A story in the Muncie, Indiana Star Press serves as a reminder that there’s more to podcasting than “monetization”:
When Ben Ranfeld, Liz Ranfeld and Paul VanDemark decided early last year to start a podcast centered solely on one topic — the movie The Big Lebowski — they figured they faced one major problem.
“We didn’t really think anybody would listen to it,” said Ben, 26, who is a technical staff employee at Taylor University, his alma mater.
Turns out, they were wrong.
“We get e-mails from all over the world,” he continued, citing The Big Lebowski fans from Israel and Germany as being among the 2,500 listeners who download their program every month.
“I think the reason is, it’s such a multi-faceted film,” said Paul, a 22-year-old TU student.
Or maybe it’s Autobahn - the band of German nihilists. Or Mrs. Lebowski, aka Bunny. Or Jesus.
You can subscribe to the Big Lebowski podcast by adding this URL to your podcast client:
Podcasting network Wizzard Media has announced that it is is working with European lottery site PlayUKinternet.com on what they are calling the first international geo-targeted audio podcast advertising campaign.The three month campaign is aimed at audiences around the globe in Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Italy, encompassing over half a million ad impressions delivered across a select group of audio podcasts on the network.
“We believe their state-of-the-art geo-targeting capabilities will allow us to raise awareness of our products and services to highly-targeted audiences around the world through an innovative new media,” said Tasneem Domingo, Marketing Manager, PlayUKinternet.
Podcasters Across Borders, a Canadian podcasting unconference, has announced its schedule for the 2008 event, being held June 20-22 in Kingston, Ontario:
BlogTalkRadio today announced that it has updated its Cinch mobile podcasting service to let you use a custom podcast feed URL. Previously, your podcast feed URL was automatically set to your mobile phone number.
When the service was introduced, we questioned the decision to embed your phone number in the feed url:
I question a service that makes it easy to do something dangerous.
BlogTalkRadio’s service uses your phone number as the URL of your podcast feed, and embeds your phone number in the feed in several ways:
http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/ Cinch is a voice to RSS service provided by BlogTalkRadio. To use this service simply call (646) 200-0000, record your message, hang up and subscribe to http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/858342####
By using this service, you’re not just advertising your phone number to the world, you’re doing it in a way that makes it easy for automated crawlers, spammers and Internet creeps to find.
This was a concern for a lot of people.
At the time, BlogTalkRadio’s Kris Smith let us know that customized RSS feed URLs would soon be available. They’ve followed through quickly on their promise.
Creating a custom feed URL is a matter of visiting the site and providing:
your phone number
your preferred feed URL and
your email address
With the changes, Cinch deserves another look.
If you’re interested in a service that makes creating a podcast via your cell phone a no-brainer, you’ll want to check out BlogTalkRadio’s Cinch.
Sessions from last fall’s Podcast and New Media Expo (PNME) continue to be released via Gigavox Media’s Podcast Academy site. The latest session is of interest to any podcaster who wants or needs to include music in their episodes. “Music Licensing for Podcasts and New Media” covers a lot of ground in under an hour. (And I can’t stress strongly enough how important it is to at least listen and consider some of the issues brought up in this podcast.)
The discussion begins with a basic explanation of the four different types of music licensing rights (performance, mechanical, master use, synchronization rights) and defines copyright and legal terms podcasters should know and understand. Colette Vogele gives a sobering view of what can happen if you don’t “play” by the copyright rules. Podsafe and indie music alternatives are discussed, as well.
TalkShoe has introduced an iPhone application that lets you participate or conduct community calls from your phone and even lets you use the service to create podcasts.
Features:
iPhone users can join live calls and view upcoming calls they may want to participate in.
The iPhone application provides a one click link to auto dial-in and participate in a call. Up to 250 people can join and talk all together at once.
Hosts can create public or unlisted community call episodes and manage them through their iPhone.
TalkShoe members can follow specific calls, which can then be viewed from their iPhone or be notified via email or SMS when they start.
The iPhone application makes it easy to record a podcast right from your phone.
Calls can be recorded for later listening or turned into a podcast.
In addition to participating through iPhone, anyone can also participate via phone, mobile phone, Skype, or VoIP via the talkshoe.com website.
