RIP Gillmor Gang?

So is that it? I hope not, as the Gillmor Gang proved to be one of the most thought provoking nuggets of wisdom (and BS) in the podosphere. It must have been pretty special to have maintained any sort of regular listenership due to.... well count the obstacles:

Crappy audio quality

The bizarre use of 20% of each segment just for brain numbing repetition of pretty abysmal ads

The frankly bonkers idea of splitting up each show into up to five 25 minute segments and then publishing them all on the same day! Which often (always!) meant that iPod syncing never worked as you'd only get the last part during a sync on my configuration

I was always sure there was a really good reason for this but Steve never explained and I was always too scared to comment for fear of being told "f*ck you" as so many brave soles before me did. Perhaps it was to prove they really did have our attention? Well you did Steve, despite all these barriers to listening and the remarkably shabby way I felt treated as a listener. No, I still hung in there, I still manually went into iTunes to download the other parts and yes I scrolled through those adverts to get to the meat. It was worth it to catch the occasional spark of brilliance, to listen to the frustrations of the gang, to change my opinion of Jason and to get an insight into the workings of SV. So now it's gone and we're left with a partial show and no real sign off. Pretty much par for the course but you know what, I'll miss the gang. Technorati Tags: Jason Calacanis, Gillmor Gang, Steve Gillmor

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The ScobleShow

Just noticed that Scoble has posted a show on Google Reader and interviews some of the Google Reader team. Excellent, I'm a big Google Reader fan (props to Scoble for making me look a bit closer at the app after initially first dismissing it). But that's not the point of this post. Just some observations on the PodTech/ScobleShow thing as constructive criticism, I'm not Scoble bashing :-) Look, I'm no brilliant editor myself but Robert is sorta high profile and I don't know but I tend to expect high production values on his output, especially video stuff. Audio can hide a multitude of sins but Video, well it's kind of in your face. The actual video quality is great, but I would have expected better user of the format? Or is it that new media shouldn't worry about production values? Perhaps it shouldn't! But there are still people to convert to new media and there needs to be some compromise between raw content and a final semi-polished version? People are used to high video production values and we can't just dismiss that fact. Would it really hurt to turn this into a two camera shoot? 30 minutes on a fixed frame shot is really not that interesting to watch. Why not a couple of close ups, a couple of inserts, etc. Yes, it makes it much more complex to shoot and it increases both the cost and the production time but without it, you may as well just listen to the audio. Technically it's really not that difficult, even in the editing process in FCP. You can virtually do it in real time. It may just be that Robert is gearing up and I know there is a new editor coming on board so we may see more sophisticated episodes further down the track? I hope so. And as for sponsorship by Seagate, I've really no problem with that. The more major league sponsors that move into the podcasting space the better - heck, I'd love a major sponsor for my show :-) But you just need to be a bit more careful with how you position them... "without them I couldn't bring you what I'm doing here tonight.." Hmmmm....I seem to remember that Podtech received $5.5 million in Series A funding funding back in March so I'm sure he could actually do a show without them. Perhaps he couldn't due to the setup within Podtech but I'd be really surprised if he wasn't able to do a show without a sponsor! Just a minor point, but it just grated a bit knowing the background. It probably wouldn't even be picked up the majority of the viewers. Again, I'm not bashing the show but just offering up some suggestions. More power to your elbow Robert, as the more you can popularise the medium the better for all of us working in the same space. Anyway, I'd better get on with recording my show for this week! No $5.5 mill funding for me but at least I'm making a living doing this new media thing full time!

Technorati Tags: google, googlereader, scoble, scobleshow, podtech

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TalkShoe - Typical Mac User Podcast

My good friend Victor over at the Typical Mac Podcast Typical Mac Podcast invited me to take part in a new experiment he ran last night! There's a new interactive podcast service called Talkshoe and Victor had setup a trial show last night. The only problem was that the show was due for 8:30pm EST which works out to 1:30am UK time but it sounded a blast so a few strong coffees later I was all setup. The service looks pretty damm cool! The host creates a show and announces when it's available. You basically signup for a free Talkshoe account and download some software. When the show is live you can phone in using a LandLine or Skype. The Talkshoe client software opens up a multilayer chatroom that allows the participants to text chat with the other attendees whilst listening to the show. What's even cooler is that the host can invite listeners to join in the conversation via the client software. It worked amazing well! Victor did an amazing job of co-ordinating the calls and the chat room, I was very impressed! I even had a go at joining in with the conversation all the way from the UK via Skype. The sound quality was excellent with virtually no latency. There was also some guys on from Talkshoe who gave some interesting background to the development of the product. You can listen to the recorded show: here or download it! Look for Past Episodes and it's the show 10/29/06 08:30 PM EST I'll try and stay up again next week to participate in the show so I might speak to you then :-)

Technorati Tags: podcasttools, podcasts, talkshoe, ScreenCasts, ScreenCastsOnline, mac

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Quote of the day from Susan Mernit

(From the post, 'What Google didn't buy') '(For $1.65 billion) Google could have bought the New York Times...(That Google) bought YouTube, not a media company, and the fact that doesn't even surprise anyone one anymore and that it makes perfect sense, that, dudes, is a paradigm shift.'

Technorati Tags: google, youtube

(Via rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog.)

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Extra! Member Management - Update

Spent most of today migrating my member details across from PayPal, esellerate and the .htaccess script mechanism I use to manually manage my members. One of the few things I love about Microsoft is the data manipulation capabilities of Excel and yes, it works just fine on the Mac! - I'd have been stuffed without Text to Columns and AutoFilter. I just don't know of another package with this type of functionality. The migration process was quite involved, not so much from the aMember side as the import mechanism is pretty sweet, but due to the complexity of bringing over members from different sources. I made a major boo boo on the final stages transforming some dates which made half of the members expiry date incorrect. This was after I discovered the save and restore mechanism. Some manual edits and all was well. Just got about 40 records to double check, update the ScreenCastsOnline website with the new arrangements and some new pages and then unleash it on the poor, unsuspecting Extra! members! To be truthful, it should make life better for both the members and myself. I may so a short screencast to explain all. The only thing I still need to resolve is an alternative payment gateway for those people who really don't like PayPal. Even though you don't need an PayPal account and can pay with a credit card, some people still won't use PayPal. I have an account setup with eSellerate but unfortunately, there is no integration with aMember. This means any new users using eSellerate still have to be managed manually. I did a quick check of other payment gateways but they are all so expensive to setup! Anyone with any recommendations on a cheap low volume payment gateway that integrates with aMember?

Technorati Tags: podcasttools, Premium Podcasting, Subscription Tools, aMember

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