Bob Stepno: Boblog Podcast

Video blogs IN the Times; Podcasts FROM the Times...

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 17:15:00 GMT

Now that everyone but me has DSL at home, video weblogs are probably going to take off the way audio podcasts did earlier this year. (OK, so Apple's video iPod might have something to do with it, too.)

Sunday's New York Times has Amanda Congdon's name up in caps, featuring her and Rocketboom.com under the headline, TV Stardom on $20 a Day. That's a reference to both Rocketboom's being featured in Apple's video iPod introduction and its cutting a deal with TiVo... So now Amanda (and presumably Rocketboom correspondents like Steve Garfield) will reach audiences who prefer their video on a bigger screen with a remote control. That combination is something fans of TiVo have been talking about hacking together for months.

Sidebar: If you haven't seen them yet, here are Rocketboom's "about" page, and Amanda's informative intro to blogs and vlogs. Also, Steve Garfield was showing how to do this "video podcast" stuff a year before Apple got into the act.

Meanwhile, I just noticed that the Times website has started offering its own podcasts: A "come into the tent" sample is free, but most of the audio is part of the "Times Select" subscription service. "Every Monday, an audio version of one Op-Ed column will be podcast for free," the Times says, but you apparently won't have Maureen Dowd herself whispering sweet nothings into your ear -- professional announcers are recording the columns through a Times deal with Audible.com.

There's also evidence that the Times is "getting clueful about blogging, sort of,"as Corante's Stowe Boyd put it. See the L.A. Observer story with a Times memo on the topic, and "Carpetbagger," the Times movie- related blog, complete with bloggish features like an RSS feed and comment links.

By the way, like the rest of us, the Times still has trouble sometimes keeping up with changes in the technology scene: One of the Times's links on its podcast page, labelled "ipodder (PC)," goes to the "million-seller" (free, donations accepted) project that started under that name and adopted a lemon as its icon last year... until a computer company with another fruit for its name apparently started telling podcast-software developers to find names less like its iPod trademark. The lemon group chose "Juice" (short for Juice Receiver).

The parenthetical "PC" in the Times is wrong, too. From the beginning, there has been a Macintosh version as well as a Windows version... and a "GNU/Linux Soon" sign. In fact, every program mentioned here is available for both Mac and Windows.

Another Mac-and-Windows podcast collector, iPodderX, is having a contest to find itself a new name. "Exaggerator" might be a good one, since it claims to be "the world's very first Media Aggregator." Thousands of us were able to collect "podcast" style media files with Radio Userland (which we use to write our blogs and aggregate RSS feeds) for a couple of years before podcasting got its name, as my pod/vlog history page explains in ridiculous detail. (Unlike the Wikipedia podcasting page, which I've also contributed to, I'm the only one responsible for mistakes on my own page -- and I'll fix any you tell me about.)

The first podcast receivers were simple scripts that dragged the media files from Radio's in-basket into iTunes, to be played or loaded on an iPod. Earlier this year, Apple added aggregating ability to iTunes itself, but all of these "middleman" applications are hardly obsolete. They don't have the commercial distractions of Apple's iTunes Music Store, and they are adding features left and right to compete. Fireant, on the other hand, focused on being an aggregator for video feeds before Apple got into that business.

I still love the fact that the "ANT" in its name stands for "Ant is Not TV," even if the Fireant developers' friends at Rocketboom are being seen on old-fashioned TV via TiVo now... thanks to that deal that caught the attention of the Times... which neatly puts this blog entry back where it started.

Podcastercon (and ONAcon) alert

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 17:37:18 GMT

There's a Podcastercon conference brewing for January in Chapel Hill, and it has just collected a substantial donation to help with expenses.

Thanks to Paul Jones for the event reminder... and to whoever decided on a between-semesters date -- when I might even be able to get there, unlike the last half dozen conferences I've wanted to attend (including the Nashville bloggercon, annoyingly timed for my end-of-semester madness last year and the Online News Association's annual conference next week in New York).

Talk about using the technology: The Podcastercon site is accepting donations via PayPal and plans to share event planning meetings with, of course, a blog and podcast.

Meanwhile, if I haven't mentioned it, WUOT has made about a dozen podcasts so far, and has been talking about them quite a bit during fund-raising week. Mark Harmon's podcast has recovered from some feed problems. And mine has degenerated into a text-only blog sub-category until I find time to record some episodes.

News radio (or TV audio) from the Web via podcast

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:41:26 GMT

Podcasting pioneer Dave Winer posted a note in his weblog the other day asking whether any broadcasters were offering daily news programs as subscribable audio feeds on the Web (you know, "podcasts").

Weekly features and opinion programs are still more common, but I've been listening to some daily news podcasts too... so I dug up a few more and added their addresses to his comments page.

(Here are Dave's post and my response.)

