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.
Podcast hosting network Wizzard Media announced this morning that its common shares are set to begin trading today on the American Stock Exchange (”AMEX”) under the ticker symbol “WZE.” Previously, the company traded as “WIZD” on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board.
Wizzard is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit, and was in the headlines last month for its disclosure that it had served up one billion podcast downloads in 2007. Additionally, Wizzard recently completed a major podcast advertising campaign for the U.S. Navy, across 28 of the podcast shows it hosts on its network.
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.”
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.
Apple has updated the iTunes store with a directory of their top podcasts of 2007.
Lots of the usual suspects, including Sesame Street, NPR’s Fresh Air, Ask a Ninja, Grammar Gril Diggnation, Boing Boing TV & Tiki Bar TV. It’s a great starting point, though, for people new to podcasting.
Another demonstration of the fact that Apple has done more than any other major company to promote podcasting.
Compete has published their latest stats for Total Time Spent Online - and they make clear that people are rapidly moving their attention from traditional media to online media. Time spent online is up by nearly 25% since last August.
Here’s how Compete’s Jay Meattle characterizes the trend:
“We are spending more and more time consuming information online. Logically, since time is finite online advertising spend should follow a similar trajectory with marketers allocating their ad budgets in proportion to where people are spending their time.
Needless to say, this is a time of considerable opportunity for online media properties and online marketers!”
Dave Winer, creator of the RSS 2.0 standard on which podcasting is based, offers some interesting comments on the state of podcasting at his blog:
“What if the energy that went into Chumby, for example, went into designing a podcast player? The player might actually look more like Chumby than it does an iPod. The interesting thing about the Chumby is that it is connected but not tethered to the network. The ideal podcast player would be even more loosely connected.
It would directly read its feeds over wifi, it would not have to synch through a desktop or laptop computer. The iPhone has enough connectivity to do this. The iPod Touch does. A Nokia N800 does as well. Most cell phones do.
You could use it to create a podcast. We’re basically there with Twittergram and BlogTalkRadio. Just call a number, and we not only shoot your minicast at Twitter but we also maintain an RSS 2.0 with enclosures feed. In other words, in every way, it’s a podcast.
It must be open, so users can have a range of choices of catcher software. I don’t think a one-vendor approach has a chance of working.
When we get this device, podcasting will work better.”
He also responds to people suggesting that podcasting hasn’t achieved its promise:
“A lot of people hoped they could make podcasts and quit their day jobs. I wasn’t one of those people, and I never encouraged people to believe that. I see podcasting, for bloggers, as just another way to communicate with a few people who are interested in what they know and think. I also see it as a way for professional news organizations, esp non-profits, to flow reports to people in a very convenient and powerful way. As a consumer of podcasts, I am in heaven. I am a regular listener of: Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, Fresh Air, Nightline, NYT Tech Talk, and numerous NPR shows. I have far more content than I have time to listen. Thanks to podcasting I am a much better informed person, and it gives my mind something to do as I get my exercise.”
While Winer hasn’t hyped the idea that podcasters would be able to quit their day jobs, it’s happening anyway. Just like a small percentage of the people blogging have been able to turn their blogs into careers, a small percentage of the people podcasting have been able to turn their podcasts into careers.
For a few examples, check out the article Secrets of Viral Video Hits, or listen to Elisabeth’s interview with the Ask A Ninja guys. People are beginning to make their livings from podcasting - it just takes talent, a great idea and a lot of hard work.
We, along with a lot of people in the podcasting community, were excited to hear recently that Microsoft had hired Rob Greenlee to be its Podcast Programming & Marketing Lead for the Microsoft Zune.
Rob was doing Internet radio long before podcasting was created. Rob, along with his wife Dana Greenlee, hosted WebTalk Radio, an internationally syndicated radio show, webcast and podcast. Rob also helped pioneer the world of mobile podcasting as the Senior Marketing Manager for Melodeo.
And he’s got a Guinness World Record for his role in making the world’s largest glass of orange juice.
I caught up with Rob at last week’s BlogWorld Expo and talked with him about the new Zunes, Microsoft’s new podcast directory and more.
Podcast hosting network 
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