PBS’s MediaShift has published an interesting article by Benjamin Melançon that looks at how Internet media equates to power for non-profit organizations:
Nonprofits are not setting their sights high enough.
Justice-seeking not-for-profit organizations, and all people who are working for change, need to change the environment in which we do our work if we are to be truly effective with our most important projects.
Nonprofits need to form their own media.
These organizations, their supporters, and their constituencies form a critical mass of people and passions. We are not yet bonded together by much more than working for below-market financial reward (as workers and volunteers), receiving a lot of the same begging mail (as donors), or getting regular benefit from the kindness of strangers (as constituents, which includes all of us who appreciate common goods like the environment). We, the actively involved of all these overlapping groups, need to communicate with one another and collaborate on communicating to and with the whole population.
Nonprofits can be key stakeholders in developing and supporting a journalism infused with the direct connecting potential of today’s technology, a journalism that transforms society local community by local community.
Cheap webspace, free software like Wordpress and inexpensive digital gear has pushed the cost of creating Internet media down to where it’s within reach of any organization.
One example of the power this gives you access to is the reaction the Humane Society got from its downed cow video. The Internet video resulted in the recall of 143 millions pounds of meat - the largest recall in history.
Much of the attention in podcasting and new media has moved to “monetizing” content. Don’t lose site of the fact that new media also can equal an amazing amount of power.
An Apple patent reveals that the company is working on a podcast aggregator that would dynamically collect the news that you are interested in and deliver a personalized news podcast, according to a report at AppleInsider.
In other words - Apple wants to be your news and information station.
The system would allow you to:
Subscribe to and personalize a podcast with software like iTunes;
Select news segments selected from a variety of categories; and
Automatically download the personalized podcast to your Apple TV, iPod or iPhone.
The custom news show could consist of a 5 minute segment from CNN on the day’s national news, a 5 minute segment from a local news station, and a 10 minute segment on sports highlights from ESPN.
In addition to offering mainstream content, the iNews service may let you integrate other podcast content:
“Upon selection of the custom button, a user can be assisted with another dialog screen to create a category of content, namely, media content, that is to be included within the custom podcast.
For example, the user may request to receive sports highlights from the weekend during the NFL season regarding specific teams or teams in the Eastern division. As another example, the user may desire to receive statistics regarding games played during the past week in the NFL.”
Once you select the playlist of content that you’re interested in, Apple’s servers would request the latest podcast content from content creators, stitch the segments together and then deliver the personalized podcast to iTunes or other podcast software. As part of this process, Apple could insert targeted advertising dynamically.
At Scripting News, pioneering podcaster Dave Winer is highlighting a service from BlogTalkRadio that makes podcasting a no-brainer:
A new service from BlogTalkRadio…
Call their special phone number: 646-200-0000. It records the call. When you’re done it creates an RSS 2.0 feed with an enclosure that’s an MP3 of the call.
The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from. I just called in a podcast from my Nokia N95, which they added to this feed:
http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/858342####
That’s all there is to it! No registration. They have a web page for it, but it’s completely unnecessary.
Winer notes that it would be tough to make a mobile podcasting service that was any easier.
Robert Scoble is wowed by the service too, saying “Holy donuts is this cool.”
They are right - but in this case, I think there’s something just as important as ease of use to consider - your privacy.
I question a service that makes it easy to do something dangerous.
BlogTalkRadio’s service uses your phone number as the URL of your podcast feed, and embeds your phone number in the feed in several ways:
http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/ Cinch is a voice to RSS service provided by BlogTalkRadio. To use this service simply call (646) 200-0000, record your message, hang up and subscribe to http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/858342####
By using this service, you’re not just advertising your phone number to the world, you’re doing it in a way that makes it easy for automated crawlers, spammers and Internet creeps to find.
On the Internet, there’s always someone that wants to spam your email, your comments, your pingbacks, your social network attention. Putting your phone number in an RSS feed and syndicating your personal info to the Internet is an invitation for problems.
A better solution would to let you pick the URL that you want your podcast to show up at the first time that you call into the service.
A story in the Muncie, Indiana Star Press serves as a reminder that there’s more to podcasting than “monetization”:
Podcasting network Wizzard Media has announced that it is is working with European lottery site 
Sessions from last fall’s 
