So having nuzzled around the podcasting theme in the last few articles we've finally 'bit the bullet', 'got our hands dirty', 'put our money where our mouth is' and other multi-mixed metaphors. So here we offer you our first podcast. It's an 18 minute interview with Brian Kelly who works with UKOLN and is the holder of the WebFocus post for UK Further and Higher Education. Not content with this as a sufficient challenge, we also recorded the interview via Skype, the VoiP solution so loved by some, and so hated by others. Let's start with a reminder of the audit trail of recent Auricle articles on this theme. First up was Probing podcasting from the professionals which now includes some additional links to MP3 resources. Next was a series of 3 articles called Recording online audio interactions - the easy way?. The latter had high 'geek' index, but provided a useful record of our trials and tribulations. In the end it all proved to be pretty easy so I'll keep the techy bits of what we did until the end of this posting.
For those of you who haven't yet absorbed the term 'podcast' here's a ultra sparse description. Technically, a podcast is just some RSS metadata which contains some extra markup which contains one or more links to a media file (usually, but not always, an MP3). Not really earth shattering when put this way, is it?. There are some, however, who contend that this small addition to the Really Simple Syndication (aka Rich Site Summary, or RDF Site Summary) format is now a major catalyst for change in the way we expect to receive our media and information.
Why?
Well, lots of people have iPods and iPod like devices which can playback and store audio data and some supporting textual information in a minature hard disk or, alternatively, in a solid-state memory device which has no moving parts (making it 'jog' proof). The latter, in particular, are very small light devices containing up to 2GB of data. The former are a little bigger, but can store even more data, e.g. up to 6GB (and rising). Such devices can be used to store and listen to music, or speech, or be used as a computer's removable data store.
But what makes podcasting work is the growing number of applications that now exist which, when provided with an appropriate URI, will connect to a website and download any new media files it finds there, automatically. In some cases, the podcast application will also automatically update the person's iPod-like device with this latest data.
So what! you say?
This is a bit of a problem for organisations who are still thinking they are leading edge because they have built a business or distribution model based on 'streaming' media where the consumer is expected to 'consume' the media during the period of 'transmission' of the stream over the wires or ether. Even worse for those organisations whose business or distribution model is based on broadcasting programmes over the ether at scheduled times, forcing users to use recording devices so they can time switch their consumption to when they, not the broadcaster, is ready. The advertisers certainly won't be happy with this audience drain.
No! What the podcast can do is change behaviour. The consumer decides what they are interested in and their device 'goes and gets' and keeps everything up-to-date based on the metadata contained in that RSS wrapper (as well as metadata in the media file itself). So we now have consumers who are listening to (and soon watching) what is in effect their own private playlists which must be making those who are used to controlling what, when, how and why very nervous. The destabilizing of this status quo is, however, opening up opportunities elsewhere. There's a new type of media entity already 'out there' which is going to become part of the mainstream fairly soon. For example, it's no longer necessary to own a radio station to broadcast. There are already individuals who are outside the broadcast mainstream who have multiple thousands of listeners who download their 'programmes' via podcasting applications, e.g. iPodder. The best known of these podcasters is, arguably, Alan Curry whose programme The Daily Source Code contains the unforgetable line in its signature “we don't need no stinking transmitters” (warning: Curry is very politically incorrect so don't go there if your are of a sensitive disposition).
What Curry demonstrates, however, is an incredible mastery of a medium and distribution method which requires relatively modest resources to produce, is not tied to a studio, and, furthermore, benefits from contributions from his listeners, some of which have very high production values. The result is that Curry can produce his Daily Source Code from hotel rooms anywhere in the world by dynamically linking content and commentary via his Google GMail account or Skype interviews and then uploading it as an MP3 file to his server for his listeners (or their devices) to download.
Anyway that's enough of 'the world as we know it is coming to an end' rant. If you're interested in the results of our efforts then you can listen to the Brian Kelly interview either by downloading the MP3 directly or if you want to try this podcasting thingy for yourself why not download iPodder or any of the other similar applications and add the following URI to its 'add a podcast' field or equivalent:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-learning/Download/podcasts/auriclepodcasts.xml
We will do other occasional podcasts of this nature. So if you get a call from us in the near future we will offer no road to wealth, only even more recognition of your importance!
And finally, a little bit for the technically or production minded. We used Audacity for recording and editing at 44,100Hz 16 bit PCM wav (~166 MB) and exported as 64 Kbps MP3 (~8MB). Skype was used to talk to each other in different parts of the University. We used two cheap Plantronics headsets, put up 'do not disturb notices' on the office doors, turned off email and instant messaging sounds and redirected the phones. My Plantronics headset was cheaper than Brian's more expensive version, but IMHO my microphone was less noisy than Brian's … or perhaps it was just his penchant for heavy breathing:)
