Podcasts: New Twist on Net Audio
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A technology that delivers internet audio programs directly to iPods and other MP3 players, podcasting is gaining a following among people who can't listen to their favorite shows when they're live. By Daniel Terdiman.
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It's a relaxed entry this time, an update on some recent happenings in the Linux audio world. Without further preamble, let's take a look at some of the good things going on there.
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A new service from BlogTalkRadio... Call their special phone number: 646-200-0000. It records the call. When you're done it creates an RSS 2.0 feed with an enclosure that's an MP3 of the call.  The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from. I just called in a podcast from my Nokia N95, which they added to this feed: http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/8583429663  That's all there is to it! No registration. They have a web page for it, but it's completely unnecessary.  It's the new application of RSS that I wrote about on Saturday. It's brilliant because of it's so simple. Some people think innovation in technology is about how hard it was to implement, or how long it took, or how complex it is, or convoluted. They see innovation as wizardry. I see it differently. I'm impressed by the ratio of functionality to complexity. I like that number to be as big as possible, because the less complex it is, the fewer moving parts, the less likely it is to break, and the easier it will be for others to build on the idea. Hats off to the BTR guys, they've come up with something truly useful that's also very simple.  Could it be simpler? I don't see how.
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Some wireless gadgets pump music from a computer to a stereo or TV. Others take a broadband connection and make it available to any PC within range.
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Continuing the thread from yesterday. I got absolutely nowhere, some people suggested I use a smart playlist, missing the point that I'm a developer working on a podcatcher, not a user trying to use iTunes as a podcatcher. I'm sure it's an excellent way to subscribe to podcasts, but I have my own ideas how podcatchers should work, and I want to integrate them with other stuff I'm working on. Integrating with iTunes is proving to be quite a challenge, or maybe it's an art, we'll see.  As usual Mac users are superior sumbitches.  (Quoting the James Brolin character the first time we meet him in the third season finale of The West Wing.) Anyway, the search continues, I tried another more direct tack, and looked for glue for iTunes for UserLand, and bingo, there's a match, from 2001, a well-known Frontier programmer Sean Elfstrom, apparently converted glue for the Sonic SoundJam app that iTunes used to be, before Apple acquired it.  I installed the glue in the OPML Editor. It's daunting, for sure, but let's see what I can get working.
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In this week's entry we'll look at two more "live" CDs of Linux systems optimized for multimedia creation and performance. I've been having a great time with these systems, and I hope that my mini-profiles inspire you to try them all. They're a great way to introduce someone to Linux, they show off the system optimized for multimedia performance and they provide a wealth of high-quality sound and music software to exploit that system. They all include the standard cornucopia of applications for the mundane tasks, word processing, text editing, graphics, networking, and so on. All that, for the cost of a download and a disc.
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The Brits finally move to let people use personal FM transmitters such as the Griffin iTrip to connect their iPods to car stereos. Plus: Zune Hack: Trade Any File, Quick In Listening Post.
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After getting a taste of the radio business in college, software designer Craig Patchett never lost his interest in broadcasting. But without a job in radio, it seemed likely to remain one of those unfulfilled passions &#151; until something called "podcasting" came along.
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Podcasting for the iPod  If you are fed up with listening to your local FM station and the mass of inane adverts that punctuate each show, or, if you crave interesting spoken word programmes that are written and presented by excited, knowledgeable enthusiasts, then Adam Curry's "Daily Source Code" podcast may ...
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Scientists have tested whether cellular audio is good enough to play and record animal sounds in the wild.
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Listening to radio over the Internet is easier than ever, as high-speed connections have proliferated and online offerings become more sophisticated. Now the legal aspects may be falling into place too.
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New high-quality audio files may entice audiofiles to buy classical fare on the web.
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When you can spend over a thousand dollars for all-in-one portable digital microphones that record at broadcast quality, podcasting (or netcasting -- call it what you will) has gotten ready for primetime. In Listening Post.
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New lightweight microphone systems allow high-fidelity recordings to be captured and stored on an iPod and can easily be transferred to a computer
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In the coming weeks and months you'll probably see me writing about issues of podcatchers here, because I'm working on one. It's the third one I've written, so this time maybe I'll get it right.  A lot of things have changed since I wrote my first podcatcher back in 2001. 1. Back then there were no podcasts, so it was a proof of concept, a chicken without an egg (or an egg with no chicken), a step in a bootstrap. Today there are lots of podcasts. An embarassment of riches. 2. Back then implementing a podcatcher was simple, there was exactly one format to support, RSS 2.0 with enclosures. Today, luckily, it's still fairly simple, as far as the format goes. The only variability is the iTunes namespace, which complicates things, just a little.  3. Today there are enough users to make it possible to support lists of podcasts published by fans, and instead of just subscribing to the podcast feeds, you can subscribe to lists of feeds. I will publish one of these lists, in OPML 2.0 format, as a proof of concept.  4. The first version of this new podcatcher will run in the OPML Editor because that's where all my software runs at first. But the goal is to port it to run in other environments, some with millions of users. I want to provide a popular alternative to the one that Apple publishes which currently dominates the market. (Note: I'm generally pleased with the way Apple dominates, they've been very fair about allowing users to export their subscription lists. But if we want to create the opportunity for others to innovate in the area of podcast players, there has to be choice at the podcatcher level. That's my main motive for revisiting this area.) There probably are some other changes, and I'll write about them as the project moves forward. Now.... To people who say that Apple has the market sewn up, I say Bah! I think iPods are great, but they're designed to play music, not podcasts. Every bit of music is something you want to keep forever, a podcast loses almost all its value after you've listened to it once. You have to pay for music (in theory at least) but podcasts are free.  Podcasts beg to have a player that can download them without synching with a desktop computer. Okay that's something podcasts have in common with music.  I buy Apple products all the time. I've gone from resenting Apple so much that I wouldn't buy their products, as recently as 2005, to today when not only do I only use Macs, but I'm constantly telling people why they'd be better off using Macs. I can't help but evangelize the products, I think they're that much better than Windows PCs.  But as much as I love Apple (can't believe I actually said that) I still don't trust them with a whole medium. We need them to have competition. The rest of the tech industry seems to think they're immune to it, that creates a huge opportunity with someone with enough chutzpah to think they can do it. Yours truly, Dave Winer
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Browse this week's Wired.com gadget reviews for an 11.2 surround sound receiver, a music player that carries recommendation radio, the ultimate in desktop speakers and more of the latest tech.
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Connect your MP3 player and phone audio in one fell swoop, on the cheap.