Index of podcast

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.

Actor Stephen Fry, beloved at our house for his early 1990’s stint as P.G. Wodehouse’s butler/hero Jeeves, has turned his creative attention to podcasting. Calling his subscribeable, downloadable audio a “podgram,” the first episode details the story of breaking arm on a movie-making trip to the Amazon.

The enhanced podcast is available via his site, StephenFry.com, which he calls a “place in which to browse peacefully and without being harangued, harassed, heckled or hectored.” The first episode is interesting and relaxed, just Fry telling stories of what he’s been up to (writing, acting in movies and television, traveling the fifty US states, making documentaries about vanishing species, getting pins in his broken arm). Maybe I’m a big dork (yeah, you already knew that), but I could listen to Stephen Fry talk about nearly anything. He can make everyday fare into a great story. The feed is available through iTunes or here.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately in the world of new media about the future of podcasting - people wondering what the current state of podcasting is and where it’s going.

eMarketer forecasts that the audience for podcast consumption will double in the next two years, but even that relatively rosy forecast is disappointing to some.

We recently talked to Chris Spencer, CEO of podcasting hosting mega-network Wizzard Media, to get his perspective on podcasting and its future.

In the last year, Wizzard has acquired podcast hosting services Switchpod, Libsyn, and Blast Podcast. Wizzard made headlines in January when it announced that it had delivered over one billion podcast downloads in 2007. Earlier this week, Wizzard announced that it was now trading on the American Stock Exchange (”AMEX”) under the ticker symbol “WZE.”

In our interview, Chris shared his thoughts on what a billion podcast downloads per year means, what he expects that number to be in 2008, and his predictions on what will happen with podcast advertising.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Tell me about this whole billion downloads number. What does that mean for you in particular, and for downloadable media industry in general?

Chris Spencer: It’s a big number, isn’t it?

For us in particular, it means our servers are running well. Let’s face it: some people wonder whether this accomplishment gets credited to Wizzard, or to our content creators. We feel strongly that it’s 95% our content creators - they create the quality content, and they go out and market their show, and grow their audience. We get 5% credit for being proficient and productive enough to offer a stable inexpensive hosting solution, and that takes a lot of work.

But it comes down to the podcast producers. It’s a big accomplishment for the podcasters we host. It’s a big enough milestone for them and for us, and we publicized it so much.

In reality, what we’re trying to do is raise awareness for podcasting, specifically with the advertisers and the sponsors. It’s a number that’s going to attract a lot of the bigger brands that didn’t realize how big the potential here is. If there’s going to be big audience for podcasts, then that’s going to draw advertisers. That’s why we publicize it, not just for us, but for the whole industry.

Let’s look at the whole podcast industry: Right now, the industry is too small to worry if it’s us, or PodShow, or Podomatic. Right now it’s all about getting the advertisers and sponsors to know more about and be more interested in podcasting. Period.

I could talk about this for hours: it comes down to trying to demonstrate that this is a viable alternative to reach target audiences. More importantly, it is a product that people are consuming, and they’re loving it.

RawVoice announced on Tuesday the launch of PodcastFAQ.com, a site that offers, in their words, current and prospective podcasters “comprehensive insight into the field.”

The new site includes history, technology, industry trends and a portal to several online communities and directories. The site also offers a glossary of podcast terminology, support and instruction on how to create a podcast.

“Having gone to conferences, meetups and workshops and sharing the information we’d learned [over the last several years], we realized that we needed to get this stuff out of our heads and make it available to not only the community but the world,” explains Todd Cochrane, CEO and co-founder of RawVoice.

RawVoice’s new PodcastFAQ site will join the media company’s other new media communities, Blubrry.com, Podcasternews.com and TechPodcasts.com, which are powered by the RawVoice Generator platform.

We’ve been fans of SkinnyCorp for several years now. We saw their founders on a panel at South by Southwest in 2006, and they wowed us with their corporate philosophy.

