James Snell is experimenting with Atom feeds (in lieu of RSS) that contain both our MP3 and M4b (AAC) files. As he notes, we’re in the process of killing off the M4B files and eventually generating BitTorrent feeds from the MP3s.

Last year, Jon Udell and I began experimenting with various techniques for expressing an excerpt of an MP3 file in an URL. Jon has now taken this to a whole new level. Not only has he improved the the URL syntax and the excerpting code, but he’s even gone so far as to use a text-to-speech service to generate intros or identifiers for his clips. He apologizes for some of his hacks along the way, but the results are very cool and show some of the things one needs to do to make things work in the world of varying MP3 players.

Santa Clara, CA. July 30, 2005
Four rooms, each with RCA line-level outputs

We’re not even close to rolling out our system for matching events with stringers who can record their presentations, but we’ve got a few that would be great to capture even before all the pieces are in place. One such event is the BlogHer Conference being held in less than two weeks. Just check out this schedule.

The producers of the event have rented PA systems for each of the four rooms, and we need podcasters or others with the right skills and equipment to record the sessions. Each room will have a mixer with RCA line-level outputs, so if you have a recorder or laptop with line-level inputs and the proper cables — and if you what you’re doing! — this is a great chance to help out. The IT Conversations coverage of BlogHer will be heard by more than 40,000 individuals, but only if you help. In addition to the fame and glory of being a member of Team ITC, you’ll also get free admission to the event. And it’s not for women only; 20% of the attendees will be men.

If you can help, just email me at doug@rds.com. Even if you can’t please spread the word in your own blog so we can capture these great sessions for the entire world to hear.

I don’t mean to pick on Frank Barnako, whom I finally had the privilege of meeting, if ever so briefly, at last-month’s Gnomedex. It’s just a matter of timing. In his column today for Marketwatch.com, Frank writes, “Podcasting’s ‘indies’ are losing ground…the little guys have gotten squished.” This is just more of the same misunderstanding of the podcasting phenomenon as we’re hearing from Mark Ramsey and others. These folks are looking at podcasting only as a platform for stars and hits. It ain’t about that, guys. This is all about us reaching the audiences who care about our programs, and very few of us think for a moment that even the potential audience comes close to the size of that for some of the traditional-media outlets. Not even within two orders of magnitude.

Take IT Conversations, for example. Did anyone really think that IT Conversations would stay in the Top 100 (or Top Anything) once the large-media companies jumped into podcasting? Of course not. And does that discourage me? Not in the least. The same event that Frank refers to — Apple’s release of iTunes 4.9 with support for podcasts — nearly doubled the traffic to IT Conversations overnight. What a huge success for us and for the rest of the little guys.

The real question is whether all of the so-called indie podcasts combined will have an audience as large as a single BigGuy. I think we will. I believe that within three years, independent podcasters, as a group, will deliver more programs to more listeners than any single old-media distributor. And I think we’ll soon after that make a run at beating the listenership of all the old-media channels combined. It’s a classic long-tail story. It fits the model in every way.

Does this signal the end of BigGuy media? Only to the same extent that Amazon.com has meant the end of bricks-and-mortar bookstores. (Wow… I haven’t used that phrase for a few years!) But it does create a new, unlimited spectrum for programming about which people are more passionate than they are for the Top 100 stuff, in the same way as Amazon gives us access to the books we really want that aren’t available from the local strip mall. Ask most readers whether they’d rather lose that local bookstore or Amazon.com. Even easier: Ask yourself. Then think what this will mean for podcasting when it brings you the long-tail of audio and video programming.

Update: Steve Gillmor and Dave Slusher were on top of this before me.

Voting for the Podcast Awards is open through July 31. For some reason I don’t understand, you’re allowed to vote once every 24 hours. The awards will be given out at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, in Ontario, California, November 11-12, which is shaping up to be the major podcasting event of the year. I’ll be giving a session there, about “lessons learned” from IT Conversations — mostly audio stuff.

Firefox 1.0.4 had a nasty rendering bug that caused various screen objects to slide into strange positions when the page was scrolled. I got a moderate number of complaints about the IT Conversations site because of this. Firefox 1.0.5 seems to have fixed this. Thanks!

