The Most Desperate Tivo

“Want to watch how the FBI uses math to solve crime?”

“The Tivo’s so desperate, it’s probably recording it for us right now.”

We’ve had the Tivo for about a week now. Yes, we’re still getting over-the-air broadcast television with our trusty rabbit ears – half-dozen channels depending on weather conditions.

This means Tivo is trying really, really hard to show us how smart it is. Unfortunately, there’s not much for it to impress us with. So far, its offered; religious programming, old Cosby reruns, Conan, Will & Grace, and a bunch of daytime talk shows.

Like a new puppy bringing home a dead bird.

No, it didn’t record Numb3rs for us. Guess the bird was too dead.

The Problems with Podcast Directories

I had a great lunch with Paul Cantrell today at Sushi Tango. Oh, and if you need an idea for lunch, ask Paul. He listed off a half-dozen other places that sounded just as fantastic.

One of the many things we discussed was the problem of podcast ratings and categorization – i.e. the problem of finding interesting podcasts.

At the bottom of each post here on the Work Better Weblog (and many of the other sites I contribute to) you’ll see a star rating. Click it if something I say resonates with you – don’t if it doesn’t. I offer it as a low-investment feedback mechanism. It’s cheaper than writing a comment and only slightly-more expensive than reading the post itself.

Like all feedback mechanisms – those most likely to bother are those at the poles (polls) – why speak up if you’re not the choir or in the wrong church altogether?

The number to pay attention is the number of votes – not the rating itself. So yes, an overall rating of 2.5 with 10 votes would be a good thing. In the end, our individual rating criteria are very different. Is this rating in comparison to the previous post? Another post on the same topic on a different weblog? How well my writing went with your morning coffee? Is 5 good or is 1 better?

The star is only a single indicator. Top rated posts on this blog will be different than top rated posts that I’ve written, than, well, you get the picture. How does a 4 at podcasts.yahoo.com compare to a 5 at Podcast Pickle to a 0 at Podcast Alley? Given how niche anything in a weblog or podcast is – the qualifiers of what these ratings mean are a mile long.

AmigoFish has promise – its collaborative filter + RSS feed sends new stuff directly to my feedreader – based on what I and others have rated – then provides an easy way to go back and finish the loop. Problem is (like all the directories) ratings are applied channel-wide and there are a lot of open loops.

I’ve got a channel over at GigaDial – Garrick’s Podcast Picks. It’s an on-going list of podcasts that I’ve found exceptional (35 as of this writing). Here’s the 9-step process for a item to get added to the list:

  1. A podcast finds its way into my feedreader
  2. It gets transferred into my iTunes’ Unlisted Podcast smart playlist
  3. It comes up on shuffle
  4. I listen and don’t hit ‘next’
  5. It resonates with me
  6. I remember I liked it the next time I’m at my computer
  7. I click the ‘add to podcast picks’ bookmarklet in my browser
  8. I search for the specific podcast in their directory (not everything is in there)
  9. I find the podcast and add it to the list

I gotta wanna – I’m just saying. So, this means something and I’m only going to do it once. Now, unless I take the extra step of telling the publisher I’ve added them – they’ll never know they connected. Same is true at all the other directories. That sucks. More than Earthlink advertisements in podcasts.

Within the RSS 2.0 spec, there’s an optional category tag, at the channel and item levels. It’s a free-form field – can be anything you’d like. Anything. If it’s a series of characters – it’s a category. And it can be different item to item, podcast to podcast.

Reminds me of a scene in a quiz show sketch from MTV’s 90s comedy show ‘The State’:

“Name a type of car.”
“Blue.”
“Yes, blue can be a type of car.”
Applause.

So, why are all the directories shoehorning podcasters into 15 main, meaningless sections when each podcaster could declare their own unique categories – plural – and standout?

A single-dimension directory is like trying to make money hosting podcasts or sanitizing telephones – it’s only fulfilling at the most cursory level. This is why Google is still the best podcast directory – it takes very specific queries, ones with multiple qualifiers. Then returns fulfilling results.

Bringing me to the podcast directories splogging up the search results. Yes, podcast directories are guilty of the same crime as the the other PageRank-loving sploggers – taking an RSS feed and republishing it for higher placement. 6 of the 10 items on the first page of Google results for “first crack podcast” are directories echoing one another. This redundancy makes each result less valuable.

Update: 9 Feb 06, If you’d like a more colorful read of the same issues, The Bman at FalconTwin.com delivers

Karaoke Gone Very Very Wrong

Sinéad O’Connor’s classic song “The Emperor’s New Clothes” came up on my iTunes this morning. This happens fairly often because its in my ‘Getting Things Done’ playlist.

