Have an Ipod and like green and orange?

29.10.2004 / filed under default

Then I got something for you - or to be correct: Eric Rice has it for you: The first podcasting show with it's own ipod tattoo. ;o)

Sendung über Blogging (und Pordcasting)

29.10.2004 / filed under default

Morgen um 18:30 läuft auf 3sat ein (kurzer?) Bericht in der Sendung neues über Bloggen und Podcasten. Dirk Ellenbeck von ipod-news.de ist Gast in der Sendung und darf etwas über unser Lieblingsthema erzählen. ;o)

Ich bin mal gespannt. Dank an Nicolas für den Tip, leider kann ich weder diese Sendung noch die Wiederholung sehen - DVB-T kommt erst ein paar Tage später nach Lübeck *hrmpf*.

Article on blogcritics.org about podcasting

28.10.2004 / filed under default

I never heard of blogcritics.org before but when an article hit the mailinglist "please read" I did as I was told. ;o)

In "Podcasting - The New Revolution Of Cool?" Matt Wardlaw describes his first steps in podcasting and explores the geek side of it. ;o)

One of the things that I immediately dug is how Curry receives audio comments from the people that are listening to his show, which he uses within the show. It's a great no-brainer - as a listener, you record a quick audio comment using your audio software of choice.

I think you can even do it with Skype, but that's a whole different story. I'm still learning about this stuff! Two weeks ago, I was still scratching my head, trying to figure out what the hell Skype was!

I would listen to his show, but it is about metal - *brrrr* ;o)

New Jäger version available

28.10.2004 / filed under default

David Janes from Jäger just announced a new version on the ipodder mailinglist. While I was not satisfied with the last one, perhaps some of the new features are interessting enough. Check out their blog for all the new stuff.

But one big fault still remains - and when I read 'mousing' and 'right-click' I know it still has not changed: You are doomed in Jäger to use your mouse plus to use it through several submenues to get the things done as you like them. Settings are not available unless you dig (sorry: click) *very* deep in it's menue structure.

Hei, even Mac application can have keyboard accessible menues and functions! (No decent keyboard support as requested by windows standard and yes, even mac is my number one reason for dumping software at once.)

And while reading this:

In addition, Jäger 1.6.2 adds attachment expiration. Attachments that are downloaded now expire after 7 days, unless marked as "never expires". A future release will allow more detailed control of the expiration period on a blog-by-blog basis

Am I the only one here to ask for a "do not expire unless heard feature based on this little checkbox in my itunes" or something like it?

I will try it out next week. For now it does not look like I have a decent podcasting application available which does not drive me nuts right away - and I will stay with my right-clicking solutions in bloglines ...

Li Europan lingues es membres del sam familie.

27.10.2004 / filed under default

That's very cool. Of course the fact that I had english (10 years), french (5) and latin (4) in school makes reading this a whole lot easier but still I am amzed.

Li Europan lingues es membres del sam familie. Lor separat existentie es un myth. Por scientie, musica, sport etc., li tot Europa usa li sam vocabularium.

Li lingues differe solmen in li grammatica, li pronunciation e li plu commun vocabules. Omnicos directe al desirabilitá de un nov lingua franca: on refusa continuar payar custosi traductores. It solmen va esser necessi far uniform grammatica, pronunciation e plu sommun paroles.

Reminds me of the fact that - as far as I know - chinese have different dialects and can't talk to each other but when they write it down, it is no problem 'talk'. If we set aside the fact that their signs are difficult enough ...

The ugly D-Man

26.10.2004 / filed under default

Eric Rice says it "In my ABCs, D is for Doug, not Dvorak". I don't know what the ugly D-man gets from bashing Doug Kaye. As one of the comments in Doug's blog points out:

Oh boy, John Dvorak is bashing some new technology saying it has no future? This has been going on since at least 1984 when he said “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse.´ There is no evidence that people want to use these things.’ This is also the guy who has claimed as recently as last month that focusing on the iPod will “ruin’ Apple.

