Twelve Black Code Monkeys

My killer feature for the iPod is something that probably doesn’t appeal to you. Ok, maybe some of you, but not many. It’s the feature that Apple introduced with the 4G iPods back a couple of years ago. The feature is the ability to speed up (or slow down) audio without changing the pitch (if you are familiar with variable speed tape recorders, you understand that simply speeding up the playback of something tends to also make the speaker sound like a chipmunk).

Why is this a killer feature? It lets you play one minute and fifteen seconds of audio for every minute you listen. In other words, you get an extra 25% of content. I listen to a lot of spoken audio – audio books and podcasts – and this means that I get to enjoy a lot of extra content in the same stretch time. It’s a time saver. You get to save countless hours by listening at faster speeds, just as a speed reader gets to read many more books in the time a normal reader would.

There are some downsides, but I don’t think they are significant for most audio. One is that you have to pay closer attention, since drifting off a bit will mean that you will miss a lot more than you would normally, plus it just takes more concentration to comprehend everything at a higher speed. There are some audio artifacts that sometimes occur as well. Those artifacts aren’t jarring, but do degrade the sound quality slightly. Oh yes, and of course you just have a different listening experience. For some audio, timing and cadence can be a big part of the narrator’s performance. Speeding this up can wreak havoc on it - especially for dramatic naration of audio fiction. On the other hand, I’ve gotten so used to listening to nonfiction at this speed that now when I listen to podcasts at the normal speed, the speaker sounds like he’s talking in slow motion! So to some degree it’s just a matter of getting accustomed to it.

While the iPod is the only (or one of the few) digital audio players that has this functionality built in, it doesn’t let you just listen to anything in this fashion. Nope, you can listen to Audible.com audio books (or Audible’s other paid content like radio programs, newspaper transcripts, etc.), and you can listen to files in AAC spoken word format (.M4B). Since most podcasts are in MP3 format, you have to convert them. This is one reason why I use Doppler Radio as my podcast program, or “podcatcher” – it is the only podcatcher that I’ve found wihich converts files to .M4B. Some others convert to .M4A, but you still need to rename them and that implies updating iTunes with the new filename – a manual and cumbersome process.

While Doppler’s conversion works well, it has its disadvantages too, the main one being that iTunes (which is the program actually doing the conversions) can take a while to convert files. The fastest I’ve seen it work is 20X (or 20 times real time). So an hour-long show will take about 3 minutes at that speed. But most of the time, it seems to range from 5 to 12X, or 5 to 12 minutes per hour-long show. iTunes can only convert one show at a time, and so if you have a couple of hours worth of shows downloading at a given session, this could take upwards of 25 minutes to convert! It’s far from ideal.

Now, while I do have this killer feature with the iPod, I would rather that such a feature existed on other devices so that I wasn’t forced to only use an iPod. Don’t get me wrong, I like my iPod, but there are certainly things I don’t like about it as well. The main thing that irks me about it is that you can’t use music subscription services like Yahoo! Music because it won’t play Windows Media files. Apple’s system is built to be proprietary – you can only use the iTunes Music Store to download music (other than free MP3’s from independent artists or your own ripped from CD), and the iTunes Music Store only supports Apple devices. For those who need the speeding up feature, unfortunately, the iPod still seems to be your only choice.

While I could not find other players with this functionality, I thought I’d see what I could find out about speeding up audio in general. My main find proved quite interesting. It’s a Windows software program that does this very thing called, inappropriately enough, Amazing Slow Downer (or ASD), by Roni Music. I guess the name is somewhat appropriate because it can slow audio down, but it can also speed it up. I’m not sure about the utility of slowing things down, but my guess would be so that musicians can listen to a song at a much slower rate in order to pick up notes and chords more easily?

ASD allows you to take any MP3 file (or other formats as well), speed them up or slow them down arbitrarily with a fine degree of control, and then rip them to MP3 (or another format for other encodings). You can control the pitch yourself, although it seemed to automatically handle that. You can also control the audio qualities via an equalizer in order to yield the best quality sound. I played around with the trial version I downloaded from Roni Music’s site and was able to speed up a sample podcast by 42% and still follow everything. I figure you could probably train yourself to understand higher and higher levels of speed.

