Podcast Production Services President Dan Roberge Radio Interview.

Dan was interviewed about Podcasting on the "Woody Woodland Show" this morning, you can hear the interview HERE

Hope you enjoy it and find it informative.

Will Pod People Feel Microsoft's Love?

By Laurie Sullivan, TechWeb Technology News

Microsoft Corp. might rely on third-party software developers to make podcast publishing and listening easier in its next operating system, media player and Internet browser, a company executive said.

Plug-ins and podcasting tools for Vista will likely come from third-party developers, Aaron Coldiron, a Microsoft product manager, said on Friday at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, Calif.

Although Microsoft has no plans to build a podcast aggregator into Vista, "the company is thinking about it," Coldiron confirmed. "It's on Zune's list of features."

The word came after Los Angeles radio host Leo Laporte rallied podcasters Friday during a keynote speech at the conference aimed, in part, at encouraging the Redmond, Wash., company to add a podcast aggregator and tools.

Colligan.com Inc. CEO and podcaster Paul Colligan said someone at Microsoft advocates podcasting because 250 simultaneous feeds called "Zune firmware .9 beta" recently accessed one of his podcasts.

"They have to put it into Media Player on XP," said Colligan, a developer in Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program. "Zune could become the hottest thing for podcasters."

Believing third-party software developers could create the podcast tools for both Zune and Vista, Colligan wants Microsoft to handover the project to the MVPs and let them create the $10,000 worth of code needed to make it work.

Vista and Zune might lack the podcasting tools for easy publishing, but Microsoft's Coldiron touted RSS features in IE7 that will send the audio and video files straight to listeners.

IE7 will have a RSS feature with an easy-click button enabling users to save the feeds to their Internet browser favorites, reading each tag similar to a Web page, Coldiron said. These's also an option to have them sync up directly with Outlook.

"Unfortunately, we don't have a feature set that deals directly with podcasts," Coldiron said. "There's a ton of stuff we would like to add, but we are focused now on shipping a good product."

Podcasters would welcome new tools and distribution methods. Bruce Murray, who produces and hosts a podcast called The ZedCast from Canada, said as a listener it doesn't make much difference whether Microsoft incorporates podcasting tools into Vista and Zune.

"As a podcaster it does," Murray said, because it would make it easier for podcasters to reach the millions of potential listeners who have Windows-based computers and media players.

Haywood, Calif., podcaster Sarah Chavis also believes easy-to-use tools in a Windows environment would entice those who are not tech savvy to embrace podcasting.

"Would it grow without Microsoft?" Chavis said. "Of course, those of us in the space won't let it die. But in Microsoft, the ramp up would be a lot faster."

Chris Gondek produces and hosts two types of podcasts for The Invisible Hand from Portland, Ore.

Gondek, who interviews authors of business books, publishes a show in two formats: MP3 and M4P, which podcasters call an "enhanced version."

The "enhanced version," for Apple iPod listeners, lets podcasters add links, cover art, and indexes for easy click-through. The M4P file produced with an Apple chapter tool will only play on QuickTime, iTunes, or an iPod, Gondek explained.

Listen to feedback from podcasters at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo here.

Surfing the Internet for Spoken Words

New Technology Allows Searchers to Scour
Online Audio, Video to Target Advertising

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
September 14, 2006; Page B3

One of the charms of Internet video and audio is that Web sites featuring such offerings are largely free of the advertising cluttering television and radio.

That may be about to change.

Several small companies are starting to pitch advertising links using their software that will search every word spoken in Web-borne video soundtracks or Internet audio programs known as podcasts. The new technology, from companies including Podzinger Inc., TVEyes Inc. and Blinkx Inc., uses voice-recognition software to translate spoken words into text or audio-wave forms that can then be searched.

Identifying spoken content of audio and video clips results in more-relevant results when using a search engine to look for a particular item or topic. From there it is only a short step to also use the new technology to match related advertising with the search results -- much as Google Inc. and others do for searches of text-based material.

Major search portals, including Google, already offer searches for videocasts and audiocasts. But they search for text "tags" -- a few words of summary created by the producers of the content that may not fully describe all the content of the audio or video material.

The new technology makes it possible to take a searcher directly to the portion of a podcast or video where the speaker discusses specific topics of interest, such as mutual funds, cholesterol or Lindsay Lohan. On the side, the search page can display ads supplied by Google or Yahoo Inc. based on the search term, with the site that serves as the host for the search getting a cut of the ad revenue.

Podzinger, of Cambridge, Mass., which provides audio search on its site and for some partners, says the ability to find words in videos fills a huge gap. "Audio and video have been a black space that cannot be discovered by traditional search engines," says Alex Laats, Podzinger's chief executive.

Also, the traditional "tag" searches typically take the searcher to the beginning of what may be a very long audio or video interview, for example, without telling the searcher how to quickly hear or see what they want.

