Thursday, April 28, 2005

Business: Podcasting: The radio-free radio experience

Not that there is any single 'podcasting realm' - which is one of the aspects podcasters find so appealing. There is no Federal Podcast Commission, no corporate radio giant dictating topics and playlists. Content can be as niche as niche gets; some topics listed on Podcast Alley - the Billboard of podcasts - include quilting, 'gay sexcapades,' and Florida Gulf Coast University hockey.
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bhg adds, if podcasting is Citizen's Band Radio and the evolution of CB was GSM/GPRS/3G mobile telephony, expect big business to want to buy into podcasting.

Mac News: Trends: Bring Radio to Your iPod

Like satellite radio, podcasting is going to free us all from the bonds and torture of commercial radio. It may play a self-congratulatory 'six hits in a row without a commercial break' but then stops anyhow for a commercial break. And that's before we consider the Radio Thailand news, which a recent Harvard study showed was the most likely cause of driver drowsiness in the country.

Unlike satellite radio, podcasts challenge both the creator and the listener. No iPod owner needs a blogger to record 25 minutes of music for him every day, but she might want to listen to 25 minutes of thought, philosophy, alternative news, jokes, a roundup of the soap operas.

CNET News.com: Stage two of the podcasting revolution

Enter Podscope: the first search engine built specifically for podcasts. It was developed by a company called TVEyes, which specializes in audio and video files that are text-searchable (ironically, the company recently licensed its technology to Yahoo for video searching).

How does it work? According to TVEyes CEO David Ives, the core of the system involves a spider that plays each of the podcasts it tracks and then runs a speech-to-text algorithm on it. When you search Podscope, you're searching that database of transcribed text. Find something you like and you can play the entire show, subscribe or listen to just a snippet that includes the word or phrase you entered.

Digital Silence: Nokia release iPod busting phone

It seems that Nokia just can't stop cramming more and more features into their range of phones. The latest innovation is an addition of a 4GB hard drive to offer music storage which rivals apple's iconic iPod.

The iPod, with it's huge storage capacity and it's miniscule presence in your pocket quickly made it's way up the ranks to become the must have tech toy of the past twelve months. Now things have moved on, with the launch of the iPod shuffle (a backwards step in my opinion) and now Nokia, the king of mobile phone diversification have included a 4GB hard drive in their latest range of phones, the new luxury 'Nseries' handsets.

The NSeries offers limited PC-type functions like e-mail along with other additional functions like the digital camera, oh, and it can make phone calls too.

Nokia unveiled its N91 multimedia phone, which will have a 4-gigabyte hard drive that can store thousands of music files. The phone, which will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks, is due out by the end of the year.

Wired News: Podcasting Killed the Radio Star

Podcasting will soon break out of the 'pod' and onto the public airwaves.

Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio.

Infinity, one of the country's largest radio operators with more than 183 stations around the country, will invite do-it-yourselfers to upload digital audio files for broadcast consideration by way of the KYOURadio.com website.