This was a great find and maybe there are other such applications out there but I haven’t found any yet. As nice as it is, though, I can see using it for major jobs, but not on such a regular basis as Doppler. Much of the spoken word audio I listen to is downloaded via Doppler on almost an hourly basis. So when I listen to something, it’s often only hours or at most a few days old - an ongoing stream of current podcasts. Unfortunately there’s no way to have Doppler “talk” to this program and have it automatically convert these podcasts into faster ones. Neither is there a command-line interface as far as I can tell, so even if Doppler could issue external commands (which I’ve seen in some other podcatchers), this wouldn’t work. What you would have to do is dump all my podcasts into one directory (Doppler puts them into separate directories named after the podcast’s title) and before uploading them to the iPod you would have to run this program and tell it to convert all new files – also determining which of those files were new so that you weren’t reconverting already converted ones (you could change the names or put them in different directories but this would then mean having to go into iTunes and tell it where those new files were, or what they’d been renamed to – otherwise iTunes would remove them from the iPod). Neither will ASD do anything with Audible files, which is to be expected since they have a proprietary DRM. Then there’s the issue of speed. The trial version of ASD only lets you work with 3 minutes worth of audio. I was able to rip this to a 2-minute-long MP3 in a matter of seconds, but it’s hard to extrapolate this to a 30-minute podcast, let alone a bunch of podcasts of various lengths adding up to a couple of hours worth of listening.

Where ASD might come in handy is if you find a bunch of MP3 spoken word files that you want to listen to - say open source stuff from Librivox or Project Gutenberg. Or possibly if you find a podcast that you’ve never heard but has been recording for many months and you want to catch up and listen to all the old episodes. Or you buy a new audio book on CD and want to rip it to MP3 to play it on your portable device. I can see using this for such things because they are one-shot deals rather than a constant, ongoing process.

We can dream that Erwin Van Hunen, the creator of Doppler, will put this type of functionality into Doppler 3.0, but considering how busy he is with other things, it’s hard to imagine that he could devote such resources to what is essentially donationware.

Despite the probably small number of people who find this functionality irresistible, perhaps there are enough of us to encourage a developer out there to create a podcatcher that has similar functionality, or maybe the developer of ASD will actually consider developing a podcatcher with it? Or perhaps we can get Roni Music to partner with Erwin and come up with a premium podcatcher that has this functionality. Well, we can dream!

Since last week none of my NPR podcasts have been retrieving anything - any that are being retrieved from NPR.org domain anyway. There’s no indication in their directory about this, nor can I find any commentary on the net anywhere. Am I the only one having this problem? I’m using Doppler Radio 2.0.0.3, but I’ve tried looking at the feeds via a browser and still get an error:

We’re sorry, but there’s been an error delivering this podcast. Please contact podcasts@npr.org for updates and more information.

I did email them but of course havent received a response. I’m just wondering if anyone else besides me is having difficulties? I would assume that a decent number of people subscribe to these podcasts…

Well, not quite, but I think this is definitely the longest hiatus since I started this blog two and a half years ago - over two months of no entries! The reasons are somewhat obvious from the last entry, huh? But of course there’s work as well. A new job has meant less free time at work to get personal things done - can you imagine, what nerve they have expecting me to actually work! Hopefully, I will make time to post something new and useful on at least a weekly basis, though. I think I can at least manage that!

So for starters, I have revamped the links section at left - specifically I’ve updated it with the podcasts I listen to now. Many are the same, but there are a lot of new ones, particularly NPR podcasts. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I have been rooting for NPR to get most or all of its shows out there as podcasts. A couple of months ago they did add a whole lot of content, but not exactly in the way I expected.

Most of the new content added is actually clips from various shows they produce (Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Day to Day, etc.), but categorized. So you have lots of movie-related content strung together from different shows into one regular podcast. Another has lots of health-related clips, and so on. It’s definitely a different approach than simply taking an entire show and plopping it down into podcast form. In some ways it’s better for the listener because if they have no interest in a given subject, they don’t have to fast forward every time a segment comes up on, say, the bird flu pandemic. It’s of course a lot more work for NPR itself, so I’m a bit surprised they went to that level. On the other hand, there are also these “Story of the Day” or “Most Emailed Stories” which aren’t a specific category. Because they overlap other categories, and even each other, I very often have to fast forward through stories that I’ve heard before.

