Nielsen Analytics’ Economics of Podcasting

Earlier this year, Nielsen Analytics surveyed a bunch of people in Las Vegas and found 102 people that described themselves as ‘regular podcast listeners’.

Thankfully, those 102 (77 men / 35 women) represented.

Some interesting bits

  • 61 people (50 men / 11 women) said they “always fast forward” advertisements
  • The survey found that the average length of the podcasts being listened to was 44 minutes. (Dave, isn’t that how long your walk is?)
  • The cumulative total of all monthly downloads for a given podcast series can hit 2 million. (No mention of how many were failed or actually listened to.)
  • Training, education, and other business-to-business oriented podcasts make more sense than entertainment podcasts.

Nielsen’s entire report is $1200 (I’d like to link it, but I can’t find a url that works). Now that’s how to make money podcasting.

Even Free Registration Has a Cost

Yesterday, I did a good amount of thinking about the registration model of the T-minus aggregator project. At this point, I’m confident that a good portion of the service will be free and without registration.

This was confirmed when I went to check out the Technorati redesign this morning and neither the site nor my browser remembered my name/pass combo. Looking in Keychain Access – I had 3 records for the site. Huh, which one works?

There are a few bits in the T-minus project where some having some identification or authentication makes more sense than not – but as a whole, requiring a name/password combo doesn’t make any sense.

Update: Steven from Panic agrees registration isn’t always a necessity to communicate value.

Growing a Business – Today, 20 Years Later

I completely disconnected from phone, computer, internet, for a day and a half this weekend. Much of that time was spent reading Paul Hawken’s ‘Growing a Business’.

On my way through the book, I had to keep checking and double checking the publication date (1987). Growing a Business reads like Cluetrain Manifesto (2001) – commerce is better when it’s done at a personal level, etc.

Using Names in Rails Routes Instead of IDs

I spent tonight cranking through some Ruby on Rails has_many :through association oddities and after pounding my head against the keyboard, I decided to shift gears and figure out Ruby On Rails Routes.

By default, the Rails expects ID to be passed in URL strings. But that’s really lame, and passing words is much cooler so, how do you do that?

Turns out, it’s so simple no one talks about it (vs. so hard no one’s figured it out).

Take the following example:
http://mydomain/friend/show/1

What’s ‘show’? Who’s friend 1? Don’t they have a name?
Sure they do. Let’s say their name is ‘Wooster’

Here’s how to make turn the above url string into:
http://mydomain/friend/wooster

  1. Get the name of the database column storing your friends’ names (let’s say it’s ‘name’).
  2. In config/routes.rb add, somewhere above the default route:
    map.connect 'friend/:name', :controller => 'friends', :action => 'show'
  3. Now, in friends_controller, find def show and change it to:
    @friend = Friend.find_by_name(params[:name])
  4. Lastly, all the id-based urls pointing to our good friend Wooster need to be updated to reflect the name-based change. Like the one your Friends list.rhtml file.
    'show', :name => friend.name

When Murphy Decides You Need to Use Windows

Just last week, I was taking with someone about Parallels Desktop. Cavalierly, I stated how I grabbed a trial key – but then realized I had no need to use for Windows.

Then just days later, I needed to see what a process looked like on Windows. Funny, Murphy, real funny.

Option 1. The Mac mini home server does have a Windows partition on it, but no monitor. So I’d have to disconnect it form the rats nest of external hard drives and other peripherals, plug it into the living room TV and reboot.

Option 2. Install VirtualPC on the eMac with the dead keyboard (no ability to open the DVD drive). Share the install disc across the network and run the install via VNC.