Jobs and Gates: Cats and dogs livin' together

Last night Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat on the same stage together and had a virtual love-in over their competing product lines... full coverage here... nothing earth-shattering to report, however. Earlier in the day Jobs revealed that the Apple TV will soon sport a new source of content... some fly by night operation called YouTube. Yeah, like THAT'LL work...

(sarcasm off)

Hooking up with Google for the iPhone seems to be paying off in other ways... YouTube, as you may recall is owned by Google. This new option gives every Apple TV owner a whole new universe of content... some good, some not. It also firmly entrenches the video podcaster as a major contributor to Apple TV entertainment since many (if not most) video podcasts have a home on YouTube as well. Ninjas and Tiki Bars for everyone!

iTunes revamped

Apple is launching a tweaked version of iTunes today (version 7.2)... it doesn't appear to contain any upgrades or changes to the podcasting platform, but since it is by far the most used podcatcher out there, it's good to know there's some changes coming down the pike! Apple says the main feature in iTunes 7.2 is the ability to buy the new DRM-free tracks from the iTunes Music Store... that's worth the upgrade for a lot of people! If you're interested in seeking out those unlocked MP3s in the store, check out the how-to guide from MacUser.

Podshow adds Dvorak

Podshow has added on "controversial" John C. Dvorak to its tech podcast lineup. I say controversial because I think he decided long ago to try to tick off every Mac owner in everything he says or does. Fine by me... it gets him mad coverage. Of course it makes him the butt of a lot of flack (mixed metaphor?), particularly from Valleywag. It feels like Podshow is the network that's easy to rag on... perhaps as far back as the big contract revelation on Keith and the Girl. It continued when they had the strange notion that having their own unconference during last year's Podcast Expo would be a good idea for community relations... it didn't. In fact it backfired. We'll see if adding Dvorak will add numbers through the tried and true method of adding a "controversial" podcaster to the mix...

Apple: Don't Buy Audiobooks from iTunes

Ok, file this one under, "weird." Apparently a bunch of recent audiobooks sold in the iTunes Music Store play just great in iTunes, but refuse to play on iPods. It's come to the point that Apple has reportedly recommended that iPod owners not purchase any additional audiobooks from Apple's own iTunes Music Store! If only Microsoft would say the same thing about not buying the Zune, then maybe we'd all sleep better...

Apparently the snafu is a result of something that Apple's audiobook partner Audible has in these new versions. One of the books is Al Gore's newest, The Assault on Reason. Since we know Steve Jobs is a big Al Gore fan, we know he can't be behind the sabotage. Maybe the culprit is a pro-Obama coder over at Audible? Hmmmm... stranger things have happened...

Podcasts in education

I was chatting with someone over this beatuful holiday weekend (Happy Memorial Day, to one and all in the US!) about the wide application of podcasts for businesses and public interest groups. It's alos exciting to see how much podcasting can be used by universities... check out this article originally published in the Bergen County Record... the content out there is amazing.

Upgrade your passwords

Not sure how many of you are Linkin Park fans, but a member of the band just had a nasty run-in with someone who figured out his too-easy-to-figure-out password. Read more about it here. Word to the wise... make your passwords extra tricky to figure out. Forget birthdays and names of kids... forget using your middle name... use a combination of letters and numbers, upper and lower case.

If you want to test out the relative strength of a prospective password, a lot of companies have integrated in tools to help you out when you sign up for their services (Gmail comes to mind). You can also try online helpers like securitystats.com's password strength meter. Whatever you do, make your sensative data and email accounts a little safer!

On the move...

I know, I know... you just got used to the new digs here, but the podcast and tech blog is going to be moving to be a part of the newly launched Nineball Media website! If you've got us bookmarked, no worries... the autoforwards are cranked up and ready to go. Check out the new blog address at nineballmedia.com/blog.

Congrats to Keith & the Girl

Congratulations to Keith and the Girl for 500 episodes... an hour a day 5 days a week over the past 2 + years shows remarkable consistency and dedication to podcasting. To Keith, Chemda, and all the fans... I say "Brumski."

Podcast gear for beginners

A lot of people ask me what kind of investment is needed to start a podcast... if you already own a computer and have an Internet connection, the answer is "anywhere from $0 to $10 on the low end." The great part about modern computers, whether you run a PC, a Mac or even a Linux box, is that they can handle almost all of the audio recording and editing you need for a basic show. Check out Todd Cochrane's excellent rundown from Podcasting: The Do It Yourself Guide for some of the great free and low cost software options for the beginner. If you have a built in microphone, a free recorder and editing program like Audacity plus a free FTP program to transfer your shows up to a server will make you a podcaster for no additonal investment. No microphone? For beginners, I suggest starting with a low-cost ($10 or so) USB microphone, then advancing to a better microphone later on.

For those of you interested in an advanced set up, remember that most podcasts are so compressed that getting a super high end set of gear is probably not going to make much difference in the audio quality of your show. For most people, spending about $250 is about as much as you need to get the gear for a high quality, professional sound. More on that in future posts!

