Will anyone Podcast the Hurricane?!
The Blogverse is abuzz with activity and the National Hurricane Center is warning folks out of Florida (check out this
news blog!), fleeing in the face of Hurricane Wilma.
I hope all you Podcast enthusiasts packed your iPods full of Podcast shows and MP3's for the long slow drive out of Florida! We are keeping our fingers crossed for you all that Hurricane Wilma does not increase back up to a Category 5 storm.
That makes us think... There are plenty of people in Florida... More than a few Podcasters too. So is anyone going to be recording a Podcast in the face of the Hurricane? Before the state loses power anyway?
It may be slow Halloween in Florida if Hurricane Wilma has anything to say about it... maybe we can convince Wilma to wear a Britney Spears Halloween Costume... much less scary than a category 5 Hurricane!!!
Good Luck Florida.... our thoughts are with you as you try to weather the coming Hurricane Wilma...
Geocachers Turned Grave Robbers?
Absolutely ridiculous... I know this is a little off topic (Geocaching) for this Blog, but it is such a great example of news gone wrong that I had to mention it.
I don't know how many of you are 'in the know' when it comes to
Geocaching but don't worry... you are obviously not alone!
We have a geocaching oriented podcast (a geocast or podcache I suppose) in our directory, and wrote a blog entry previously on the subject.
I won't go over the story again... you can read it below, but basically a local mayor (neil craig) and newspaper (the barrie examiner) made ridiculous remarks about Geocaching, a very community friendly sport, before bothering to find out any facts. It was such a ridiculous story that it has been picked up across Canada already...
The blog entry below was written by a friend who runs
http://www.centralontariocachers.com/index.htm. Letters have been written both to the Mayor and the paper and the mayor at least has made a retraction about the sport of Geocaching. We contacted the
local TV station who released a correction of the story...
This story is so bizarre that it would be funny if it didn't damage the credibility of a great sport (Geocaching)... Long Live The Blog!!!
Read on and give me your comments:
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Geocachers Wrongly accused of being Grave Robbers in Oro-Medonte historic site.
Read the short newspaper column hereI am going to have to ask you to bear with my tone in this blog. With the events that have transpired through geocaching in the last week, my patience with the media has been pushed to the limit.
It turns out that a local Historic location was victim of some vandals who now are believed to be grave robbers. Leave it up to the media to assume that because there is a virtual cache location at this spot that it MUST have been a Geocacher looking for "Buried Treasure".
News articles quickly spread implicating Geocachers as the culprit for these crimes.What pisses me off the most is how hastily the media were in crucifying Geocachers as the perpetrators in this case. Most of these media sources including, but not limited to The Barrie Examiner, CICX 104 and Barrie's B101 all had the audacity to assume that these words were fact without doing some investigation.
Now I am not a complete idot. I am aware that "Good" news is useless news, but this has gone too far, but if
This Article has caused even ONE person to think twice about a sport/hobby that has given so much back to the community and gotten so many people outdoors into a healthy lifestyle for them and their families, Shame on these media outlets.
I have attempted to contact the above Media organizations. I have not heard back from any of them. I would fully expect contact back from at least the Barrie Examiner. If I do not, and if I see one more Barrie Examiner newspaper on my driveway, I will do everything in my power to charge them with Littering because I don't want that trash on my property.
posted by Swifteroo
Who's Got A Podcast?
If you look at a who's who of the podverse right now, you will see a decent cross section of industries that have jumped on the bandwagon. Podcasting
has been commercialized, whether some of us like it or not; which just emphasizes the power of this medium.
Podcasting is no longer about garage bands and basement talk-shows, indie music and amateur sound effects. Over the past year, if one thing has become clear, it is that the power of voice is stronger than the power of the written word. A good speaker can control his audience far more easily than a good writer.
This is the reason so many marketers are using solutions like audio generator on their websites to 'talk' to new visitors. Seeing the potential of this powerful medium, big business has now moved in and firmly claimed their (fair?) share of the podverse landscape.
So who's Podcasting? Everybody I think...
Rock bands... Pornographers... Politicians and Governments... Retailors... The Police... Fire Departments... Churches... Universities... and now even Realtors (propertycasting!)...
And yes, the list goes on and on and on and...
Why? Well, to quote Matt Barr, communications director for a la mode inc, a Web services provider:
"That's what podcasting has done across media -- make it more convenient," Barr said. "It's like TiVo for audio. It's natural."
So, obviously, natural for people means 'good breeding ground for commercial ventures'.
What Is A Podcast?!?
We get so caught up in this very cool medium that it almost becomes hard to understand that there are still so many people that do not know what Podcasting is. I still get a few emails a day asking me "
What is a Podcast".
I went to visit the inlaws this weekend. It is a three hour trip that we only make a couple of times a year and so is a big deal when it happens. I married into an Italian family who think that at 200 lbs I am too skinny and try to feed me for three days straight... my first Italian word was - Mange - ( - EAT - hope I spelled it right).
Anyway, in between rounds of radichio, Pesto and my favorite cheese ravioli, I asked a slew of highschool age kids if they downloaded any podcasts... and was met with a room full of blank stares... No one knew what I was talking about...
So I spent an hour explaining it and the Podverse has 12 or so new converts :) But it just goes to show you... no matter how big you think something is getting, sometimes it feels like you may just be living in a bubble of your own.
To fight this feeling, the gang here at Podcast Empire have made it one of our goals to make as many people aware of Podcasting as possible... so, here is the - slightly dry - Wikipedia answer to the question:
What is a Podcast!?!Podcasting is a method of publishing audio and video programs via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers.
"Podcasting" in its strictest sense is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, which uses a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio shows," and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically.
However, since computer jargon is frequently misused, the word "Podcast" is frequently used to describe the posting of any link to a media-player-compatible audio file (typically MP3) on a website. Some radio personalities post MP3 versions of their shows daily, and even though these are simple download links, and not part of any subscription model, they are nonetheless typically referred to as "Podcasts."
Most podcatching software enables the user to copy podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. From the earliest RSS-enclosure tests, feeds have been used to deliver video files as well as audio. By 2005 some aggregators and mobile devices could receive and play video, but the "podcast" name remained most associated with audio.
"Podcasting" is a portmanteau misnomer that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player. Also podcasting does not involve broadcasting or sending out of audio, since citizens need to point software to XML-tagged file to pull it down to their computer or portable device.
Aware of that misleading association from the beginning, some writers have suggested alternative names or reinterpretations of the letters "p-o-d", without winning much of a following. One little-used alternative is "blogcasting", which implies content based on, or similar in format to, blogs. Another is "audioblogging."
