WordPress 2.6 has been a disaster for a lot of podcasters.

The update, which WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg said “should be pretty painless,” has broken a lot of podcasts, leading to a lot of kludgie workarounds.

Some, like Dan McKeown, think the WordPress/PodPress fiasco highlights broader problems with the way WordPress is handling releases:

This episode is a good illustration of a few problems with WordPress and the relationship between the CMS and its plugins. First, Automattic, the company that manages WordPress development, is extremely overzealous in pushing new versions on users at the expense of previous features working. Second, the lack of professionalism of plugin developers is a serious danger to the continued functioning of blogs for a wide range of WordPress users, from casual podcasters to large enterprises.

The problem with pushing new versions and features on users is a fairly nuanced one. Let me explain: I do not mean to say that new versions and new features, even at the pace at which they come out, is a problem. Rather, the problem is the assumption by Automattic that all users are ready for major upgrades every three months and have the time to install new versions and find updated plugins. Because the last few new major releases (WordPress 2.5 and 2.6) have included some fairly major changes, they broke the functionality of many plugins that were designed for older versions. That really is okay–I don’t want to stand in the way of progress here–but what I don’t understand is why they can’t maintain the older versions for a little longer while people scramble for new plugins.

WordPress has gotten a free ride from many analysts, despite a history of security problems and new releases that break existing features and plug-in compatibility. In fact, WordPress has had many more security problems over the last four years than other content management systems, like Joomla and Drupal.

I still think that WordPress is the best blogging platform, but the PodPress problems and the history of security problems with WordPress show that Automattic’s constant push to get user to upgrade to a new version is dangerous.

WordPress is a mature content management system with hundreds of thousands of installs, which makes it a nice target for hackers and means that features changes are more likely to break things.

Automattic needs to maintain two versions of WordPress because of this:

• the bleeding-edge version that it’s been releasing every three months or so, and
• a “stable” version that for users more interested in security and compatibility

Let me know what you think – is it time for WordPress to slow down and get more conscious of security and compatibility?

The US National Parks Service is getting into podcasting in a big way, and now offers 18 park service podcasts and virtual tours, offering hundreds of audio and video programs that you can get from park websites or iTunes.

The podcasts include:

1. Acadia NP
2. Antietam National Battlefield
3. Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP
4. Canyonlands NP
5. Clara Barton National Historic Site
6. Curecanti National Recreation Area
7. Everglades NP
8. Gettysburg National Military Park
9. Glacier NP
10. Grand Canyon NP
11. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
    
12. Katmai National Park and Preserve
13. Mississippi National River & Rec. Area
14. Petersburg National Battlefield
15. Richmond National Battlefield
16. Rock Creek Park
17. Yellowstone NP
18. Yosemite N

Many parks offer interpretive podcasts about wildlife, history, and topical issues like climate change and fire management. The most extensive collection of park podcasts is from Yellowstone National Park where they are reaching out to new and nontraditional audiences to spark an interest in visiting the park. The Inside Yellowstone series has more than 50 episodes, which are one to two minutes in length. More episodes are on the way.

“Our podcasts give people from every corner of the earth the chance to fall in love with Yellowstone and become its stewards for the future,” said George Heinz, one of the writers and on-screen personalities for the podcast series. The park has another online series called Yellowstone InDepth that presents mini-documentaries on subjects like volcanoes, invasive species, bears, and wolves.

“While nothing can replace a personal experience in a national park, we think our podcasts will enhance people’s trips or give them the opportunity to learn about a park that they can’t visit,” said Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service. “Whether people download them to portable devices or watch them on their computers, these free electronic presentations give us another way to serve park enthusiasts of all ages.”

CellSpin Soft has announced it has added support for Apple’s iPhone to its mobile blogging software platform.

CellSpin is designed to let you capture audio, photos and text on the iPhone and publish it to your blog or favorite social media sites. Supported sites include

• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pownce,
• Blogger
• Picasa
• Flickr
• Live Journal
• Live Spaces
• TypePad
• eBay

CellSpin’s free iPhone application supports:

• Voice blogging
• Photo blogging
• Text blogging
• Posting pre-existing media from iPhone
• Posting audio, photos and text to live eBay auctions
• Podcasting
• Recording and posting live events

CellSpin’s app is free via the Apple App Store under Social Networking. In addition to the iPhone, CellSpin supports the Symbian, Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0, Palm OS and Blackberry operating systems.

We had fun watching Joss Whedon’s musical Internet video experiment as he released it. If you missed it the first time around, though, it’s available now on Hulu.

The musical follows aspiring super-villain Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), who wants to join the Evil League of Evil and win the girl of his dreams.

Dr. Horrible is notable because it’s a glorified mom and pop production, because of the way Whedon is using free distribution to generate interest for later DVD releases and because Neil Patrick Harris is awesome.

The industry group formed around the nascent podcast industry, The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), has announced the release of two sets of recommended guidelines: ad unit standards and audience measurement guidelines. The recommendations released today grew from feedback and discussions of proposed standards, which were first unveiled in April at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco.

