However, I'm not really convinced by the use of the word "failure". Podcasts may be less successful than their most breathless hype predicted... but what invention isn't?
Podcasts are a modest success. They're modest, in part, because the masters of podcasting turn out to be radio producers. This is completely unsurprising -- the radio folks have been evolving their audio production skills in a competitive environment for nearly a century -- and it's the very un-surprisingness of it that keeps the phenomenon under the radar. Who besides advertisers knows or cares what the audience of a radio program is? Radio hasn't been the stuff of tech news since the 1930s.
The other problem with podcasting is that the term is badly chosen and too narrowly defined. The word is associated with downloading (rather than streaming), audio (rather than video), RSS (rather than simple web links), the use of portable devices for playback (rather than PCs), and amateur production (rather than pros). Youtube and its clones represent the same core phenomenon as podcasting -- ubiquitous, cheap distribution of audio and video over the web -- except that they offer better UI and lower costs for users, producers, and advertisers. But somehow the word "podcasting" isn't used for Youtube.
It's not the podcasting phenomenon that's "failing": It's the word "podcasting", and the specific constellation of technologies that it implies.
In traditional radio, an interviewer had x-minutes to get the job done. The duration of the time slot was the hard limit they were working against and it ensured a tight focus on the content. You received a lot of information in a short burst of time.
Amateur podcasts by contrast can go on for however long the interviewer would like. The result seems to be an unstructured rambling chat rather than a to-the-point discussion, and you can’t skim it like a blog post or text article to pull out the valuable points – you have to listen to the whole danged thing.
Perhaps if podcasts were set to have a hard limit of ten minutes we’d see a spike in quality? Much as Twitter forces a condensed to-the-point blog.
Podcasting is failing because 99% of the population doesn't even know WTF "podcasting" is and won't even try to click "Podcasts" button or whatever. GMail would have failed miserably if they tried to replace "emailing" with "ajaxing".
For two years I worked at RSS company where technology didn't matter: what mattered was that people were too tired to learn yet another buzzword. Even now, while immensely useful, RSS is still used mostly by geeks.
Podcasting isn't failing. It's not meeting some people's expectations, but it's not failing. FTA I too get news from a podcast, since my commute may not take me through the next hourly update. With a little effort (and an AutoHotKey script) I get my iPod charged, and it's ready to go when I am. I also get the weekly Maximum PC podcast (rant on, Gordon!).
I don't care much for video podcasts, since I'm driving.
Most stereos sold these days come with a front auxiliary jack that you can plug an iPod (or any other portable music player) straight into. Many aftermarket stereos come with iPod dock connectors or USB connectors. I've installed one in my car and it makes it painfully easy to listen to podcasts in the car. Yeah, it'd be great if iTunes would wirelessly beam my podcasts to my car, but having them on an iPod that seamlessly integrates into the car stereo is a close second.
Well... by now it should be obvious to everybody that
a) Your cell phone and your iPod should be the same device
b) It should always be connected to the Internet
c) It should be an open platform that everybody could
develop for: I suspect you'll have no issues finding software that downloads your picks into your phone automatically.
The industry, however, is fighting hard to postpone this reality. Not just Verizon, Sprint&Friends (closed networks, locked phones) but even Apple themselves (dumbed down iPhone API, draconian control over developers)
My girlfriend is just finishing up teachers college and a large portion of her course was spent on technology in the classroom.
I heard her talking about podcasting once and she was told at a conference in January that podcasting was the future and teachers should be integrating it into their classrooms and this and that.
That said neither of us could figure out how to best introduce podcasts into a classroom without them being at best a simple distraction(neither could the presenters it would seem as they gave no ideas either).
That fact is though that there are a lot of new teachers that will take these peoples word as gospel and try to introduce podcasting into their classes which is the start of the cycle.
So podcasting may not be a huge success now but possibly the kids that are currently in elementary school will be the first group to truely embrace the idea of non-live radio?
I think if you were interested in a particular area, and could download an audio commentary that contributed to this, then that would be useful. For me, pod casting is a new attempt on an old idea called "push" that wants to steer the internet towards broadcast rather than browsing. Consumers spoke on this long ago.
I would have thought that a lack of search capability would matter. How many neat pages or sites have you come across due to searching via Google? There is currently no easy way to search the podcast content for stuff I am interested in.
However, I'm not really convinced by the use of the word "failure". Podcasts may be less successful than their most breathless hype predicted... but what invention isn't?
Podcasts are a modest success. They're modest, in part, because the masters of podcasting turn out to be radio producers. This is completely unsurprising -- the radio folks have been evolving their audio production skills in a competitive environment for nearly a century -- and it's the very un-surprisingness of it that keeps the phenomenon under the radar. Who besides advertisers knows or cares what the audience of a radio program is? Radio hasn't been the stuff of tech news since the 1930s.
The other problem with podcasting is that the term is badly chosen and too narrowly defined. The word is associated with downloading (rather than streaming), audio (rather than video), RSS (rather than simple web links), the use of portable devices for playback (rather than PCs), and amateur production (rather than pros). Youtube and its clones represent the same core phenomenon as podcasting -- ubiquitous, cheap distribution of audio and video over the web -- except that they offer better UI and lower costs for users, producers, and advertisers. But somehow the word "podcasting" isn't used for Youtube.
It's not the podcasting phenomenon that's "failing": It's the word "podcasting", and the specific constellation of technologies that it implies.