The limits of podsafe music

I've been working on a project for a client who is looking to directly monetize her audio content (that's fancy talk for selling those mp3s), and we're running smack into a dilemma that faces anyone who wants to do the same thing... if you just give away your podcasts, there are several very good sources for free, licensed podsafe music. I happen to like the variety of IODA Promonet and Podsafe Music Network (although the latter needs a serious user interface revamp). If you dig into the licenses for both, the second your show has a commercial hook (fancy talk for, you make money off of the podcast), then you are either out of the licensing agreement, or you owe someone some money.

Now, this makes perfect sense... if you are able to capitalize on a product and use these artist's music, they have a hand in the money you are making. Some artists may see their exposure as enough renumeration... in many cases it could be pretty valuable. However, for the here and now be mindful that selling your podcasts has a consequence... you're going to have to find truly royalty-free music, get proficient with Garageband, or negotiate a license deal with your favorite artist.

Who knew we'd be getting into intellectual property law when we got into this? Luckily, there's Collette Vogele's excellent podcast and guide to help out beginners who aren't blessed with an IP background...

KATG making waves

Our favorite podcast rebels are at it again... Keith Malley of Keith & The Girl bought thesimpsonsmovie.com in 1999 and was recently forced by the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization to hand over the domain name for the Simpsons movie opening today. Although his loss was total and complete, Keith has parlayed the story (and his investment) into massive exposure for the podcast in the mainstream media (like this, this, this, and this). Sure, he's often referred to as a cybersquatter and other less desirable names, but I think Keith can handle it.

In other KATG news, it looks like their brief hosting experiment with TalkShoe is over. In a recent show discussing the split (Show 541), there was an almost Festivus-like airing of grievances. Needless to say, that didn't end well for TalkShoe. KATG is moving hosting to Wizzard Media... a major upside to the switch is that listeners no longer have to hear the truly annoying pre-roll ads anymore. Coming to Wizzard is a bit like coming home for KATG... the show had been hosted for years by LibSyn, which was acquired by Wizzard in March.

New Apple podcast app

Interesting developments in the podcasting world of Apple... the next operating system - OS 10.5 Leopard - has a new application suite called Podcast Producer. Apple describes it as, "a complete, end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing high-quality podcasts.” What is interesting is that this app is being developed for the server version of OS 10.5, not the version that runs on most Macs. The Apple Blog has more here... will Apple be moving this into a new iLife app and out of Garageband eventually? If they keep Podcast Producer with the OS X Server I probably wouldn't recommend the cost for it, but if it ends up on Leopard for non-server Macs, it looks like it might be a nice upgrade from Garageband. No matter what, unless you're a developer, nobody can get their hands on this until Leopard is released in October...

Ditching MS Office

A lot of people are getting tired of shelling out hundreds of dollars to Microsoft so that they can use Word, Excel and (sometimes) PowerPoint. But, most of them are loathe to do otherwise, since it seems that these programs are essential if you want to interact with others in the business world. Well, the times they are a changing. What if you could read and write all of the MS Office docs but pay... nothing.

Enter the world of open source projects OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Both of these projects (Mac and PC for the former, Mac only for the latter) offer complete compatibility, open source codes that are constantly improved, and a whole lot more... for free.

Sometimes you get what you pay for, but in this case, I've found these open source options to be a nice alternative. If your budget for a new computer is off by a few hundred dollars because you are factoring in the purchase of the latest MS Office suite, consider going open source and replacing MS Office.

Compliments

The first thing I'm asked when I arrive in Portland was about the compliment machine in DC. Apparently it's better known outside of the District than in it. Even our good friend Fake Steve Jobs is on top of the situation, since the guts are made of an iPod nano....

iPhone review

There have been a ton of iPhone reviews, but none as balanced and as well-written as this one at Information Week. I'd recommend it for anyone considering the big leap.

I'm off to Nineball Portland today... should be a good week of work mixed with a little fun (a little birdie tells me the Oregon Brewfest begins this week...)

Kapow... another revised look

I'm finding that upgrading the look and usability of the Nineball Media website has addictive properties. However, after this rev, I'm thinking we might have a little more stability. You'll notice that the blog and the rest of the site finally has total synergy. Better yet, the rest of the site has additional content and description of services. Since the bulk of Nineball Media's work revolves around audio, it was high time we got some of that integrated into the site!

The future of high speed internet?