Google rumored to buy Feedburner

Valleywag has posted a rumor that Google may be buying Feedburner for about $100 mil. Interesting news for podcasters and bloggers alike since Feedburner is probably the easiest way to create RSS feeds out there. I think it's good news from a podcasting perspective, so long as Google leaves Feedburner's ease of use alone. Hopefully, if this is true, the transition will be smooth...

Podcast numbers

Wizzard Media just released some interesting numbers that have been fun to play with... Wizzard owns some of the bigger podcast hosts, including Libsyn, so they probably have a decent sample size. They report:

[I]n the month of April across the entire network of shows, we fulfilled over 83 million download requests for audio and video files. The system logged and processed well over 100 million downloads in total; however we filter out image downloads and other files that aren’t MP3, MP4, M4V, MOV, WMV, AAC, M4b, FLV and AVI files.

So, that's a pretty huge number. Rob Walch at Podcast 411 did some number crunching, and he estimates that this data translates to roughly 10 million podcast consumers. Now, compared to TV and terrestrial radio, that's small potatoes, but considering that this a medium that hit mainstream accessibility sometime within the last two years, it's pretty impressive.

One other piece of cool information from the Wizzard post... the top ten cities where they are delivering podcasts. Notice it's not just the top 10 cities in terms of population here in the US... Sacramento at #2!

• New York
• Sacramento
• Los Angeles
• Washington DC
• Atlanta
• Chicago
• Minneapolis-St. Paul
• San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
• Philadelphia
• Louisville
• Salt Lake City

Paid video downloads soon to go extinct?

A new report from Forrester Research says that pay per view downloads are soon to go the way of the do-do, replaced by ad-supported videos. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people who prefer to wait to watch a show like Heroes online at NBC.com or Veronica Mars on the CW's website rather than pay $1.99 for an ad-free (and higer resolution/sized) version through iTunes Music Store. Still, I think it's premature to signal the end of pay-to-own videos... the Forrester report is $775, so I'm going to go ahead and pass on buying and reading it cover to cover. Maybe they need an ad-supported version? Hmmmm...

What does this spell for video podcasters? It's not clear, to be honest... podcasters seem to find more success monetizing their shows through merchandise and ad revenue rather than through "premium" feeds anyways, but that may change. To be continued...

U.S. Blogging Laws

Great stuff on blogger law from Aviva Directory... hat tip to Politics and Technology for the pointer. Topics covered include:

* Whether to Disclose Paid Posts
* Is Deep Linking Legal?
* The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails
* Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content
* Domain Name Trademark Issues
* Handling Private Data About Your Readers
* Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
* The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
* Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
* Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
* Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
* Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws

Microsoft drops its Portable Media Center

File this under, "this just in... sky: blue, water: wet." When MS announced the Zune I was surprised they decided to keep on the venerable Portable Media Center. Welllll, it's over. Hasta la vista baby. Maybe they needed to sell a few more out of the warehouse before pulling the plug? How'd you feel if you were the last person to buy one of these? Probably a lot like the last guy to buy a Newton (that would be me... ouch).

Portland bound

I'll be in Portland for a week on business so blogging might be a bit lighter than normal... enjoy the weekend!

podcasts streaming to your cell phone

Leave it to the Europeans and their mobile phone systems... streaming podcasts. More evidence that this is the future. If I were a betting kind of guy, I'd put my money on this type of technology outpacing satellite radio, with the possible (narrow) exception of rural communities that cannot get mobile reception.

Sirius and Podshow divorce

So satellite radio will no longer broadcast a select number of podcasts. This news broke a few days ago, but I honestly don't think it demonstrates much other than Sirius and Podshow decided that the experiment was over. Does this mean podcasting is waning? I doubt it... I have to question the original premise... content that has a major feature of being freely available 24/7 on the Internet via an RSS feed, and playable on demand was also being featured in particular time slots via a subscription service that required additional equipment. Hmmm. Wonder why that didn't take off? Siriusly (heh)... I have to believe most listeners were shifting towards the on-demand content rather than waiting with bated breath for the next episode of Dawn and Drew to come through the satellites. Why wait? If you had a satellite radio, I'm guessing you had access to a podcatcher and a computer.

Let's also face it... the shows that were featured on Sirius may have been too niche for a broader audience, as some have suggested. Bottom line... the satellite market probably is not the next logical place for podcasting growth. If podcasters are looking for over the air distribution, the best bet may be the continuing conversion of mobile phones with MP3 players.

Ahhhh, yeah... I believe that's a semi-unintentional iPhone reference. I keep thinking that faster data transfer, plus vast networks, plus great players means effortless wireless delivery. There are (bad) methods where this works now, but I think the days of needing a computer to sync a podcast to a player may seem quaint in the not so distant future. And the (failed?) Sirius-Podshow experiment will be a distant memory then as well.