Leo Laporte Gives Up on Podcasting

I’ve subscribed to the Daily Giz Wiz for quite a while now – the combination of goofy banter, unloved gadgets, generally silliness, and it’s brevity makes for great podcasting. It’s the only TWIT-family podcast I was still subscribed.

Unfortunately, in today’s – #166 – the new TWIT intro calls it a ‘netcast’.

Lame. What’s a ‘netcast’? Do I need a boat and a body of water?

I heard Laporte’s rational for attempting to change the name at the recent 2006 PodcastExpo – he wants Apple to claim trademark of ‘podcast’. A term and media form developed by the podcast community – not Apple.

Double Lame. Rather than standing up to Apple, supporting the podcast community, simplifying the explanation for new listeners, keeping things simple for existing listeners – Laporte gives up.

Like Dave Winer said about RSS vs Atom: Two is more than twice as bad.

This thing – a multimedia file distributed via an RSS feed – is a podcast.

I’m unsubbing from DGW until it’s called a ‘podcast’ or at least a ‘clambake‘. I can’t support a name change and the software I’m using only understands ‘podcasts’.

RELATED 06 APRIL 2007

” I’m afraid, I can’t have anything to do with Twitter, either. It’s just fueling the confusion [with TWiT].” – Leo Laporte

I completely agree with Tony @ Deep Jive Interests when he says:

“I just don’t see what [leaving Twitter] is going to solve.”

This is another silly publicity stunt from the big twit.

RELATED 09 NOV 2007

“I surrender Twitter. You win.” – Leo Laporte

Odeo Disconnects

“As of November 1, 2006, Odeo phone posting will no longer accept calls. We will continue to host and serve all MP3s made with the service indefinitely, but you will no longer be able to use it to post new audio.”

Until moments ago, I would recommend Odeo and Hipcast (formerly Audioblog.com) as the easiest way to get podcasting – just sign up and call the phone number they give you. (Odeo free, Hipcast small fee)

Boom. Mass voicemail.

Outside of that, I wasn’t sure what Odeo had unique and compelling from so many of the other players in the space (is it a directory?, a studio?, a social network?, an aggregator?). Only their post-by-phone clicked for me. I guess it didn’t click for anyone else.

Kudos to Hipcast for charging from the beginning and ensuring a greater permanence than a free, resource-intensive service.

Many thanks to Eric Rice for clarifying the difference between Hipcast and AudioBlogger.com (the post-by-phone engine behind Odeo). For quite a while, I thought they were one in the same. Real glad they’re not.

Introducing the HijackingWP Script

One of my biggest problems with podcasting is the production process. Even without editing the audio, the process is far too manual to repeat without inherent discouragement (65 podcasts in year 1 and 20 in year 2 should speak to that).

In an effort to publish more and make podcasting as effortless as writing this post, I spent a couple hours last night writing the HijackingWP script.

It’s a little Applescript glue to connect AudioHijackPro (recording), Transmit (uploading), and WordPress (publishing and distribution).

More info at the HijackingWP page.

Oh, and yes, First Crack 86 proves it works. 😉

“Statistically Nobody is Listening to Your Podcast”

“…at the beginning of the year Feedburner had 1 million subscriptions to podcasts it helped deliver. That number has now grown to 5 million subscribers for 71,000 podcasts. For you math fans, that means the average podcast has … 70 subscribers. – Frank Barnako”

(emphasis mine.)

70 is a great number. It’s not a number that makes sense for advertisers – it’s statistically zero (credit to Dave Slusher for the quote titling this post). Well, until we can accurately measure influence and caring.

“But it is a number that can find your friends, like thinkers and make you feel that you are talking to more than 3 people.” – Kris Smith.

Exactly. Mass voicemail.

Related:

“”The average blog has exactly one reader: the blogger.” – Eric Schmidt, CEO Google, via Jeff Jarvis