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December 2, 2008

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Technometria Podcast No. 100: Elias Torres and Ben Adida on RDFa

Today I published the 100th Technometria podcast on IT Conversations. The show was a conversation with Elias Torres and Ben Adida about RDFa. I learned about RDFa from Elias and Ben when we were in Beijing for WWW2007 last April. The idea is simple: RDF is nice but requires people write metadata separate from the content it describes. Why not embed that semantic information inside the HTML as attributes? This is a pretty cool idea--complimentary to the idea of microformats, I think--that just might make the semantic web palatable enough that it actually happens.

Bonus: Here's an RDFa Primer

Tags: rdfa microformats itconversations podcasting

June 5, 2008

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Happy Birthday IT Conversations!

IT Conversations is five years old today! Doug started ITC before the word "podcasting" was even a word. Doug mentions these milestones on his blog:

  • published 1,743 audio programs (89 currently in production)
  • trained 152 members of TeamITC who produce our programs
  • created four channels based on the IT Conversations model
  • created PodCorps.org (now 640+ stringers)
  • released The Levelator (more than 83,500 downloads)

I was one of Doug's first interviews and now I'm the Executive Producer. It's been a fun ride and I've enjoyed my association with Doug and the other members of TeamITC very much.

Tags: itconversations podcasting

April 15, 2008

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» NewsGang Fantasies: The Dream Team

I enjoy the News Gang, The Gang, the Gillmor Gang, or whatever it's called. Actually, I think Steve's starting to call it all the Gillmor Gang again and that's good. That's the right name and brand for Steve's podcasts. I usually listen to the Gang, as I can, while I'm driving.

There's quite a flow and I can't listen to them all (after all, I have all the IT Conversations stuff to listen to). So, I usually just pull up the latest. Today that was Friday's show.

I found myself laughing out loud as it devolved from a discussion of Shel Israel and his puppet alter ego to a liberal fantasy where Cheney and Rumsfeld are tried for war crimes by President Obama. That wasn't enough, in this flight of fancy, Hillary is the veep, Bill is the Secretary of State and both Kerry and Dukakis (yeah, him) are given cabinet posts. Not sure how Mondale fell out of favor, but he didn't get a mention that I heard.

What really cracked me up however was someone's comment that this would be awesome. Hillary could do health care, Bill could do foreign policy and Obama could do....then there was a long pause. The speaker couldn't find a role for Obama. I guess he can make speeches, exhorting them all to have hope and work for change.

The Democrats always seem to find ways to lose elections. This conversation was an indication why. Do they really not understand why the nation rejected people like Dukakis and Kerry? Are they so blind to that that they would seriously consider them part of the dream team? Yes. They are.

Between Obama and McCain, I'm actually split. I'm sure I wouldn't like many of Obama's policies, but I relate to him more generationally and sometimes that makes a bigger difference than politics. But if I had any inkling that any one of the people mentioned in the "dream team" were going to be part of the cabinet, he'd never get my vote and I think that's true of many. Hillary, even as veep, is poison to the Democratic ticket. Don't walk--run!

Tags: podcasting politics

January 5, 2008

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» PodcampSLC Date has Been Moved

The podcamp scheduled in Salt Lake for January 26th has been changed to March 29th. The location, Neumont University, is the same. I'm planning on going.

Tags: podcasting utah events

November 29, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Scoble on Tech at Fast Company

Scoble is doing a video column at Fast Company called Scoble on Tech. Interesting format: Scoble and Ed Sussman from Fast Company are chatting on video. There's pretty high production value--it's edited down so that you see each person when they talk and there are out takes to sites they talk about and graphics.

I just heard about it from Brad Baldwin while we were meeting about Podcamp SLC (Jan 26--more later). I watched the show on Open Social and learned some things. There's definitely meat here.

Still, I'm not convinced that lots of people are going to take the time to regularly watch video. Do you watch much video online (besides the funny YouTube videos people send you in email, I mean)? Really? Doing something like Scoble on Tech is considerably more expensive than an audio podcast. I'm reticent to make that kind of time commitment without a compelling reason.

Tags: itconversations podcasting

May 10, 2007

Richard K. Miller
no nic
Richard K Miller
» 5 ingredients for a do-it-yourself podcast

At work I’m the “producer” of a podcast, and here are the tools we use:

1. Apple Garageband — Found on every Mac, this free app makes it easy to record and combine tracks, add effects and art, and create podcasts.

2. Logitech USB Headset — This isn’t a professional mike, but it works fine for us and it’s comfortable to wear and use.

3. WordPress — The best open source blogging platform. You’ll need web hosting and your own domain to install this.

4. PodPress — A powerful WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a podcasting platform. This plugin takes care of all the nitty gritty (podcast enclosures), offers an embedded Flash player for easy listening, and provides stats.

5. Mime Config — If you plan to publish “enhanced” podcasts for iTunes, chances are your server isn’t configured to recognize the “m4a” format. Install this WordPress plugin and add the mime type “m4a = audio/mpeg”.

What other tools are you using for creating podcasts?

May 9, 2007

Richard K. Miller
no nic
Richard K Miller
» Mining iTunes for podcast listenership data

For podcasters and their advertisers, tracking the size of a podcast’s audience is sticky. You can track how many people download a podcast, but who knows if they actually listened to it?

iTunes is the #1 podcasting client (57% market share last year), and additional podcatchers push podcasts into iTunes, so much of the data about podcast listenership can be found in iTunes. Advertisers just need a way to get to it.

I recently commented to Phil Windley that perhaps the iTunes XML file could be mined for listenership data. iTunes exports an XML file that contains a rating, play count, last played date, and last skip date for every song and podcast. This would be extremely valuable information for advertisers.

Phil connected me with Doug Kaye, the creator of IT Conversations, who is now exploring a way to automate the flow of this valuable iTunes information back to podcasters. After seeing the architecture he created with Amazon.com web services, I believe if anybody can do this, Doug can.