We were already fans of the funky t-shirts they sell at Threadless (the punny “communist party” and “hypotamoose” t-shirts are in heavy rotation in the PodcastMama shirt drawer). Plus they have a regular podcast, which always wins brownie points from us.

But last month, when looking through their weekly shirt flyer, we clicked on a link that took us to the coolest. podcast. recording. rig. ever.

We got in touch with Charlie Festa, Threadless’ Podcasting Liaison. Here’s what he had to say about his future-retro-podcast studio:

“When we first moved into the office, we started building a studio, then we came to the conclusion that we should buy something mobile in case we wanted to take it to the road.

What we have here in the pictures is a 1962 Airstream Bambi. We picked it up in Minnesota off eBay. Once we brought it home (to Chicago) we gutted it out, and built it all out ourselves, and equipped it with some awesome technology.

Every week we do a podcast in here, and let people know what is going on in the office and what is going on in the warehouse.

When outsiders come into our office the first thing they gravitate to is the Airstream, Flying Cloud, Silver Bullet or whatever you want to call it. We have a very relaxed atmosphere in our office. It is definitely a pleasure to come to work everyday and work in this piece of history.”

Photos of the studio interior below the fold…

For the third year in a row, Dixie Consumer Products has renewed its sponsorship of the MommyCast podcast, with a new 2008-year agreement. The continuing relationship will allow Dixie to maintain its role as a “preferred online sponsor” and partner of the long-running and popular MommyCast.

Gretchen Vogelzang, co-host and co-founder of MommyCast, said, “We think it says a lot about the power of the podcasting medium that Dixie wishes to sponsor us for a third year – it recognizes that they have received real value from their association with this new media.”

MommyCast was an early podcasting hit, having launched “way back” in March 2005. The podcast holds the distinction of being one of the first independent podcasts to land a major corporate sponsorship (with Dixie). Its early debut into the podcasting fray makes this third consecutive year of corporate sponsorship an apparent industry first.

MommyCast made new media headlines last fall when it launched the new MommyCast Family & Friends network, powered by Podango, featuring a variety of different parenting and family-oriented podcasts (including my friend Mark Blevis’ podcast series, Just One More Book!, about great children’s books and the people who write and love them).

Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg has announced that WordPress.com, a free blog hosting service, has updated the amount of space it allocates to each user to 3 gigabytes:

Much of the work we do at Automattic is behind the scenes, infrastructure you’ll (hopefully) never notice or see, but we’re always thinking about how the improvements we make to the foundation of the site will allow us to build more interesting things on top of it.

Today, one of those developments comes to fruition — everyone’s free upload space has been increased 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb. To get the same amount of space at our nearest competitor, Typepad, you’d pay at least $300 a year. Blogger only gives you 1GB. We’re doing the same thing for free.

Most typical bloggers will never need anywhere 3 gigabytes of space - so there’s really only one way to read this move: Mullenweg wants you to be a podcaster on Wordpress.com.

Here’s his rationale for the change:

Our hope is that much in the same way Gmail transformed the way people think about email, we’ll give people the freedom to blog rich media without having to worry about how many kilobytes are left in their upload space.

This is an interesting move by Mullenweg. It will challenge other podcast hosts to deliver more. It will grow the number of Wordpress.com users making rich media files available as podcasts, whether or not the users consider themselves podcasters.

Unfortunately, Mullenweg’s “freedom to blog rich media” doesn’t currently include video:

You still need a space upgrade to upload certain file types, like movies, and we’re also increasing the limits of the paid upgrades, so if you bought a 1GB upgrade before it now adds 5GB for no additional charge.

As social media gets more and more popular, companies are struggling to understand what’s important, who they should pay attention to and what they should measure, according to a report by the Institute for Public Relations and Wieck Media.

Here are the highlights:

• Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable to their activities as more customers and influencers use them;
• Twenty-seven percent reported that social media is a core element of their communications strategy;
• Only three percent stated that social media has little or no value to their communications initiatives; and
• Respondents believe that social media is most effective for the following sectors: arts, entertainment and recreation; communications; computer hardware; and education.