Software products from TVEyes take the Web surfer directly to the place in the video where the search word is spoken in podcasts available at Evoca.com, a podcast-hosting site based in Savannah, Ga. David Ives, president of TVEyes, Fairfield, Conn., says his company's PodScope software also will analyze advertising clips for key words that are relevant to a user's search so ads can be matched with search requests. He says Time Warner Inc.'s AOL is testing PodScope search podcasts.

With the spread of video and audio on the Internet, "The ability to target advertising to content is a major leap forward," says Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner Inc. He says it may spur "monetization of video."

Blinkx, of San Francisco, provides search technology to sites like FoxNews.com and Lycos.com. It also sees opportunities to sell search-related advertising for audio and video content related to travel and personal finance.

The new search technology captures only part of the Web's audio content. Podzinger says it is indexing for search some 300,000 regular podcasts, or 30% to 60% of the estimated 500,000 to one million podcasts available on the Internet.

Even the best speech-recognition technology has trouble understanding many speakers. People with accents or colds confuse it. Music in the background causes trouble. Suranga Chandratillake, founder and chief technology officer of Blinkx, says accuracy ranges from 60% on amateur videos to close to perfect for trained newscasters in professional studios.

Searches often return many irrelevant videos. For example, looking for "online investing" on Lycos, which uses Blinkx software, gets 19 results including, logically enough, an interview with a low-priced stock-trading firm but also, inexplicably, a BBC-TV clip about a nurse murdering elderly patients.

Still, the speech-recognition technology picks up many words and takes the searcher directly to the relevant portion of the recording. For example, if a Boston sports fan wants to find out if outspoken Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has ever opined on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, he can search the Internet archives of sports-talk station WEEI for "Schilling Brady" and find a link. Not surprisingly, Mr. Schilling thinks Mr. Brady is great: "I'm a huge Patriot fan for a lot of character reasons. Is there any doubt that Tom Brady is going to make the four guys he throws to good?" Mr. Schilling asks.

Bill Alfano, director of marketing for Entercom Inc., based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., says his company started using Podzinger last month at its Boston sports-talk station WEEI because "we were blown away by the technology."

He says it provides a way to let the 100,000 WEEI listeners who have registered at its Web site retrieve segments they might have missed. The station hasn't started to link ads on its Web site to the audio search capability, but Mr. Alfano thinks there is potential. "If Tom Brady says, 'I love to go to the Pro Bowl,' at the end we could run an ad for a trip to the Pro Bowl. People almost expect that," he says.

Mr. Ives of TVEyes says that on sites it has indexed, PodScope continuously looks ahead 30 seconds as a viewer watches a video. Then "it puts a contextually relevant clickable ad near the organic content," without interrupting the video the way a traditional video ad would. He says that "in early tests we find the click-through rates are a multiple" of clicks on random ads.

One believer in the technology is Leo LaPorte, who hosts radio shows and podcasts about technology. Mr. LaPorte, who produces 50 hours of programming a month, plans to start using Podzinger on his sites next week.

With the technology, he says, listeners who want to hear again what he said during a program about Fujifilm's Finepix digital camera, for example, can search and find it. Then the search engine can provide click-through ads from half a dozen photo stores with prices for the camera. "It's considered a service" by searchers, he says, and he can get $5 to $25 each time listeners click on ads after such searches.

Mr. LaPorte says he is hopeful that audio search will boost his revenue from "a couple of hundred thousand a year now to over $1 million a year. For a guy working in an attic, it's a viable business."

"Now there's an opportunity to use podcasting in the enterprise. Podcasting can be used for audio white papers, meeting recaps, product demos and virtual conferences. Your employees will be able to catch up on their work while commuting to the office (or exercising). They'll love it."
~Razorfish

Many of our corporate clients are finding that not only do their employees enjoy the convenience of podcast, they can also save thousands of dollars in printing and distribution cost of internal material. One client now saves an average of $15,000 a year by switching from printed weekly newsletters to digital podcast.

"Podcasting is just the natural evolution of communication."
~Newsweek

For internal departments and divisions with people scattered all over the country or world, podcasting can help everyone stay up to date and informed. IBM Benelux's marketing dept. uses podcast we help produce to distribute meeting notes and news on a DAILY basis. With their marketing dept. spread all over Europe it is easy for management to be sure everyone has the latest info.

Podcast Production Services can help your company save thousands of dollars every month. We have consultants available to help you find the best way for podcasting to serve your needs.

UPDATE:

Podcast Production Services has been extremely busy lately with new projects. We welcome three new clients to our family, the lawfirm Wilmer Hale, Tax Foundation.org and Price Waterhouse Cooper.

We are finding that corporate podcasting is catching on like wildfire. It can be used to broadcast internal company info to staff and shareholders, as well as cut down on the expense of print information.

