasts of video talks available – The time lag in updating my feed after making changes to my collection. – The strictness in parsing RSS feeds has not allowed me to move all of my podcasts over to Spoken Word.
  • to much mumbo jumbo and does not seem smooth
  • It was difficult to figure out at first.
  • Wasn’t obvious how to subscribe to a feed, although I just went back and found it.
  • Not live. New feeds sometimes take days to add programs to my collections. When a new feed is added you should give the ability to add a small number of older programs immediately to test the feed.
  • I just didn’t find a lot of podcasts that I hadn’t already found. It’s been a while since I checked. I’ll look again and maybe this opinion will change.
  • Cluttered UI.
  • Some of the feed parsing is pickier than I thought was necessary. If I make a collection on SpokenWord and subscribe to its feed on my PC its not always easy to differentiate which original feed an episode is from. So I don’t use this feature. it’s not really your fault but there isn’t an easy way to contribute to SpokenWord other than adding feeds. I download podcasts with gpodder on my PC and I don’t tag or rate podcasts because it’s a lot of extra effort.
  • can’t get to it ALL!
  • Off the top of my head? Nothing.
  • Too hard to find things. I am pretty new at this. I also visited TED. I felt it was easier to find interesting stuff there.
  • Can’t think of anything… Tue, 5/12/09 9:14 AM
  • Well, for one thing, the feedback link to tell you what didn’t work didn’t work. And here’s an obvious but unappreciated idea: I signed up to hear a progran that wasn’t there. Can you build some kind of machine that’ll delete busted or cancelled links? Also, I had a little too much difficulty finding the actual link to the program. In fact, more than a little too much.
  • Search is so broken! I search for my own podcast and it doesn’t show up in search results – even though I’ve submitted it. I have to type the exact url. Related keywords are useless. Also, I would really, really encourage you to create multiple lists of podcasts broken down by various categories, topics, niches, sub-sub niches, brand-new podcasts, etc. Even if these lists are in a separate section of the site (not taking up valuable home page real estate) these would be invaluable to finding/discovering podcasts I haven’t heard about previously.
  • there is an empty yellow popup area on the home page that just says “close window”
  • The layout and searching for new podcasts. Not much Canadian Content.

What do you think? Maybe we have a UI problem?