Then there are all the great shows that are put out by the individual stations rather than NPR headquarters. Shows like Good Food, Le Show, Leonard Lopate, Morning Stories, etc. NPR is finding it needs to adapt to the ongoing change in technology and distribution channels. Unlike the recording industry or the movie industry, it doesn’t have to protect its outlandish profits or price scale of $20-30 Million for many of it’s top performers, let alone the high costs of advertising, marketing, and executive salaries. And so it doesn’t have to put everything into a DRM package, continue to charge outlandish prices for its content, nor arrest children because they downloaded some copyrighted content off the Internet.

NPR affiliates still rely on two main sources of funding. One of these is the involuntary donation of every tax-paying citizen, although Congress has continually whittled away at this. The other source is through voluntary listener donations. In past years I have given to my two local affiliates as I used to listen to them daily. But now most of my listening is in podcast form, and my local affiliates don’t put any of their shows into that form. So I’m seriously considering, at the end of this year, dividing up my allotted amount between the various stations that produce the podcasts I listen to, including KCRW, WNYC, WGBH, and others. I think this really does make sense because not only does it thank these stations for what they are offering and help defray those costs, but it also, I would hope, motivates other stations to get in their to offer their own content in a free, downloadable form. Some of my favorite shows, including Marketplace, This American Life, Metro Connection, and others) still aren’t in this format. At this point there is just far too many shows that are freely available to worry about the shows that make it harder for me the listener to listen to them (whether that is due to lack of a downloadable version, or a downloadable version that one has to pay for - such as through Audible.com). I would even be ok with a subscription fee to all public radio shows, but I’m not going to subscribe to individual shows as I fear the price would add up significantly after only a few.

For those who need yet more motivation to check out podcasting, here’s a site that Tod Maffin has put together that consolidates a list of podcasts of traditional radio shows. (note - the site is no longer available) (via Amanita.net)

When podcasting started, it was mainly with the idea of giving a voice to anyone who had a microphone and wanted to record their words and upload it to a server - kind of an audio version of blogging. And it still works this way. The vast majority of podcasts out there are by individuals who may not have any broadcasting experience, professional equipment, etc. Likewise, there is no regulation of podcasts like there is of traditional radio, no financial structure unless a podcaster has been able to secure some advertising support, and no real pressure to post a show at any given time, except perhaps from clamoring fans egging you on, if you’re lucky.

But what began as a kind of pirate radio movement, has become much more than that because traditional broadcasters recognized that people liked the power of not having to be chained to a stations schedule but rather have a Tivo-like timeshifting ability. Likewise the idea that no government or corporate entity was going to come and tell them what they could and couldn’t listen to because it might hurt some segment of the audience.

It appears that more and more traditional radio are getting the message and are offering their content online as podcasts. This list that Tod has put together shows just that. I think public broadcasting is probably much more insulated, due to the fact that they don’t have to prove audience numbers to some advertiser and can just rely on the donations of members. Public Radio has been at the forefront of providing this new format, although they are still providing only a tiny fraction of their programming this way.

It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out especially as the commercial stations try to figure out how to switch to this format but continue to make money. Certainly I think the hyper-commercial radio that has commercials take up one third to half of their programming are going to die, because now that the growing number of podcast listeners has thousands of choices (which will only grow even more in number), why would you choose to listen to a station or podcast for that matter which has more than one or two 30-second commercials every half hour?

By the way, Todd’s list isn’t just of public radio, even though that’s the title. It does include a section for “Commercial Radio” and other shows or whole sections are not public – E.G. Leo Laporte on KFI, or Air America Network shows.

I’ve talked about podcasting before, but I thought I’d write about it again as I get more into the continuously expanding list of programming that’s out there. As I listen, I have developed a stronger sense of which podcasts I like and are worth my time, and in the process I’ve had to put off my backlog of audible books for a while, but hopefully not too long!

For those new to podcasts, they are kind of home-grown amateur radio broadcasts, but not via radio. The programming is very diverse, ranging from completely informal BS sessions, to recordings from conferences, to group discussions on just about anything you can think of. Professionals have even gotten into the fray as they see this format taking off, so we now have programming from NPR and the BBC, among others.