The Download Measurement Guidelines and Advertising Unit Standards are available now at http://www.downloadablemedia.org.

In The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 study, derived from the Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study, podcast consumers are attractive advertising targets. The downloadable media industry is seeing a notable surge in listeners who actively seek and select a program (rather than passively consuming whatever is available via traditional media), downloading it and potentially moving it to a portable device.  This enhanced level of engagement with the programs and hosts of the shows they select may translate to an increased credibility and level of trust for the show’s sponsors and advertisers.

The ratified guidelines have been accepted by the fourteen-member ADM Ad Council, a special  interactive advertising agency liaison group, which acts as a sounding board for the ADM committees.

The specific recommendations for advertising unit standards and guidelines for audience measurement follow after the break.

Jason Calacanis has published a smart post today, looking at the implications of Google Knol – and the idea that Google’s now a content company competing with Wikipedia, media networks and you as a blogger, vlogger or podcaster.

When Google announced Knol, we said “Google is looking for a way to monetize user-generated articles, effectively paying you to create a Wikipedia-killer.”

Calacanis is looking beyond the idea of Knol being a Wikipedia-killer, though, suggesting that Google’s now a content publisher competing with every content creator:

Let’s run a test: what is the role of a content publisher?

1. Secure talent
2. Distribute their work
3. Monetize that work
4. Pay the content creator for their work
5. Build a library of that work for future monetization

So, if you’re the New York Times or Wall Street Journal you:

1. Hire John Markoff and Walt Mossberg (on staff)
2. Distribute their technology reportage
3. Sell advertising against that reportage
4. Pay Markoff and Mossberg
5. Create an archive on NYTIMES.com and WSJ.com of their work.

Let’s run Google’s Knol through this same process:

1. Hire writers (on contingency) — check
2. Distribute these pages in Google’s search results — check
3. Sell advertising against it in the form of AdSense — check
4. Pay the writers via AdSense split — check
5. Create an archive on Knol for future monetization — check

Google has left the “don’t be evil” days far behind, and appears to be using its search monopoly to take an ever growing slice of the online advertising pie.

“It seems that Google, the greatest web-business ever created, is not satisfied with owning over 70% of search,” writes Calacanis. “Now they want to own the first couple of pages in their search results. So, if you’re digg.com, About.com, NYTimes.com, and Wikipedia, you’re faced with not only being traffic-dependent on Google, you’re now competing with them for the traffic within their search result.”

With Google putting Knol pages high in search results, content publishers are faced with a tough choice: move your content into Knol and share your revenue with Google, or watch Google pay somebody to build your your competition.

Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder is heading to Internet television, as the star of Electric Farm Entertainment’s zombie comedy Woke Up Dead.

The comedy centers on a USC student who wakes up underwater in the bathtub one morning and suspects that he might be dead.

Woke Up Dead will be a series of fifty three-minute episodes, designed for online and mobile distribution, and will feature live-action, combined with some computer graphics elements.

The show was developed with Heder in mind.

via hollywoodreporter

The Zune’s biggest fan, Steve Smith , aka the Zune tattoo guy, has given up on Microsoft’s portable media player.

“I am done, throwing in the towel due to a lazy offering by Microsoft,” says Smith.

To make it even worse PR for Microsoft, Smith’s bought a new portable media player. “Bought a new PMP today,” says Smith, “And low and behold its a black iPod Classic 80gb.”

via The Guardian, which says “If MP3 players have death knells, it may indeed be time to read the Zune its last rites.”

Can Microsoft still save the Zune brand?

A lot of people are reporting incompatibilities between Mighty Seek’s PodPress, the popular free podcasting add-on for WordPress, and the recently-announced WordPress 2.6.

Earlier in the week, we reported a simple hack you could use to get things working again. 

A reader, John Leavitt, sends word of an even easier fix – the No Revisions plug-in. It disables the new Revisions feature, which seems to be the source of the PodPress problems. 

I tested this out on a site that uses PodPress and WordPress. After upgrading to 2.6 about a week ago, I had been unable to add audio podcasts using PodPress. 

After installing the No Revisions plug-in, PodPress seems to be working again on the site. 

If you haven’t upgraded to WordPress 2.6, you’ll probably want to wait until PodPress gets updated for compatibility. If you already broke your podcast site with the update, though, give the No Revisions plug-in a try. 

Despite the success of Hulu, a lot of people seem to be struggling with the simple idea that people want free, ad-supported Internet television.

A new survey may help change that. The survey (Ipsos) found that three out of four people are willing to watch some ads in exchange for free TV shows and movies.

The Shorter The Internet Video, The Less Acceptable Ads Become

People are much less willing to watch ads during short videos, though. More than half of those surveyed said advertising would be unacceptable during typical user-generated videos.

“Digital video consumers generally find it more acceptable to have advertising included within longer, professionally produced video offerings such as full-length movies or TV shows. Fewer are ready to accept this ‘price of admission’ for shorter-form content or less-professional, polished content,” said Adam Wright, director of Ipsos MediaCT.

The research suggests that people trying to make money with video podcasts and short-form Internet video may need to look for options other than traditional intrusive ads.