Of course, podcasts are a new hype and still have to prove whether or not they will be able to stay hype.

To bash on Doug this way, the person who has such great audio online (you don't even need to call it podcast because it was there before the name ...) is just low. And I think the ugly D-man might have done something for podcasting (or audio on the web in general) he never intended to: Get people interessted. As I wrote in the comments:

Problem is: We know better (especially about what Doug is giving to us) but from a normal point of view his column reads okay till thrustworthy.

But, I think he choose an excellent starting point. From a listeners point of view, it conversations is a great place to start looking at podcasting: Because it is this good in content and presentation [yes Doug, even so I bashed you on Gilmore Gang, I still listen ;o)], people will think “hm, that´s not so bad after all. okay, I don´t have an ipod but hey - direct information from blogger con? Hm, Malcom Gladwell interview? Let´s hear it.’ People will have a look at Doug´s website and discover treasures there.

Nicole, non-mac, non-(ipodder, doppler,jäger but perhaps jpodder some day), bloglines using podcast hearer.

Correspondent asks "what is podcasting?"

25.10.2004 / filed under default

Wolfgang Harrer, blog-correspondent in Washington D.C. for our second national television and DW-WORLD.DE, just asked in his blog what this podcasting is he has heard about and if he should offer it. :o))

Even if this is in german, you might like the links in this particular post where he offers an interwiew with George Lakoff, the advisor on speach (as I understand a kind of Toby Zigler) for the democrats.

Haven't had the time to hear this but sounds promising, perhaps I can get him to give a short english description - 4 seasons of West Wing are not enough to be that sure about politic speach. :o)

Which leaves one question - does anyone know how to make podcasting links with blogger.com?

The bandwith issue will come - sooner or later

25.10.2004 / filed under default

Whole Wheat Radio in "Podcasting - Technical Concerns":

2) I am seeing a lot of clients downloading the same podcast MP3s multiple times - sometimes several times a day.
[...]
There were 126 attempted downloads of last Friday's rant in the last 24 hours using almost 3gig of bandwidth - and 31 of them had already downloaded the file at least once. This is a waste of my bandwidth.

As podcasting continues to grow, I feel the need to get control of the downloading on my end regardless of the client software. So I will testing being able to put a .php file in an enclosure that points to the mp3 (for example: mysite.com/podcast.php?RANT_04-10-22.mp3) so that I can step in before the actual download and see if the requesting IP has previously downloaded the file.

This is one reason why I am reluctant to do a podcast - because I am already angry about stupid people not handling their normal blog aggregators.

And in opposite to other people I think we need to take care of this before it gets out of hand. "I don't care, I have no traffic limit" might work now with a few subscribers - but imagine 500 people downloading your file again and again and again every day ... This might be the death of podcasting before it even began.

btw: I am using bloglines to show me what's new so I can download the files. Yes, manually, but for now that is much more comfort than all of the three applications (Jäger, Doppler, Ipodder). Plus I want to see new files from work and at home and sometimes decide on the entries description whether or not I would like to download this particular show.

Quality standards for podcasts, please

25.10.2004 / filed under default

(Note 2 self: Next time look more carefully - it's Gillmor and not Gilmore *blush*)

Today was the first time I was not at my computer while listening to podcast but driving with my car to Hamburg (about an hour from here). I had half of Adam's podcast left, some openpodcasts and heard the Gillmor Gang from IT-Conversations.

First of all - Adam was entertaining as always and the Gillmor Gang from this time was very good in content about what is podcasting, where is this heading to, what is the difference to pirate radio or why might it be the new "world radio on demand" (the don't call it that way but that's what I think of it). If you have not heard it - you should.

But I do have ringing ears and headache now, big time. Why? While Adam has a very good recording quality and a very clean podcast, the Gillmor Gang is recorded voip (as I asume) with no denoising, no normalising and very high noise ratio. I had to turn up volume to get the quiter parts but steadily turn it down because my ears where ringing because all of a sudden the voice was louder and then quiter again.