So how do you actually receive these podcasts? Well, really you can get them on any computer connected to the internet, a client program (I use Doppler Radio), a program to play MP3’s (iTunes, Windows Media Player) and optionally a portable MP3 player to transfer the files to. For those lucky enough to have a smartphone with MP3 capabilities and a relatively fast (faster-than-dial-up) connection to the internet, one can download these directly onto the same device that will play them and do this from any location where a signal can be found.

To understand a little more of the technical details, I’ll just explain a bit of the background briefly. First there was RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. This is basically a type of (XML-specified) scripting language that allows a content producer to create a file that has their content in a structured format. That file can then be pulled or pushed to an “aggregator” which will then make that content available to anyone who subscribes to it via a special program, usually called a “newsreader.” The bottom line is that the content producer doesn’t have to get visited by thousands of people, which might tax his bandwidth limits, and the subscriber doesn’t need to remember a url to go to. Rather he uses a newsreader and subscribes to “feeds” of the content, which are usually just text and perhaps some images, but none of the other stuff that might be on a web-page – read ADS! Then again, the content producer then doesn’t get the revenue of the ads that these readers might click on, but more and more content producers are putting ads in the feeds themselves, something that a lot of people question for obvious reasons. The newsreader will download every updated feed that one is subscribed to and present it immediately, without any fuss, so it’s a very convenient way of accessing lots of your favorite information sources in one small package.

RSS has another feature to it called “enclosures” which allow for basically attaching files to a feed entry. So, last year Adam Curry of MTV fame got together with some coders and developed a program that was kind of a newsreader but specifically for feeds with enclosures and even more specifically for MP3 enclosures. This program, called iPodder, was integrated initially with iTunes and thus the iPod, but other such programs have been developed that integrate with Windows Media Player which can then be synchronized with almost any device that plays MP3’s. The idea was similar to that of a newsreader. Just have your podcast “client” program download whatever MP3 files were available in any of the feeds you subscribed to, and then have it sync to your MP3 player. You don’t have to think about it much, just hook up your player to your computer every morning, have it retrieve any new shows, and off you go with a collection of new stuff to listen to.

As podcasting has grown in popularity, various people (including Adam Curry) have been looking at ways to make it more into a professional industry rather than just a bunch of folks fooling around in their spare time. Where this is all going I can’t quite tell you, and I think the number of people listening to this stuff is still very small side compared to traditional radio, but it does make listening a bit easier in many respects. In particular it lets you listen to things on your own schedule, instead of the radio station’s. Market insiders are seeing younger listeners (who aren’t being targeted by traditional radio) are going more and more for alternative formats like podcasting, so as these users get older more and more people will be used to this format, in addition to just the early adopters.

Anyway, as I said, I have a list now of my current shows I like to listen to, so here goes:

The Dawn and Drew Show: in my 10-course meal of podcasts, this is kind of my guilty pleasure, my junk food course. Dawn and Drew were I think the first podcast I listened to. They have been podcasting since I think last September or October and I’ve listened to almost all but their first dozen shows. They are basically just a married couple (Dawn Miselli and Drew Domkus) in rural Wisconsin BSing about tons of stuff. It’s very politically incorrect, but these guys seem to be that way just for the shock value and humor value. Drew is a bit of a geek and Dawn is kind a sarcastic ex-Punk type. Their repartee is just very funny as they kind of insult each other; make fun of the other, etc., but not in a really mean-spirited way. Occasionally they bring in guests, particularly family members, or even call them up for phone interviews. Their family – really mostly Dawn’s family – is as entertaining as they are. Each show is about 40 minutes long (including comments to their listener line) http://www.dawnanddrew.com/rss2.xml

Future Tense: this show is produced by NPR and are fairly short at around 5 minutes a pop. Each cover a topic related to technology, the internet, etc. A nice short digestible amount of content similar to a single story on NPR, although usually a bit more savvy than what you would get on one of their general news programs like All Things Considered. I believe they come out on a daily basis: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/podcast.xml

