Category: Updates

Podcasting faces growing pains
Scott Kirsner, The Boston Globe, February 28, 2005:

Remember the Web in 1994? Lots of pictures of pet cats and long lists of people’s favorite junk foods. Podcasting is in the same place today as the Web was in 1994. These personal radio broadcasts, designed to be downloaded to an iPod or similar MP3 player, are homespun, rough-edged, and — let’s be honest — not all that riveting. Some of the best podcasts so far are recordings of speeches and roundtables from high-priced technology conferences; some of the worst are like eavesdropping on your next-door neighbors while they’re making dinner and talking about their day.

Now that things are rolling, we’ve stopped renting and finally bought: the Hawaii Association of Podcasters can now be found at hawaiipodcasting.com. Of course, the old address will redirect here for a little while. Be sure to update your bookmarks and links. Continue reading “New URL”

For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting, John Markoff, New York Times, February 25, 2005:

The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web’s next big thing. That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city’s Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting – the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts.

Watch this space for an exciting announcement from podcasters Shane Robinson and Roxanne Darling regarding a new website and an upcoming podcasting seminar. In the mean time, note that podcasting fan Bob Lew will be giving two presentations as part of the “Living Digital Brown-Bag Lunchtime Series” at UH Downtown:

• Thursday, March 3 (noon to 1 p.m.):
  Podcatching: Listen Up – Voices Speak to Me from My Ipod (Or Any Digital Audio Media Player)
  “For anyone who loves listening to the wide variety of internet audio programming, but can`t always listen to their favorite shows when they`re scheduled or take the time to download them manually, help has arrived. Your iPod can have a set of audio subscriptions that are refreshed frequently — free.”
• Thursday, April 7 (12:30 to 1:30 p.m.):
  Podcasting: Talking to the World or Anyone Who Will Listen
  “Podcasters are the source for the `podcatchers.` It`s audio broadcasting for the 21st century and audio stardom for every man. Become a pilot instead of just a passenger. Begun in August 2003, there are over 300 podcaster sites and 1,000s of audio files. Maybe that 60GB iPod isn`t so capacious after all.”

The Hawaii Association of Podcasters site is up, with a few links and some basic information. Of course, we don’t know if we’re an association, a guild, a club, or what… or who “we” are, for that matter. But we’ve got to start somewhere.

For the record, the group was born following a Feb. 17 talkstory lunch with the Bytemarks group, which that day consisted of Bob Lew, Burt Lum, Larry Geller, and Ryan Ozawa. What happens next? Stay tuned and find out.

Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star, Annalee Newitz, Wired, March 2005:

He’s gone from MTV to MP3, and now he’s leading a grassroots rebellion called podcasting. Why amateurs may soon rule the airwaves (begin download now)… Welcome to podcasting, the medium that promises a future where anyone can make radio, instead of just listen to it. The biggest podcast audiences now number in the mere tens of thousands. Yet real radio, the kind with bona fide mass audiences, is starting to use the technology to make its shows available for download.

‘Podcasters’ deliver radio-on-demand, Celeste Biever, New Scientist, February 13, 2005:

The ubiquity of MP3 players, the emergence of easy-to-use, inexpensive audio-editing software, and the explosion in the number of blogs where information on new podcasts is posted, has created an environment ripe for podcasting. There are now more than 700,000 different podcasts to subscribe to, compared with 5000 only three months ago. While some traditional broadcasters are now podcasting, the majority of postings are by geeks who keep up with the emerging technology. As a result the casts tend to be a little rough at the edges, and some are positively bizarre. Fancy musical news? Try the Tapdancing News, a satirical news round-up sung by California-based Sondra Lowell while she tap dances.

Radio to the MP3 degree: Podcasting, Byron Acohido, USA Today, February 9, 2005:

Big tech and media companies could not have foreseen this potentially disruptive hitch to their grand strategies… Like the blogging phenomenon, podcasts have come out of nowhere to attract an enthusiastic grassroots following. They’re being generated by a wide cast of characters — from professional broadcasters to rank amateurs. Listeners can download shows to their computers, or, with a bit of know-how, automatically export shows to an Apple iPod — hence the term “podcast” — or any MP3 player.

‘Podcasting’ takes broadcasting to the Internet, Associated Press, February 7, 2005:

Less than a year old, podcasting enables anyone with a PC to become a broadcaster. It has the potential to do to the radio business what Web logs have done to print journalism. By bringing the cost of broadcasting to nearly nothing, it’s enabling more voices and messages to be heard than ever before… For listeners, podcasting offers a diverse menu of programs, which can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime. Unlike traditional radio, shows can be easily paused, rewound or fast-forwarded. The listener doesn’t need to be near a PC, unlike most forms of Internet radio.