(Hear the MP3 version in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating. For descriptions, visit the IT Conversations home page.

• Sound Policy: Corporate Blogging (rated 2.8 by listeners)
• The Architecture of Participation (3.0)
• Tom Igoe – Networked Objects at ITP (3.3)
• Rebecca Goldstein – Tech Nation (3.5)
• Gordon Moore – Moore’s Law, 40 Years Later (3.6)
• Jonathan Schwartz – The Participation Age (3.7)
• Keith Devlin – Tech Nation (3.8)

This week’s Doug’s Favorite from the IT Conversations archives:

• R0ml Lefkowitz: (More) Missing Open Source Projects (3.4)

I’ve previously ranted about the use of MP3 for anything but final delivery, and here at IT Conversations, Team ITC has been experimenting with the best codec to use for exchanging in-progress audio files. Under consideration have been:

1. MPEG-1 Lauer III (MP3, at 192kbps or 256kbps)
2. MPEG-1 Layer II
3. MPEG-2
4. FLAC (lossless)

We’ve been using MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) based on my own empirical tests in which I encoded a WAV/PCM original using one of the above, then decoded and re-encoded using MP3 for release. Using MP3 (even hi-res) causes annoying artifacts when decoded/re-encoded. FLAC doesn’t offer much compression, although the audio is perfect. MPEG-2 has a boatload of options, and the ones I tested weren’t any better than hi-res MP3. (I didn’t test them all.)

I then went out and got some advice fom the real experts in public radio. Here are some excerpts from their comments. Stephen Hill wrote:

The quick answer is MP2…[When] the MPEG 1 spec was designed, precisely the problems you are facing were addressed. The solution was a 3 tier system for origination, production, and release formats, which correspond to Layers 1, 2 and 3. Layer 2 is an intermediate production format specifically designed to limit artifacts when re-encoded or transcoded into the final Level 3 release format. You are correct that NPR standardized on MPEG-1 Layer II at 128kbps (mono) or 256kbps (stereo) some ten years ago, and continues to use them today. The latest distribution architecture which they call the ContentDepot, is built on this. You can see the details at http://www.prss.org.

Steve Schultze of prx.org had this to say:

Basically MP2 survives much better than other codecs when reencoded. In codec-greek MP2 is recommended for “contribution (i.e. link between broadcasting studios with provisions for post processing)” vs. MP3 which is only recommended for “commentary links, i.e. a link for speech signals which are transmitted to the broadcasting station using e.g. one B-channel of an ISDN line.” Read about it here if you’re so inclined.

NPR came to the same conclusion: “Now NPR does not accept audio feeds in MP3 format, because employing this algorithm can lead to degraded audio in fewer generations than does high-bit rate MPEG Layer II.”

For PRX we chose MP2 at 128kbps mono / 256 stereo because it can be used fairly reliably for re-encoding later, is 1/5 the size of an uncompressed WAV, and it is the NPR standard. We generate Real and MP3 files from these MP2s and will likely create Windows Media, AAC and others in the future. Our producers would not have been able to reliably upload hour long WAVs (~600mb) even on broadband connections.

FLAC is non-lossy and is about %60 the size of the WAV, so that’s an option worth considering. However…MP2 would make it easier to get into the radio broadcast chain. Also, FLAC is less widely supported in sound editing software (MP2 *should* work in anything that supports MP3s although that’s not always true) and MP2s can be played in iTunes etc for convenience. MP2s at 256kbps are also still ~half the size of FLAC. If you settle on MP2 then you could give your producers/engineers our mp2 encoder which is drag-and drop with no settings, meaning that everyone is using the same standard.

MPEG 2 frankly still confuses the heck out of me because of the varied video/audio layers and settings.

For our purposes, it ultimately made sense to go with MPEG-1 Layer II as our “archive” and “interchange” format. It sounds like one of the better options for you.

Via one of the podcast email lists I found out about Podscope, a very cool site that searches the audio content of podcasts. Hey…I’m not kidding. It’s pretty cool. Check out this link for China, then click on the + sign to the left of Oded Shenkar: Tech Nation. David Seltzer is the Systems Architect at TVEyes, the company whose technology is behind the scenes.

I was visiting Evan, Noah and the Odeo team this afternoon, and we kicked it around a bit. Evan did some further investigations and explains it well.

Last Friday I had the privilege of being a guest on the Charlotte Talks radio program on WFAE with Mike Collins. The show was about blogs and podcasting. Also on the show were Steve Rubel and Haney Howell from Winthrop University. You can listen to the show. (Windows Media Player required.)

Thanks to an invitation and ticket from Niall Kennedy of Technorati, I’m going to hear Ira Glass speak in Redwood City, CA, on Friday night. If anyone else wants to go and join us for dinner beore the show, just get in touch with either of us.