Plus the constant noisefloor was very distracting to listen to. I know that I have to denoise my recordings, and I do it. And I adjust the noiselevel and do a little compressing so you won't have that much dynamic.

Second: every podcast has its own level of loudness. After the first ones I knew I had to turn down volume immediatly and slowly turn it up for the next track - and then restart it so I could listen to the start.

I therefor suggest a quality meater or an scale of "adam" as the unit how a podcasts recording quality is. As the Gillmor Gang pointed out, audio is a much more natural language than writing - but avoiding noise is even older than that.

I wrote on Adam's blog I like the "1 adam" unit but have thought it over and would suggest the daily source code to be 10 adam - and the Gillmor Gang from today be 3. Todays Rock and Roll Geek show on the other hand - while not being so crisp and energetic in it's quality (sound, not content!) would be a good 8, perhaps more.

So please, do my ears (and other ones) a favor and tell the people if you have done anything to improve your audio quality. And if you don't care: please tell me also, as I would know then that I should avoid your podcast. :o)

Interessting point Adam Curry pointed out in his podcast (thanks to Johnnie Moore for typing this)

Adam Curry's Daily Source Code is a good podcast. Keeping it real, he points out today (around minute 4:30) that in preparing for the Gilmour Gang, participants expressed strong anti-Bush opinions... but "no one spoke with the same passion during the actual taping even though the elections did come up... it always amazes me how the minute the microphone turns on then all of a sudden... everyone takes a stupid pill and we're not real anymore." I'd like to have heard the pre-taping discussion!

I had heard this before and would like a copy of that too, if this was the 'silent' version ...

Which Skype sounds would you like?

23.10.2004 / filed under default

While still a skype newbie, I hated the call signal right away. Imagine me sitting in front of my computer, listening intensive to english podcasts (because of the used tech slang I am not familiar with in english) and suddenly
*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING*.

Make this *very* loud and you can imagine which heart attack I nearly get. *argl* While surfing through my logfiles I noticed several people searching for skype sounds and I was thinking of recording some. But what would you like as spoken text? Incoming message? Call waiting? Busy line?

Give me some ideas, please! :o)

If you like, visit also: Some soundfiles for SAM, the skype answering machine

Sunday Morning by Jaimes Alsop

22.10.2004 / filed under default

Just send this poem to Christian for his poetcast with a comment - once the new poetcast is only he could send a trackback ;o)

I found it several years ago and it has been on one of my websites for forever. I recorded this with my other favorite poem last year and have been thinking about where to put it since then. Now, with the poetcast available, that seems to be the correct place. Enjoy ist. :o)
Sunday Morning

It is this morning.
We sit across the table from each other
breakfast over
the coffee steaming in the china mugs
as you read from the magazine
and I work on the crossword puzzle
sections of the news paper spread everywhere.

You look up, smile at me
and lean across the table for a kiss,
happy for no reason but it is Sunday,
we have all day to do with as we choose.

You are so sure of me
I am afraid enough for both of us.
In my life I never imagined
a morning like this morning;
the bed unmade
me in this ragged robe
all my senses singing:
This is what we share with one another.
This is the place I keep my promises.

Jaimes Alsop

The poetcast is only and you can download it here here- of course on sunday morning :o)

Distribute Podcasts to others, perhaps via different p2p-networks?

22.10.2004 / filed under default

As I was following the discussion on podcasters about how to name a file (don't forget to check out John's "Podcast File Name Usability" ) one topic arised: We don't need long names because when I look at the file, I know that DSC is the daily sourcecode but not that Dawn & Drew Show is named DNDS.