“Blogs, podcasts, and social networks are changing the way we think about media and influence,” said Jen McClure, executive director of the Society for New Communications Research. “We wanted to learn what criteria communications professionals use to define new influencers; how social media is being used to communicate with these influentials; and how to measure the effects of such efforts. The ultimate goal of the study is to offer a set of recommendations to the PR profession.”

Respondents reported that the most effective tools for their social media initiatives are currently:

• Blogs
• Online video
• Social networks

The top three criteria for determining the relevance and potential influence of a blogger or podcaster are:

• Quality of content on the blog or podcast
• Relevance of content to the company or brand
• Search engine rankings

The Beatles’ second feature film, “Help!,” has just been re-released on DVD. To herald the event, “Monty Python” alumnus Michael Palin narrates a podcast series about the 1965 hit movie.

The podcast mixes dialogue from the movie with Palin’s narration and bits of audio from commercials, songs, interviews with individual Beatles, supporting actors, and director Richard Lester (who also directed their mockumentary movie debut, “A Hard Day’s Night“).

Lester describes, in the first podcast, how he conceived of the story of “Help!” as a fictional story of how, in their real (mid-1960’s) lives, the tension and stress they were under made them “prisoners of their fame.”

“Help!” is, nominally, about a strange “eastern” cult, a missing ring worn by a sacrificial virgin that gets stuck on Ringo’s finger. The Beatles get chased all over the globe by members of the cult (including actor Leo McKern), two mad scientists who want to rule the world, and a mysterious beautiful woman. And a tiger who is pacified only by the singing of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

You can preview the Help! podcast below, or subscribe by adding this podcast feed to your podcast client:
http://www.thebeatles.com/help/assets/downloads/rss.xml

 Help! Podcast [19:42m]: Play Now | Download

In the midwestern (US) city where we live, there is a sixty-year, very goofy tradition of not sending the children out to beg for treats on Halloween. Fearful of what might happen if 1940’s era trick or treaters mixed with older “hooligans” on October 31, our community decided to sugar-ize the little ones on “Beggars’ Night,” October 30.

This leaves the Podcasting News staff a quiet Halloween evening tonight — without the responsibility for answering the doorbell, handing out candy, or traipsing through the chilly neighborhood in the dark. We’re looking forward to some scary podcast listening and viewing.

Here are a few treats we came across:

Project man Bre Pettis has a MAKE magazine weekend project with Eric Skiff: making well fitting, realistic vampire teeth. Not a project to be attempted by little kids (stinky plastics, dremel tools, and gag-reflex diy dental molds), the end result looked really, really cool. This week they also have a video on convincing zombie makeup. Very gross.

Final Taxi’s Ron Nasty is telling real-life stories about the scary, creepy, and deadly all week, a variation on his usual tales of real-life (not so scary and creepy) notables. A far cry from last week’s entries about the late Deborah Kerr and the actress who was 007’s Miss Moneypenny! Not suitable listening for small humans, but you probably already knew as much.

A favorite TV show of our misspent youth, MTV’s Headbangers’ Ball, features this week a special Halloween podcast with scary Danish metal musician King Diamond and his scary latest solo album.

Cool As Hell Theatre has a half-hour audio adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Mad Decent Radio has a frightening “Kill Yourself Again” Halloween hip hop podcast featuring, among other artists, last year’s music Oscar winner 3 6 Mafia.

Expert storytellers Brian and Gene over at Hometown Tales often have chilling stories to tell (or sometimes to demystify), regardless of the season. They have a wonderful discussion of werewolves that’s more thought-provoking than frightening. For super scary stories, take a listen at Pseudopod, all year long.

Finally, while many cultures celebrate some kind of festival of all souls (or all saints) at this time of year, many western traditions have grown from very old pagan observances of Samhain. The podcast A Darker Shade of Pagan has a Samhain-themed podcast this week (mostly of themed music). Stacy Simmons’ The Witching Hour has an excellent overview of Samhain, “the veil of the year.”

If you’re doing something special for Halloween, let us know in the comments!