| Podcasting - so much, so soon, so confusing... | | Date Created: 19 Oct, 2004, 02:07 AM |
 It's just been over a month since I first learnt of podcasting and the support network springing up around it.
Called TiVo for radio, the analogy only goes so far, since it bears little resemblance to radio at all.
It's more like the AAC files of "Your Mac Life" I download from Audible.com, but without the Applescript needed to automatically install it into iTunes ready to be synched with my iPod.
So what's the big deal then? Why all the hype? Why over 110 podcasts?
Your Mac Life streams live each Thursday morning into my Powerbook. I watch it too on my TV by hooking the Powerbook to my VCR which itself is hooked to the hi-fi, and there is Shawn King and his crowd of merry men and occasional women talking Mac.
He's been doing it for years. And if I can't see the show live, and thus participate in the live IRC chat, or World without Borders chat, or send Shawn an email live, then I can listen to the show in iTunes the next morning when Audible.com lets me know by email that it's ready for download.
It's not called podcasting.
Somehow Adam Curry, Dave Winer, Dave Slusher and soon to be hundreds of others are giving a new name to what has been occurring for quite some time.
In many respects, Your Mac Life and other internet-based Mac shows - there are several with their own distinct characteristics - more resemble radio shows than podcasts. As is their intention: professional Macintosh reportage.
They carry advertisements and sponsorships, they broadcast live at the same time each week, maintain the same format consistently, and invite talkback from time to time. In the case of YML, there is a steady interaction between IRC-based listerners and the hosts.
Where it's similar to podcasting is when I listen to it as an AAC file on my iPod in my car or on my bike, and stop and start it at my leisure.
Except...
YML never inspired me to do my own narrowcast. It never created within me an urge to speak my voice and thoughts. I was an active recipient, occasionally sending in email, occasionally dropping in to the World without Borders live chat.
But apart from that, and the fact that I enjoy it immensely, occasionally having an email of mine read on air, I have not been inspired to be anything other than act as a listener and tell friends about the show.
Which is fair enough, since Shawn and Co. do a very professional job centred on a company, Apple, which thrives on secrecy. It can't be easy beating others to the punch, journalistically-speaking. YML rarely occasionally breaks news, and could do it more often if it was a daily show.
The podcasters on the other hand, inspire me and clearly others to give self-expression a go. By their actions, they say "grab your Powerbook, follow the schematic diagrams to get audio going on your Powerbook, learn a little about RSS and enclosures, and then sing for your supper". In other words, while not all podcasters have the professionalism of an Adam Curry, it doesn't matter.
Indeed, if it's too slick and smarmy, it's not a podcast, it's a promo. without the ad! This is self-expression, just like this blog is a form of self-expression. I have no idea who reads and who will listen to a podcast I might do.
But if you've read this blog you'll know that I enjoy exercising my entitlement - awarded by dint of paying for a .Mac account and learning a little Blogwavestudio - to cast an opinion on a variety of matters.
I have also heard arguments against calling them podcasts, because you can listen to them on mp3 players of all flavours.
It just so happens that the current king of the road mp3 player is also associated with a software, iTunes, which was the first to offer a successful model for legal music downloads. Between the iPod and iTunes, available for Macs and PCs, Apple created an extension to its digital hub philosophy introduced several years back.
The iPod has now so much cachet and desirability, coupled with its A-list 'casters using Macs and iPods, that the podcast moniker was created and it's stuck. Like the iPod itself it'll soon convey a type of audioblog in a generic sense.
The term is catchy, different, and an appropriate amalgam of two technologies. Perhaps someone will attempt a new name - WiMPcast perhaps - so as to keep Redmond in the loop, but somehow I don't think that will catch on. Maybe Smartcast, or mycast or narcicast...
Keep using it with a lowercase "p" and podcasting becomes its own genre.
I expect we will seeing as great a variety of people throwing their voices at microphones as we will see blogs, although not as many in number.
I can look over my notes here, and go back and correct for grammar, spelling and sentence construction. As well as edit ideas - adding, shaping, connecting before hitting the "publish" button. Or add new links. Can't do that easily with a podcast once it's released to the wild.
I don't think the same dynamic occurs with audioblogs. Most people dislike the sound of their own voices, which is an auditory feedback phenomenon. Trained performers eventually hear past that and listen for more subtle aspects of their professional performances. Voice-over specialists are past masters at this.
Most amateurs will throw in the towel once they hear their own voices. And so are unlikely to edit themselves. Expect to hear lots of "ums" and "ahs", amidst rare cases of easy-on-the-ear presentations.
But you know, it ought not stop people form being inspired to give it a go. The podcasters model for us how anyone can do it, and it requires little in the way of equipment other than what you have to read this blog.
It's too early to say if A-list podcasters will go on to professional careers in - what? Podcasting with advertisements? Podcasting by subscription only? Product placement podcasting? Jobs in radio broadcasting? Reading audiobooks? Voice-overs?