A Swedish woman has a pretty decent broadband connection. It's so fast, she can reportedly download a full-length movie in less than 2 seconds. If this is for real, and broadband speeds keep ratcheting up (and are made available to the general public for a reasonable price), the variety of on-demand media will be staggering. On top of that, consider all current forms of communication... TV, radio, telephone, etc. ... will pretty much get swamped by a data-driven replacement.

I'm still waiting for those flying cars though...

iPhone: still finding new gems

Friday marks the two week-aversary of having the iPhone... what's remarkable is that I'm finding new features and uses for it every day. Yesterday I discovered that the maps function is also a handy wifi locator... simply plug in "wifi" plus an address, city or zip code (like 20009 wifi) and the little beastie tells you the closest sources for free wireless internet access. What a treat for the mobile tech guy. Should come in handy next week when I'll be roaming about while working in the Nineball Portland office...

A little wake-me-up

This caught my eye on The Apple Blog... cool image. Considering I'm on my second cup of coffee today, perhaps that makes sense. Kudos to Phil Dokas...

New podcaster association

There's enough podcasters now... we have a union. Or a trade group. Or something. The Association for Downloadable Media has the following mission statement:

To provide leadership in and organization of advertising and audience measurement standards, research, education and advocacy to all those involved in portable media (Podcasts/ATOM/RSS media enclosures) across the Internet, iPods, MP3 players, mobile devices, P2P and other upcoming platforms.

So, now that that's clear... on to membership. Corporations pay $1000 per year and individuals pay $150 per year. No benefits are mentioned, but that doesn't mean there are some on the horizon.

I've been doing work with nonprofits, including trade associations, for the better part of the last decade. Some are effective, but some are not. I think there are certainly some important heavy hitters involved here (including a few I respect quite a bit), but I think the jury's still out until we see some substantive work from the group.

Shocking news: iPod + thunderstorm = bad

The New England Journal of Medicine published a report this week from three Vancouver, BC doctors concluding that being struck by lightning with an iPod on is extra bad because the current travels through the wires and into your ears. Read the medicial mumbojumbo here.

Here's my thought... if you're struck by lightning, the more immediate problem is that you've been struck by friggin' lightning. I'm guessing the 3rd degree burns are going to happen no matter what, right? Word to the wise... if you're the tallest thing in an area hit by a big thunderstorm, stop being the tallest thing in the area. USA Today has this tip... and I publish it here because it seems utterly implausible to help, and is therefore very funny:

If you begin to feel your hair stand on end, this indicates lightning is about to strike. You should drop to your knees and bend forward placing your hands on your knees and crouch down. Do not lie flat on the ground, this will only make you a larger target.

I'm wondering if Microsoft will take advantage of all of this and make the Zune out of totally nonconductive material. Hmm. Someone get Redmond on the phone!

Photo credit: gurneyh on Flickr

Mixer tip

For those of you with a slightly more advanced set-up (i.e. a mixer and a condenser mic, perhaps), sound checks are a must before you record. When I bought my first mixer, I was totally perplexed by the multiple buttons and knobs and what they did... I just played with them until the levels sounded right. It took me a while before I discovered how wrong that was... for you newbies, here's a tip:

On most mixers, you have two knobs or sliders that control the levels on the channel... the gain, and the fader. In almost all circumstances, you should set the fader to zero or U (depending on the brand of mixer... it's usually smack in the middle) and adjust the sound levels with the gain. Why? The fader at zero or U is optimized for that channel...in other words, your mic will sound a LOT better if you keep it there. Many new podcasters will treat the gain and the fader to serve the same function. In some ways they do, but if you value a better sounding signal, keep the fader firmly on zero, and use the gain for the leveling... you'll notice the difference!

iTunes podcast submissions back up?

I got a comment on the blog this morning saying that the iTunes submissions are still down... Apple seems to say that they're back up according to their high tech system of "if this post is down, then submissions are back up," because the post has been taken down. Looks like the link to submit within the iTunes Music Store is working... If that's still a no go, the best advice I can give is make sure your RSS feed is properly validated and keep trying! I've got a semi-contact with Cupertino, so I'll check in and see what he's got.

Podcasts on the iPhone

Welllll, sorta. It turns out that the iPhone can stream mp3s through its Safari browser just like any other desktop computer. Not really a podcast per se, but it' a step closer to that dream of wireless podcast access (still hoping that either Apple adds a podcatching to iTunes on the phone).

