On the Potential of Podcasting
Evil Genius Chronicles 11 14 2004: "It now seems like the strongest anti-podcasting meme is that of 'Podcasts take too long to listen to. I can read X blogs in that time.' It's tiresome to hear people over and over look at podcasts with blog-colored glasses. Because these people write blogs and read blogs and podcasts are in some cases (decreasingly so) associated with a sponsoring blog (such as this one), they think there is a one-to-one correspondence. When they have drank so deeply the blog kool-aid, everything tastes like blog to them. Ain't so, McGee. I frankly don't care how many text blogs you can read. As I've said over and over, audio carries far more extra-textual information and nuance and context than does the written text, so it is a fallacy that you are 'reading more'. You are reading more and getting less, so I think that issue is a wash. If you think the value of a podcast is solely contained in its words, you have missed the point by a mile. You get the words, you get the personality, you form a connection to the podcaster faster than you ever can from reading their text weblogs. It's not about speed of information datadump, its about the ease of feeling connected to another person.
Stop thinking of podcasts in blog terms, bloggers. If you have to score them, I'd take a stab that the DNA sources for them is 85% radio, 10% blog and 5% TiVo. Do you complain that 'I can't skim This American Life or The Howard Stern Show?' Is that really what is of value to you in a medium, how little you can pay attention to it while paying lip service to having 'consumed the content?' God help us all if that's the best we can do."
I like this for a few reasons. One, it explains better than I've yet managed why I enjoy listening to Audible at least as much as reading ebooks. A good narrator can add a lot to the experience.
Two, I like the idea of creating a new medium, and I respect the difficulties in conveying what makes it both special and different from what's already out there. I now describe myself as a "serialist", and most people still go, "huh?" Maybe this time a few years from now they won't.
And finally, I'm interested in the phenomenon of podcasting. I haven't got into it much yet, but it sounds really nifty. Has anyone figured out a good way to handle this on PalmOS?
Stop thinking of podcasts in blog terms, bloggers. If you have to score them, I'd take a stab that the DNA sources for them is 85% radio, 10% blog and 5% TiVo. Do you complain that 'I can't skim This American Life or The Howard Stern Show?' Is that really what is of value to you in a medium, how little you can pay attention to it while paying lip service to having 'consumed the content?' God help us all if that's the best we can do."
I like this for a few reasons. One, it explains better than I've yet managed why I enjoy listening to Audible at least as much as reading ebooks. A good narrator can add a lot to the experience.
Two, I like the idea of creating a new medium, and I respect the difficulties in conveying what makes it both special and different from what's already out there. I now describe myself as a "serialist", and most people still go, "huh?" Maybe this time a few years from now they won't.
And finally, I'm interested in the phenomenon of podcasting. I haven't got into it much yet, but it sounds really nifty. Has anyone figured out a good way to handle this on PalmOS?
3 Comments:
At 2:36 PM, Ben Combee said…
I've been tracking this for a few weeks. Right now, I'm downloading a lot of MP3 programs to a staging folder on my desktop, then filling up an SD card with programs and listening to them on walks on my Zire 72. Using Pocket Tunes, I've got good bookmarking support, so I can mark a spot to return to while listening to a show. When I get back, I just swap out headphones for a speaker cable and finish listening while my device is charging.
I do have some ideas. While I don't think an automatic Podcast transfer at HotSync time is too good, I'm thinking of writing a program that would notice when you insert a SD card with a particular filesystem marker. When it sees it, it would automatically pull off old programs and add the new ones from a folder on the card. Since Pocket Tunes supports deleting files from its playlist, I might not even need the delete part, just the autocopy part.
At 4:39 PM, YeOleImposter said…
I look forward to when content providers start 'publishing' their shows as mp3-rss feeds. Many shows can be downloaded now - I listen to Chapter a Day and a number of BBC7 and BBC4 shows that I have scheduled to download each day. Right now it is not easy to automate, but look forward an RSS type feed that will make it easier.
At 5:34 PM, Anonymous said…
Eh. Podcasting. Big deal. We get to hear the self-indulgent nasal whines of people who don't say enough in print (their blogs!) and then say even less with their mouths.
I'll stick to Old Time Radio MP3s, thank you.
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