I’ll tell you something, either I’m getting old or podcasting (a concept so new that Google is still trying to correct me when I search for it) is going mainstream waaaaay too fast. Last week I spent a boozy evening (boozy enough to fall asleep on the train home again – Hello Harpenden!) in a smoke-filled room above one of those Soho clubs (no, not those Soho clubs) talking with a bunch of top media execs about, among other things, torrents, podcasting, Creative Commons and blogging – blimey. This is obviously going to be a really important area and I’m going to start meeting VCs who are ‘watching’ podcasting (just like they were ‘watching’ RSS last year and ‘watching’ blogging the year before that).
A flurry of links: iTunes Applescript guru Doug is now Podcasting (and why wouldn’t he?). Gigadial threatens to absorb the next six months of my life. At least I can pretend to be working while I’m listening (if you’re as old as me you’ll need this overview page). I think this clever thing allows you to publish torrents via your blog (and RSS, natch), which at least sounds useful. iPodder 1.1 is obviously worth a donation (I think I’ve finally found a reason to upgrade that Old Skool 5Gb iPod). I’ve just noticed that iPodder.org is run by Adam “Big Hair” Curry. Funny, cos Ivan was only asking about him the other day.
Meanwhile, Ben Hammersley, the man himself, a man for whom I’d like to buy a drink one of these days if he stood still for long enough – even if only to learn what it feels like to have an entry to yourself in Wikipedia – has come up with his own handy slug of server code which captures Real Streams, converts them to MP3s and then publishes them as an RSS feed (the rest is up to your local podcasting set-up). He also links to a tool for doing the local bit which sounds perfect – downloading now.
Keith Teare
http://www.earningscast.com