While I know that ipodder has some bittorrent built in, I have to admit: I can't configure the client to work with my firewall for uploading, can't regulate how much bandwith should be used and therefore I close ipodder as soon as I am finished. But some p2p works for me and I could think about starting up some p2p programm with only podcasts in it. (Which brings another reason why metatags should be filled: If grabbed through this channel, I don't know where it comes from and I need proper id-tags.)

This way I could share my downloads with the world and to be honest: Some shows I don't need at once, it would be enough to have them once they finished downloading. Other shows which I want badly as soon as they are online I would catch from there also if I know a high availability.

So there are some questions I would like to share:

• What do you think about users inserting your podcasts into p2pnetworks


• Would it be okay for you that your podcasts are shared this way


• Would you encourage it


• Would you consider changing the name of your files for easier findability


• Would you tag your files different to let people know where it is from?


• Is a common creative licence available and how could we integrate this?

Bush or Kerry? Punch both of them :o)

21.10.2004 / filed under default

Did you ever want to punch one of the two guys?

Now is the chance: Choose your opponent and start boxing!

I've tried it, but was a miserable failure :o)) (via Frozen)

Fine fine ...

21.10.2004 / filed under default

ipodcast.de finally has comments and - gasp - trackbacks. ;o)

Just finished tweaking this page a little bit more, please don't wonder if this is changing a little bit, I'm adapting this to an all english version.

Everything is fine with podcasting - but not for everyone.

20.10.2004 / filed under default

Heiko asks "What's wrong with Podcasting?"

You can't link to ideas presented inside a podcasted audio file. You can link to the file and say: 10 minutes into the recording, there is an interesting statement made by XYZ. Podcasting is about as convenient as content hidden inside PDF or Flash files. It's non-web.

plus later

OK, so podcasting is new. Heck, I even own an iPod, I just don't seem to get hooked. [...] Maybe it's just me.

Yes it is just you - but that's exactly the point. Podcasting as in "dude I have my ipod, do podcasting and am cool" ist not the point. That's just hype and stupid.

But podcasting as in [more ...]

Recording for Skype - yes please!

19.10.2004 / filed under default

Adam Curry mentioned it in his DSC today: Would be great to have a way to record skype calls. I just phoned one (two?) hours with Nicolas from ipodcast.de and parts of that could go out as a podcast, if - yes if we had recording.

As for now I am not quite sure whether, how or about what I want to podcast, but adding some content of my own to another podcast seems like a good idea. For example chitchat with another blogger / podcaster. :o)

I just did my first computer radio show on a local radio station (Offener Kanel, paid by taxes but open to everyone) with a friend of mine and while trying to 'make' content alone was very very hard, it just went supereasy when talking to each other. So naturally recording skype calls would be an ideal basis for podcasts. :o)

(But it should be mentioned that recording phonecalls is illegal in Germany if not explicitly allowed on both sides - but that should not be the problem here.)

openpodcast.org

18.10.2004 / filed under default

If I am thinking of do some podcasts, I have to be honest - I already did a little one, two to be precise. Ben Tucker has started http://openpodcast.org/:

OpenPodcast.org is a dynamically generated podcast to which anyone at all can contribute. It expects "short" segments (under 5 minutes) which will be included in the feed as they are received. Think of it as an audio wiki or time-shifted unmoderated call-in show.

You'll find the feed here and my first and second try - and it seems as if this is going to be a lot of german influence there if you follow the next ones ;o)

Perhaps I should start a little podcasting ...

18.10.2004 / filed under default

If you are a blogger and do read some feeds (580 should count as 'some') you have crossed the topic podcasting.

But it was not till some days ago I realized: I like it. I like the fact that I can get english radioshows delivered to my pc and have some fun.

So, learn the language and learn interesting things. I just finished the webtalkradio.com/ show from Sept. 25th about blogging and IM.

I am not quite sure how this will work out for me but: I did buy myself a headset so I could start. ;o)

As for now I am considering how to seperate the "sound files" content from eventual podcasting and german from english content (a problem I am thinking about for my main blog beissholz.de from the beginning).