The French have always been careful guardians of their long-lived and vibrant culture. But in recent decades, the globalization of communication, commerce, and technology has brought about an influx of unwelcome, widely-used English terms. People look forward to le weekend, and surf le web.
Fed up with the creeping anglicization (is that even an English word?:) of la langue Francais, French linguists at the Academie Francaise - the body responsible for protecting culture through the French language - have come up with equivalents to more than 500 mostly English words for a new language website, being run by the culture ministry’s “General Commission for Terminology”.
Among the offending foreign words being banned from French utterance: WiFi, previously pronounced oui-fee (now acces sans fil a l’internet), e-mail (courriel) and (gasp) podcasting, derived from the very not French iPod (now called diffusion pour baladeur).
The sixty-five page list covers many non-technological terms as well, including words for coach (entraineur) and carry-out/take-out food. A whole page is devoted to the podcasting vocabulary.
It remains to be seen whether these new terms will be widely adopted among the general French population. We are reminded that when a few xenophobic elected officials suggested that Americans reject French foods, cultural icons, and vocabulary earlier this decade, U.S. potato lovers across the country did not rush to call them “freedom fries, ” as was suggested. The shared vocabulary of our increasingly connected world will probably continue to grow — even if some of the terms (supermodel, monetize, long tail) are annoying in any language.
Given its place as the number one Internet video destination, you’d think YouTube would put some promotion into their video awards and try to create some drama around them. Instead, they seem to treat the Awards as an afterthought.
Edirol has announced the availability of the R-44, a professional mobile recording workstation.
The Edirol R-44 is a 2 lb. portable recorder that offers up to 24-bit and 192kHz recording and uses SDHC cards to store the audio recorded.
pre-record function (captures the sound from few seconds before you press the rec button),
level control per channel
transport controls
OLED display
USB and control sync mini jack connections.
The device can be powered by DC adapter, external battery and six AA batteries and with the sync connection you can use 2 recorders at the same time - offering 8 channels controlled by one device.
SplashCast, a startup that lets you create your own broadcasting channel, has announced that it has successfully secured $4M in Series A funding.
While the company once hyped the idea of injecting social networking into podcasting, now its focus is “a new form of online marketing called social advertisements.” According to the compan, their social advertisements consistently receive click-through-rates 75 times higher than typical banner advertisements used on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network sites.
“It’s clear that Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook are the new TVs for today’s young consumers and that SplashCast is far and away the best tool out there for reaching this audience,” said Bayliss.
SplashCasts are like multi-channel TV screens that can be placed on an individual’s social network profile page. Brands and media companies can use SplashCast to distribute videos, games, pictures, and other digital content. You can share SplashCasts so that others can embed them in their MySpace or Facebook pages.
Podcasting pioneer and author Michael W. Geoghegan has a great post today on his site that looks at making money with podcasts.
Geoghegan has written several books on podcasting, has been involved since the early days of podcasting, he helped Disney create their podcast and has run a podcasting network. And while many podcasters have been waiting for the podcast dollars to roll in, Geoghegan has been cutting deals with American Airlines and others.
He thinks it’s time for podcasters that want to make money with their podcasts to start treating their podcast as a business:
People often ask how we consistently sell out our inventory on GrapeRadio.
Easy, we have a kick-ass media kit, a proven track record, a book of business with many repeat advertisers and four entrepreneurs as owners - folks who aren’t scared to ask for the deal. While the amounts aren’t huge, $1,300 per weekly episode, we can command those prices because we have nailed our niche.
A comparative CPM deal would have to be close to net $100 to make sense. No ad network has ever offered us anything close to that. We have also built a great business in white label production, i.e. non-GrapeRadio branded content specific to individual wineries for their sites.
We decided from day one not to do wine reviews so as to avoid any editorial conflicts. Our figures are not awe inspiring but they buy nice equipment, pay for the trips to Napa and leave plenty leftover for shareholder distributions. Given that we all run other businesses full time, it has worked out quite nicely.
The whole article is a must-read, if you’re interested in commercial podcasting.
Wizzard Software, the parent company of Liberated Syndication and several podcast hosting services, announced today that revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 were $1,540,992, a 108% increase over revenues of $739,551 in the fourth quarter of 2006.
For the full year of 2007, the Company recorded revenues of $5,163,491, a 75% increase of $2,195,967 from revenues of $2,943,578 in 2006. Wizzard posted a gross profit of $1,562,703, a 47% increase versus a gross profit of $1,064,115 in the full year 2006.
The company noted several podcasting-related accomplishments in its announcement:
Acquisition of Podcast Company Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) 3/19/07
Completed Raise of $7,500,000 for its Podcasting Business 7/9/07
Adds Nielsen//NetRatings’ Site Census to Advertising System 9/12/07
Announces Largest Ever Industry Ad Campaign 11/14/07
Ends Year with Approximately 10,000 Podcast Publishers 12/31/07
1 Billion Download Requests in 2007 12/31/07
In 2007, Wizzard Media surpassed download request forecasts with one billion podcast download requests achieved, surpassing the 450 million download requests for 2006.
“Podcasting is becoming a necessary audience expansion tool for content publishers and brand advertisers seeking cost effective, high return outlets to capture the migration of audiences from traditional media outlets to the internet,” says Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO. “We are seeing an increase in advertiser understanding of the high quality, subscription and episodic benefits of podcasting versus other internet video offerings. We believe that our ambitious undertaking of targeting similar audiences through interesting, engaging podcast micro-communities is a very compelling advertising opportunity and we expect advertising revenues to grow substantially in 2008.”
TiVo today introduced version 2.6 of TiVo Desktop for Windows, adding deeper support for Web videos and podcasts.
Features include:
You can now transfer all your downloaded Web Video from your PC to your TiVo DVR so you can watch them on your TV.
Automatic conversions of your TiVoToGo transfers to support portable devices that support MPEG-4 or H.264 video—Transfer video to your iPod, PSP, Treo, Nokia and other portables devices.
Set automatic transfers of your favorite shows and videos from your PC to your TiVo DVR.
Improved video quality and aspect ratio in the Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs when downloading high-quality video.
Automatically transfer shows from your TiVo DVR to a Windows PC or laptop.
Browse and listen to your computer’s MP3 library from your TiVo DVR.
Watch full-screen slide shows of your computer’s digital photo collection on your TV.
In a nutshell, the updated Tivo Desktop for Windows allows you to sync content automatically between your TiVo and Windows computers and peripheral devices.
Unfortunately, TiVo’s support for podcasts is fairly convoluted. Details below. (more…)
Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:
PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.
“There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver information about the firings; we’re told he left that to middle managers.
This looks like the end of the podcasting hype.
None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups have delivered on their promise, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.
Expect more podcast hype backlash in the next year, while forward-thinking organizations and early-adopters push podcasting technology to mainstream adoption.
YouTube has announced that it’s going “higher def”:
We’re making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you’ll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade.
How do you watch higher quality videos? On your Account page you’re now able to choose “always show me higher quality when available” or “never show me higher quality.” We suggest you select “always show me…” only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don’t play as quickly or smoothly as you’re used to. Higher quality videos also have a link right below the video player which will allow you to select between the normal or higher quality settings.
YouTube is putting usability over image quality, though:
Our general philosophy is to make sure that as many people as possible can access YouTube and that videos start quickly and play smoothly. That’s one reason why you don’t see us racing to call this “Super Duper YouTube HD,” because most people don’t want to wait a long time for videos to play.
YouTube today 
TiVo today 
Podcasting startup 