Rob at Podcast411 has gone a step further by promoting the handy little graphic above that one can use to directly link to an mp3 file. It looks sort of awkward, but it shows up great on the iPhone screen. That makes it easier for your iPhone-enabled listeners to tap and listen with less effort. Now... is it worth it? Maybe... there's about 1 million iPhones "in the wild" right now, and I suspect there are a disproportionate number of podcast listeners in that early adopting crowd. They need content... and your podcast can provide it.

Feel free to copy the graphic above if you're interested in using it for your show. The sample mp3 linked above is the most recent edition of the Nonprofit Law Podcast.

WiFi is now everywhere

A perfect story for a Friday...

Researchers in Massachusetts are now studying endangered snapping turtles by hooking them up with wifi... on their backs. Apparently, they collect data while they swim about and interract with each other. Once a turtle with the wifi backpack gets close enough to a data center (presumably on a beach), the whole set is amassed by tech savvy researchers who are probably sitting in a Hyanisport bar tossing back some coldies all in the name of science. Genius.

Off to NYC this afternoon... west coast people, check out the new contact info for Nineball Media Portland!

Feedburner makes pro services free

This was a bit of welcome news for any podcaster using Feedburner for their RSS feeds... Total Stats Pro and MyBrand are now free. Here's how Feedburner describes these two services:

FeedBurner Stats PRO
PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the "Item Views" checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand
The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the "My Account" tab after you've signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website's domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the "My Account" link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click "MyBrand". Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you'll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

I use Feedburner for the Nonprofit Law Podcast and suggest it for other clients if they have hosting covered. Total Stats Pro is a nice add-on... The MyBrand option is very cool... it keeps your RSS feed "in house" (under your own domain name instead of feedburner.com), which is a really nice feature. Try it out!

iTunes podcast submissions are down

Apple's not able to process new podcast requests for iTunes for the time-being. Check out the message here. Once it goes away, apparently, that will mean the problem's fixed.

UPDATE - Thursday July 5th - iTunes is still down for new submissions. This is rather surprising... I expected this to get fixed sooner rather than later. I suspect some people in Cupertino got their Independence Day holiday after all... or this problem is bigger than one would think.

UPDATE - Monday July 9th, 7 PM EDT - it looks like submissions are back up, but given the comment from this morning, it might be spotty.

Alright... ONE more iPhone post

Fake Steve Jobs brings you this... the Amish are buying the iPhone. I recently watched an interesting documentary called The Devil's Playground, so I know the Amish use cell phones now (but not cars... as much as I learned about the Amish, I'm confused on that point). In any event... the iPhone is definitely a crossover product, if it wasn't before.

Of course this begs the question... is this guy a Mac or PC user? Hmmm.

UPDATE: It occurs to me, based on my lessons from The Devil's Playground, that this is not an Amish couple. Once a man gets married in Amish culture, he grows a beard. I suppose this guy's potentially not married, but I'm thinking they may be rockin' Amish-like attire, but they, in fact, may not be Amish. That's the LAST time I rely on Fake Steve Jobs on Amish culture...

iPhatigue

The iPhone's awesome... only real complaints are (a) the camera's a bit lame, and (b) the calendar doesn't have multiple calendar support (everything gets merged together from iCal) and no tasks. Methinks Apple will solve the latter. As far as the former... well, my Treo camera wasn't exactly killer, so it's no loss. Everything else pretty much blows me away... the screen is ridiculously bright and sharp... the wifi hookups are seamless... it's pretty amazing.

Podcast listening is awesome... I was listening to Meet The Press while watering the garden and took a phone call from my girlfriend. The audio ducked out for the ring... I took the call, and as soon as I was done, the audio ducked back in right where I left off. I may never take these earbuds off again...

There's been a lot online about troubles activating the iPhone. Frankly, I suspect that was more because we all rushed home about the same time and flooded AT&T's activation system. Sounds like new numbers registered and activated pretty quickly... number transfers like mine went a bit slower... and you whacky types that shifted from business plans to person and family plans were fools to begin with to think it would be a pain-free transition. (With all due respect... this is AT&T we're talking about.)

That all being said... I think we're tiring of the hype. None of us had to stand in line, it turned out, and iPhatigue has set in. Maybe enough is enough. I'm gonna go watch Season 3 of Arrested Development now... I won't tell you how.