Heck, who knows? It's all too new and the A-listers themselves don't know where it's all going. They're inventing the future as they go along. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened, if the Internet's history can teach us anything.
For now, podcasters will put up with journalists calling their efforts indulgent, narcissistic, amateurish, and puerile - even a waste of bandwidth. But as the ever-expanding world of blogging has shown, there are enough stories out there to keep you amused for years. And in some cases, the bloggers are beating journalists at their own game by toadying up to no one, not even their own readers.
The same will occur for podcasters in the near future. Whether many will have the talent to speak into their Powerbook microphones regularly enough to develop a following as Adam Curry and Dave Slusher have - two of the most talented podcasters - remains to be seen.
My guess is many will be excited enough to give it a try, only to see - as with written blogs - that exuberance is hard to sustain in the face of day to day living, especially when you don't do it for a living.
For now, I am hungry to find my own cache of podcasts ready to fill my iPod and listen to on my morning walk, or my weekend bike rides, or my long-distance air travel. I want to hear what I want to hear, when and where I want. That's the essence of this development which seems so confusing and unnecessary to some.
You see, some time back I switched off commercial radio. I was tired of screaming advertisements every 7 minutes, I was bored with humourless puffed-up, chest-thumping hosts and commentators, and impatient with slack-minded single-track dichotomous thinking talk-back callers.
I switched to the commercial-free, full-of-personality Radio National service (think NPR) mixed with Real Player streaming broadcasts of Chicago's Odyssey on NPR, and Doug Kaye's IT conversations. As well as my weekly does of Your Mac Life and Webtalk radio.
Now I am in the process of sorting out the must-hear podcasts from talented individuals. It's their ideas that I want to hear, as long as their broadcast skill reaches a minimal standard, so I'm not made to suffer for their technical sins.
As I said in a 600k emailed mp3 sent to Adam Curry (heard in his daily source code of October 14), it's more than the Chinese meal Adam and Dave Winer spoke of in their prior Trade Secrets podcast. There, Dave said a friend aligned podcasts with eating a Chinese meal. Delicate morsels, needing chopsticks to handle.
I'll extend it and say It's more like Yum Cha, the Chinese brunch also known as Dim Sum that lasts for hours. Yum Cha style is in contrast with ordering a la carte from the menu, and thus not sharing with other dinner guests. It's waiting while trolly after trolly of delicacies are wheeled out to your table, and the guests collaborate to share the choices.
Some like seafood, some beef balls, others bean curd. The table reaches consensus, consumes and waits until the next surprise comes along. And repeats the process, until we're full. Then the desserts come out! It's as easy to over-indulge as to dine lightly. Yum Cha-style - it's your choice, The serves are small enough that if you make a bad choice, it's no big deal, unlike a la carte.
Let me extend my own analogy one step further. Those podcasts I will listen to regularly are probably from those I would invite to a long drawn-out very "wet" Yum-Cha. People I would want to chat with, share stories and learn from... they would not be faux-celebrities who name-drop and enjoy their own voices. Having spent time hosting a radio show 20 years ago, and a frequent guest on radio and TV shows as a guest psychologist, I have met my share of "celebrities".In contrast, podcasters so far sound like the genuine article, as Ned Beatty said in Silver Streak.
I'll give podcasting a go myself sooner or later. Probably something about mental health, community issues and technology, and their nexus. And of course Apple's future, since it's the one high-tech company for which I feel passionate.
That'll turn plenty of people off, but since I don't have to report to a boss, an advertiser, an FCC or Broadcasting Control Board or regulator, that's my choice. And that's the bottom line for podcasters and their audience - choice. Of content, as well as place and time of listening.
Radio will always have immediacy.
And newspapers will always have the space and time to explore issues deeply.
Podcasting will offer a form of story-telling neither radio, newspapers and certainly television can emulate. Pushed to me with applications like iPodder, stored on servers for me to delightedly discover using Google or A9 or Vivissimo, or emailed to me to let me know a new installment of a conference broadcast is ready for downloading to my iPod.
It's about the capacity for making choices. I have already chosen to do away with commercial radio. I spend more time on the Net than I do watching television, and when doing the latter it's without full attention while I have the Powerbook in my lap.
It's about connectivity with others, and sharing knowledge, something these old media long ago stopped doing. (Didn't Jon Stewart sound like an audioblogger giving Crossfire a feed the other night!) I can't imagine what they can do to get my eyes and ears back, and while it will take new software, collaboration and energy to maintain a short list of "must hear" podcasts, I can only see a bright future for this medium.
Something about which I want a say, if only to say I want this, but not that. And now, or maybe later. On my schedule. It's my dime*, and I'll start listening when I want to...
* - or zac, for my Aussie readers of a certain age.
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