I added even more to that page later, including some info from other folks who responded to Dave's request, then organized it a little better for a class discussion. (For now, the URLs are still visible on this page, but I may neaten this up later.) Here's the result:

TV's PBS Newshour has an audio podcast: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/index.html

So does MSNBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams: http://podcast.msnbc.com/audio/podcast/MSNBC-Nightly.xml
and I see at least one other daily program on MSNBC's podcast list:
http://podcast.msnbc.com/audio/podcast/

CNN's podcast links are here, including its hourly news update: http://www.cnn.com/services/podcasting/

Fox Broadcasting is even calling some of its podcasts "foxcasts," but I haven't had time to look for news among all of its self-promotional links to summaries of TV dramas:
http://www.fox.com/foxcast/

Here is some information about Fox News RSS feeds:
http://www.foxnews.com/rss/
And this podcasting directory exists, but I don't see links yet:
http://www.foxnews.com/xmlfeed/podcasting/

Fox affiliate KCMO in Kansas City has a podcast, even if it could use some text-oriented proofreading, at
"The 710 KCMO Podacst Page," http://www.710kcmo.com/podcast.asp

Ironically, I haven't had a chance to listen to most of these programs. (There are only so many hours a week to be at the office, and I don't have a broadband connection at home.)

A Fox affiliate in San Francisco, KTVU, has a podcast at http://www.ktvu.com/podcast/ and other RSS feeds at
http://www.ktvu.com/rss/

For website management, KTVU is an Internet Broadcasting System affiliate,
(http://www.ibsys.com) which makes me wonder its scores of other local TV websites across the country all will be on the podcast bandwagon shortly. http://www.ibsys.com/sites/

On television, the visuals carry a lot of the story... I wonder if any of the TV-news podcasts are supplementing the audio somehow, possibly with the audio track of a captioning-for-the-blind service.

Dave mentioned noticing an ABC Nightline feed, but it looks like ABC News really has gotten the little orange [POD] bug, with feeds for Good Morning America Highlights, the Nightline news program -- and more than 20 other programs, including some from ABC stations in major cities. I haven't listened to the audio version of Nightline.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Podcasting/

On the radio side of the Web, I noticed that WWL in New Orleans is linking to KIRO, Seattle, for what they're calling an "audio blog" of reports from their guys in Baton Rouge and New Orleans: http://www.wwl.com/Article.asp?id=113214&;spid=

I don't see a podcast feed, but when I first noticed the "Seattle" note, I expected one -- I mistook KIRO for Seattle KOMO, which got into podcasting a year ago, long before most of us. http://www.komotv.com/radio/podcast_explain.asp

Closer to home, I've been checking out the WTOP morning and afternoon news updates from Washington, D.C., and their feed of the 40 minute CBS (radio) Weekend Roundup, which I hope to use (along with various PBS things) in some classes on radio news next month:
http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=311915&;nid=404

See a related article in RadioMonitor: http://tinyurl.com/caz6o

Incidentally, you don't have to subscribe to the podcasts for most of these feeds -- the broadcasters offer the option of playing the audio directly through your browser ("streaming") or downloading individual mp3 or m4a files instead of subscribing. (M4a is a newer format that Apple is pushing, in order to offer advanced features in iTunes. See http://phobos.apple.com/static/iTunesRSS.html and http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/07/how_to_make_enh.html)

MediaWeek on WINS in NYC: http://tinyurl.com/a92hw "WINS is offering 12 separate podcasts, all new content (nothing repurposed from the station) and running the gamut from 1010 WINS Morning Podcast to the off-the-wall You Can't Make This Stuff Up. There is also a Spanish podcast, 1010 WINS Noticias Ahora... "Infinity announced in June that nine of its News stations would begin podcasting with WINS acting as the flagship."

(Infinity is also the parent company of http://KYOUradio.com, which started an all-podcast format in the spring, including a few words from Dave himself on opening day.)

For more on those Infinity affiliates... see http://podcast.medianext.com/

For instance, http://podcast.medianext.com/stations/wbz/ in Boston

Or KYW http://podcast.medianext.com/stations/kyw/ in Philadelphia
The Philly morning newscast sounds like someone gets the idea, but four minutes is shorter than I expected from the intro: "KYW Newsradio on the run. This morning's news brief to take with you on the way to work or school." Four minutes? Short commute!

http://podcast.medianext.com/stations/kyw/ http://podcast.medianext.com/stations/kyw/?archive=34&;d=AM

Separate feed: "KYW Newsradio in the raw ... full content from selected news events, news conferences, important speeches, live coverage and analysis."

... and many more, including a hint that they might be /listening/ too... "KYW How's My Driving?" "The management of KYW Newsradio answers questions and addresses complaints from listeners, along with a weekly behind-the-scenes peek at something you never knew about KYW Newsradio."

CBC/Radio Canada is in the middle of a labor contract dispute, which may be why its podcasting page is currently unavailable:
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/
However, its RSS page mentions a few podcasts: http://www.cbc.ca/rss/

Public Radio affiliates are feeding a lot of http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php weekly feature and interview programs, but not the main NPR newscasts. http://archive.scripting.com/2005/09/10#When:10:33:03PM Dave suspects that has something to do with the network's relationship with affiliate stations, which sounds reasonable.

Local NPR stations weave their hometown reports into the Morning Edition and All Things Considered broadcasts, which may encourage some of the top-notch local news reporting by affiliates like our own award-winning WUOT here in Knoxville.

I wonder if it would be possible for the local affiliates to put out the podcasts of the combined programs -- including their local news, rather than losing their local listeners to a centralized podcast of the national programs. That would be similar to the way the Associated Press feeds its stories through member newspaper websites, so maybe NPR could ask AP how well it's working out.