Anyway – this particular time I was inspired to sing along – inspired to sing along as Garrick channelling Jimmy Fallon channelling Barry Gibb channelling Young Fine Cannibals.

I’d be happy to share it with you if someone wants to pick up the licensing fees 😉

First Crack 68. Dan Carroll Talks about the IMP Media Player

Dan Carroll and I grab lunch at Joes Garage and we talk about IMP – his music and movie distribution platform currently in beta.

We talk about how it benefits independent artists, how it’s different than iTunes, the decision to go with BiTorrent, and who this platform is intended for.

We start off with a bit about Attention and then get down to business.

Listen to Dan Carroll Talk About the IMP Media Player [18 min]

More about IMP over at the Minneapolis Observer

Amazing Race 8 – Episode 11

Dear Amazing Race,
Thanks for visiting our airport. We have a lovely city as well.
Love, Minneapolis, MN

Detour: Slide it or Roll it
You’re in Canada and you don’t go curling? That’s like, well, going to Canada and not curling.

This is why I like the Lintz’s – they have such enthusiasm. Makes armchair travel all worth it.

They have to find a door on the back of a non-descript warehouse? Why didn’t they just stick around Minneapolis for the final? We’ve got curling and non-descript warehouses with ‘J’s painted on the doors.

I’ve been hoping for a catch-up this entire episode. Looks like I got it – the search the stadium for 5 minute-apart departure times for the next morning, should bring everyone neck and neck.

(Oh yeah, and I vote for Jen to do the trapeze catch.)

Jen says when she flew back from visiting me in Germany (almost a decade ago, wow) the pilot pointed out the CN Tower.

Detour: Ship or Shoe
Jen just gave me a #10 “are they serious?” look after Phil described the ‘Shoe’ task. So, um, I’ll be hiking up a ship.

On a related note, we checked out the Cinderalla holiday exhibit at Fields downtown earlier tonight. Lots of fun – the exhibition designers did some very cool mirror work to show the magical transformations. The little man slept through it.

Roadblock: Geography Puzzle
I’m taking this one. I remember a puzzle from my youth very similar to this one – though that one didn’t have the Canadian provinces – and it was much smaller.

Final Standing of Garrick’s Favorites:

  • Lintz – #1

This is the second time I was on the end of my seat hoping for my favorite to win. Sure, it wasn’t like last season where I stopped watching.

Jen’s closing thoughts, “They’re such good kids.”

Special thanks go to Tivo for making this 2-hr finale much easier to get through. I now consider pausing live-TV a necessity for new parents. Coincedently, with all our stopping and restarting – we ended at 10pm.

Looks like we’ll meet all back here in Feb for another 2-person trek. Until then – it’s all non-elimination rounds.

Tuesday Triple Play – The ER Being Like an After Bar

This triple play was tough, two of these songs were sitting in the queue for a while now awaiting a third. This morning inspiration struck – like that scene from Pulp Fiction. Conventional wisdom says there’s a fine line separating pleasure and pain. These three songs aren’t sure which side they’re on.

Aggregation Not Adding Value?

Splogs or spam-blogs are a problem I’ve touched on before. I find them annoying and whenever Technorati points me to something smelling sploggy, I hit my SplogReporter bookmarklet.

My criteria for splog:

  • whole-cloth copying of another weblog’s post
  • minimal or nonexistent attribution to the original authors and weblogs
  • no explicit “we’re aggregating these sites” messaging

RSS makes it real easy to communicate with readers frequently and automatically – and real easy for robots to make splogs. Simply subscribing to an RSS feed isn’t “content theft” – doing so and not explicitly crediting the original site/author is. Absolutely. No Question.

I can appreciate Mark Cuban’s position that “a search on any blog engine should uncover the unique content on their original source” – not any of the derivatives. The lack of this strictness is why slogs exist anyway. I don’t agree with his position that aggregation doesn’t add value. Aggregation is a very simple way to provide value – Bloglines, Yahoo, and Google have based a number of products on that belief. To me, aggregation and search are two ways of answering the same problem. The trick is to know who’s the aggregator and who’s the source when the aggregator is being dishonest.

When I’m pulling together some feeds for an aggregator, say PodcastMN or MNRep I use the link – or preferably the guid – element in RSS to point back to the original author. Upon reviewing the spec while writing this post, looks like source exists “to propagate credit for links, to publicize the sources of news items.”

Makes sense – and I’ve just added that tag into the aggregators. Seems to me being strict about RSS tags first and checking sources second is a useful to fight splogs and un-attributed content aggregation.