We get at least a half-dozen donations and messages of praise every day, and I can’t recall that I’ve ever posted any of them to my blog, but I just liked this guy’s style:

Dear Mr. Kaye,

I am IT Conversations’ biggest fan. Others may claim this title, but in truth they are second fiddle to me. I am writing to say thanks for putting together this great collection of programs. I have found them both educational and entertaining. Now before I get to my ultimate point I’ll give you a little background on me. My wife and I run Kipe and Associates which is a small IT services firm based in Beaverton, Oregon. The Oregon Business Journal recently recognized us as the 9th fastest growing private company in the state of Oregon. We provide staff augmentation and application development services to mostly large conservative businesses and we usually do things like J2EE, .NET, and database development. My wife really runs the business and I write code for a living.

Now before you delete this email out of boredom, I’ll get to my point. I would be thrilled if you would visit my website. You don’t have to read anything, click on any links, or anything like that. I would just love to be able to tell my friends that Doug Kaye has seen my website. If you do visit my site, I’ll make a $50 donation to IT Conversations. And don’t worry this isn’t an advertising ploy and I’m not going to write about this is in a blog or anything like that.

Unless you object, I would like to add a link to the IT Conversations website on my evolving “developers” page so that my employees and other visitors will know about the great resource you provide. My website link is below. Its safe and you won’t be asked for any information, nor will any cookies be placed on your computer.

Thanks,
Frank Sampson
Kipe and Associates, Inc.
http://www.kipeassoc.com

We received $50 from Frank, today via PayPal.

It has been a long-standing rule here at IT Conversations that we don’t conduct interviews over Skype, but recent improvements in Skype as well as additional experience has caused us to revisit that restriction. I’ll be publishing more detailed guidelines shortly, but here’s a summary:

• Record on an external device, not the same computer running Skype.
• Record the two sides of the conversation on separate tracks, then mix them in post-production. This allows you to match the levels and equalization and to eliminate single-track noise with gates.
• Shutdown all other applications on the computer running Skype. The worst offenders are those that use network resources such as email and IM clients, but anything that can take resources from Skype must be halted.
• Have exclusive access to a broadband connection. Another computer or a VOIP phone using the connection can adversely affect the quality.
• Use a standard cardioid microphone, not the noise-canceling type that are part of most headsets.

The figure below illustrates a hardware configuration that works quite well.

• The mixer can be an inexpensive one such as the Behringer UB502 ($35 street price) .
• The pan pots on the mixer are set such that the microphone signal is fed only to the mixer’s left output while the PC’s audio output (audio from the remote speaker) is fed only to the right channel.
• Only the left channel from the mixer (with only your mic’s signal) is fed to the computer’s line input.
• Yes, you need a line input, not a mic input, on the computer.
• Your voice will be recorded on the left track, and the other person will be recorded on the right.
• Likewise, you’ll hear yourself in your left ear and the other person in the right.
• As always, the headphones are connected as late as possible in the audio chain in order to detect as many problems as possible.

Note that this may work well using SkypeOut, which would allow you to conduct interviews with non-Skype users that sound as good as if you have an $800 telephone hybrid. I haven’t tested this to a great extent, so let me know how well it works for you.

Update: Here’s another variation.

Rob Walch interviewed me for the latest edition of Podcast 411. (mp3)

I’m starting to write the specifications for the new project’s software. We’ve got some interesting things to build:

1. a specialized content-management system
2. a show-assembly system that combines audio files according to scripts
3. content-distribution interfaces (our CDN, BitTorrent, Internet Archive, etc.)
4. a membership-management system
5. extensive ratings, reputation and personalization features
6. event/engineer matching system

I plan to build most (if not all) of this in PHP, based to some extent on the existing code written by yours truly. Almost everything will be open source, and I hope to send out the word for interested developers within a month.

But in the meantime, I need advice from one or two people who have built successful large-scale projects in PHP. I wouldn’t call what I’ve written to date spaghetti code, but I’m sure I didn’t organize it the best way. For example, here are some questions I have:

1. What’s the right way to organize source files in terms of common/include files for parameters, common functions, etc?
2. What’s the best way to manage database connections? My current code sometimes opens and closes the database multiple times per page rendered because of the moudularity of the source files.
3. Can you provide a link to an open-source PHP project that you think is well organized and architected? I’d like to read some source code to look for best practices.

At this point, it would be great just to get #3: some links to well-designed code. But if you’re interested in doing more, just send me a message. (doug@rds.com)