This week is the launch of a new series here on IT Conversations: Larry’s World featuring Larry Magid. A syndicated technology columnist and broadcaster for more than two decades, Larry contributes to CBS News, the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report and other publications. Larry’s World will be published on Mondays, and you won’t want to miss the official premiere edition this Monday, when Larry interviews Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel. Gordon invented “Moore’s Law,” which is now 40 years old. And it hasn’t been repealed yet.

Thanks to Kevin Werbach, the founder of the event, we’re thrilled to be bringing you the terrific Supernova event this year. It will be held in San Francisco, June 20-22, and our coverage will begin 1-2 weeks later. Don’t miss our coverage of Supernova 2004 in the IT Conversations archives.

Yesterday I posted some 1Q2005 stats from IT Conversations. Here are a few more. First is the count of pageviews.

I’ve been telling people that the number of pageviews has been fairly flat due to the relative increase of those who retrieve audio files via RSS and never visit the site. Guess I was wrong! The number of pageviews during March 2005 was 330,405 or an average of 10,658 per day.

Next is the total number of Equivalent Complete Listens (ECLs).

Equivalent Complete Listens are something I created as a way to report downloads. It’s probably more conservative than most podcasters would like to emply. Most of they techniques others use to count listens result in substantial inflation of results, in my opinion. ECLs are derived from the total number of bytes of downloads (audio only, of course) each month divided by the average size of the programs published in that month. For example:

In March 2005, IT Conversations had 4,485GB total audio downloads, divided by 17.22MB average per program yielding 260,453 equivalent full listens per month (8,402 per day).

New programs are listened to more frequently than older programs, which are not featured on our home page or in our RSS feeds, so we estimate the average number of listens to a new program to be approximately 10,000.

Here’s a summary for the month of March 2005:

• Registered users: 8,812 (up 96% in three months)
• Audio delivered: 4.485TB (up 85%)
• Listens: 260,453 (up 85%)
• Pageviews: 330,405 (up62%)

(Hear the MP3 version in beautiful stereo.)

New Programs This Week

(in increasing order of listener rating)

• Geoffrey Moore (rated 3.1 by listeners). In this keynote address from the Software 2004 conference, Geoffrey Moore (author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado) considers what might happen to the software industry over the next decade. He looks particularly at what the big, established players might or should do, and how that will affect them and the smaller companies as well.
• Daren Tsui – Mspot (3.1). First there was AM, then FM, satellite radio, streaming on the Internet, podcasting and now Mspot, a small California startup offering audio over cellphone networks. Larry Magid interviews Daren Tsui, the CEO of Mspot, that now offers 13 channels (eight of them for music) of streamed and on-demand audio for mobile phones.
• Real Money in Virtual Economies (3.2). This debate will clue you in to one of the most interesting developments most of us haven’t yet heard of: virtual property markets and their intellectual property issues. The participants make legal, dollar, behavioral, and design forecasts for the virtual property markets within massively multi-player games, debating the practice from seller and designer viewpoints, and business vs. gaming intentions. From Accelerating Change 2004.
• James Stewart (3.2). On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn interviews James Stewart, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of “Den of Thieves.” His latest endeavors have been a look inside the wonderful world of “Corporate Disney.”
• Rael Dornfest (3.3). Some would argue that the learned professional dominated the 20th century, whereas, in the 21st century it appears that a paradigm shift is poised and ready. In an age where knowledge, information, and global communication are at the fingertips of almost anyone, the amateur enthusiast, the “citizen engineer”, has the ability to make an impact on the economy and society, to remix culture. Rael Dornfest kicks off O’Reilly Media’s Emerging Technology Conference.
• Neil Gershenfeld – Bits and Atoms (3.6). Imagine a future where personal fabricators allow each of us to make almost anything. Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms — yes, there really is such a thing — explains how personal fabricators will revolutionize our world as PCs did a generation ago by enabling us to design and make the tools and products we want in our own homes. A panel of experts then considers the implications of personal fabrication. From ETech 2005.
• Elizabeth George (3.6). Moira Gunn also speaks with Elizabeth George, the best selling author of over a dozen Inspector Lynley mysteries. You’ve seen them on television on PBS’ Mystery, and you will never guess where she gets her forensic science.
• Malcolm Gladwell at SXSW (4.0). He’s back! An all-time IT Conversations favorite and author ot The Tipping Point and Blink, Malcolm Gladwell kicks off our coverage of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. In this keynote address, he discusses how we interact with our environment and make instantaneous decisions based on a multitude of information sources, some of which may actually be driving us awry.

Doug’s Favorites from the Archives

• Clayton Christensen: Capturing the Upside (4.3). The author of The Innovator’s Dilemma says many managers are unable to predict whether an innovation will succeed, so they place multiple bets with the hope that some will be winners. Others try to identify opportunities and develop a rigorous plan to attack those opportunities. But conclusive data is often only available after the game has already been won. Professor Christensen suggests using theory instead. Every action a manager takes, every plan a manager makes is based on some belief of cause and effect.