Tax Foundations weekly podcast has already been generating a buzz as noted in this article from The Charlotte Observer:

12:00 pm | New podcast on corporate taxes

KERRY HALL

Khall@charlotteobserver.com

Think the U.S. government taxes American companies too much? Then you may be interested in the debut podcast issued today by the Tax Foundation, a research group in Washington, D.C.

In the podcast, the foundation talks with R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School and former Director of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Hubbard makes the case that the U.S. corporate tax system is more economically damaging than comparable taxes in other nations.

The interview, titled "R. Glenn Hubbard on Corporate Tax Reform," is available online at www.TaxFoundation.org/podcast.

The foundation plans to publish a podcast each Tuesday.

Platform nightmares.

I was recently contracted by a start-up to help create content for portable devices. The media was targeted at a few different types of platforms, iPods (video & audio), windows media devices, smartphones ect. They were getting into this with ideas of delivering content across these platforms easily. Needless to say there is NO easy way to do it!

Problems started to arise regarding chaptering. Video set up with chapters only works correctly on ipods, and only video ipods. Also, every peice of media needed to be created in the correct format for the device, so video needed to be created in both mac (m4a + m4v) for itunes and ipods, and wma and wmv for windows media devices, a nightmare right from the get-go. It seems the windows devices, as well as windows media player will not handle m4a or m4v on most machines or devices, and chapters don't work at all. The only way to do "chapters" on wm platforms is to create seperate files and an asf (playlist) file, a process that takes some time.
This proved to be frustrating for my client as these options greatly increased the cost of creating and formating the media, thus denting thier bottom line. Also, the platform problems dont end there, on my end it was even worst! Need to do a video with chapters? Get on the Mac. Need to create WIndows media playlist? Get on the PC... A constant headache.

When, if ever will we converge the multiple format options out there? Is it so hard for itunes to handle wmv and windows media player to handle m4a/m4v? Smooth, consistent, easy content delivery will not be possible until media can be used across platforms and devices and it will continue to take twice the time to produce as long as there is a Beta vs. VHS type thing going on in the world of mobile media.

The advantages of Podcasting.

I have been working with online, streaming audio since 97 or so. The first time I ever needed to use audio on a site was for a prank call site I was building. The pranks were recorded onto cassette tape and I used to use a homemade 1/4 inch cable to run a line from a Walkman to to my mixing console and of course to my soundcard. The only solution I was aware of at the time, was Real Player. Around '97 Real Player was ALOT more prevalent than it is today. I have always hated it, from the way it sits in your system tray to the way the audio sounds. Keep in mind, this way before broadband was even a thought so the files needed to be optimized for dial-up, meaning I would usually do 2 versions, a 28k and a 56k version. They both sounded like you were listening to a badly encoded mp3 on an ipod turned up to maximum, down the hall and under water. In order for people to listen, they HAD to use Real Player, and they had to wait for the file to download and buffer for quite some time, and most importantly, they HAD to visit the website. Not really an ideal situation for distributing audio files to the maximum amount of users.

From 2002-2004 I produced a weekly 3-hour streaming radio show featuring local bands. The show was distributed as a Windows Streaming Media (.WMA) file. The show was 3 hours, but using compression I could get the file size down to about 40mb, still a pretty large file. Our webhost was a dedicated Windows 2000 server from Managed.com, it wasn't cheap (think $299 a month) We had to use a Windows server so we could take advantage of the windows media streaming server. This was a perfect set-up to handle our bandwidth demands, but again, to listen you had to visit the site, and to find it in the first place you had to use a search engine, and we had to spend ALOT of $ on SEO to get into those search engines.

So how does this relate to the advantages of Podcasting? First and foremost in my opinion is directories. Podcast directories are the rocket fuel of Podcast and in some ways, site promotion as well. Back in the day, when I was creating the above shows, the only effective way to get seen was through search engines (to say nothing of forums and advertising) there was no prank call directory ect. Podcast directories give you the ability to reach millions of qualified leads (listeners) hungry for the content you offer. By simply submitting your podcast to directories you not only reach new listeners and gain exposure for your podcast, you also benefit from having multiple inbound links to your site from each of the directories, thus increasing your search engine rankings in the process. This fact alone give enormous advantages to the podcaster over the person trying to gain listeners for a show on Live365.com or the like. If you have a podcast, you should be submitting your podcast to EVERY directory. Be sure to include a detailed description and keywords so people can find you once you are listed.

Another advantage: bandwidth. Using Bittorrent for Podcast distribution is a great way to save on bandwidth. Read more on using it here.

I also am thrilled with the subscription end of Podcasting as well. The fact that someone can find your Podcast through a directory, and if they like it, subscribe and never have to think about it again, they can listen and enjoy it at thier leisure. More on subscriptions later...