Morning Stories: another NPR-produced show with Tony Kahn. These are also relatively short at about 8 minutes each. A nice format, where a theme is picked and someone reads a kind of audio essay. These are sometimes very humorous, sometimes sad, and often touching. Tony then comments about the essay and discusses the subject a bit more with his cohost. These are nice little tidbits, and I wish they came out more than once a week: http://streams.wgbh.org/podcast/morningstories.xml

Engadget: the blog Engadget recently got Eric Rice to reengage their podcasting. Last year they had come out with a bunch when Philip Torrone was still working there (more on him below). They talk about gadgets and technology similar to the blog, so it’s nice to have an audio source for this because they are often so prolific on their blog that I just get helplessly behind! But my opinion is not totally set with this yet. I’m not sure if I like Rice as a commentator and sometimes I’ve thought he missed some points or didn’t get everything right on a given technology. They don’t seem to have a schedule down, and I’m not sure if the show length is very fixed either, but check them out and listen for yourself: http://podcasts.engadget.com/

Geek News Central: Todd Cochrane records this show at home as kind of a supplement to his website. We get to hear about some tech news, what’s going on in the blogosphere and podosphere, and someone in the IT industry in general. But Todd also throws in a lot of personal anecdotes about himself, his wife, and kids, which make it a more interesting show, I think. Todd has an interesting voice that helps to keep you from drifting off. The show lasts for around 35 minutes or so and is put out twice a week: http://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml

Leo Laporte The Tech Guy: Leo was one of the mainstays on ZDTV/TechTV before it was bought and put to a horrible death by GameSpot. Leo now has an am radio call-in show in Los Angeles at KFI where he helps users diagnose problems a lot like his show “Call for Help” on TechTV. But he also talks about new developments in computers, technology, gadgets, etc. One time he went on an Apple cruise and interviewed John Wozniak for the show, which was great. Leo is also just an incredibly upbeat and his desire to help anyone with anything really makes the show enjoyeable, even when you already know the answer he’s going to give: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kfi

The Laporte Report Audio Edition: another podcast from Leo Laporte, but this time it’s more of a BS session between him and some former The Screen Saver cast and crew, including Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and potentially Yoshi. Leo initially called this the “Revenge of Bleep” where the bleep was a bleeping out of “The Screen Savers” which G4 owns the rights to. The show is kind of an insider’s view of what went on behind the scenes at ZDTV/TechTV, but much more. Actually, it’s probably mostly just about new technology, trends, etc. Basically a bunch of geeks talking shop. Nothing is dumbed down like the previous podcast, so be aware that not everything is explained for the benefit of listeners who may not be savvy. Still, it’s great to hear these guys again together and it brings back memories from the ‘good old days’ before G4 put TechTV/ZDTV to death…: http://leoville.tv/tlr/tlr.php (soon to change to now http://twit.tv/)

Reel Review: Michael Geohegen is a film fanatic who reviews generally non-current movies (DVD’s), at least since I’ve been listening. It’s possible he’s done some currently running stuff in the past, I don’t know. Michael’s knowledge of and passion for film really show in his reviews and I always feel like I want to go out and rent the movie after listening! If I had a Netflix account I’m sure I’d be adding the movies he’s been reviewing. Recently he even teamed up with another team of podcasters who have a show about wine (Grape Radio) and did a group discussion about the movie sideways. This was great because you got all the cinematic analysis from Michael and a bunch of wine connoisseur’s analysis about the wine and the various wineries, wine bars, and restaurants featured in the film. His shows are generally in the 20-minute or so timeframe and he puts out one or two a week. : http://reelreviewsradio.com/podcast.xml

IT Conversations: this podcast, founded and hosted by Doug Kaye, is starting to become a kind of IT-News and Views radio network of sorts! Some of the content is just recorded panels from various conferences like Web 2.0. It’s great to get such recordings for those of us who would love to be there in person but don’t have the freedom, money, or job that would put us there. But in addition to these, there are all kinds of interviews of various technology luminaries. These shows are hosted and produced by a variety of people who send their content to Doug who makes the best of it available on the podcast. Some of the stuff I’ve listened to has been way to wonky for me, but most of it is really quite interesting. It doesn’t just stick to pure technology issues, but veers into economics and culture often but as it relates to technology. I don’t know if there’s any real schedule, but you can usually count on at least several shows a week if not more. Those shows can range from 20 minutes up to two hours depending on the type of show (the panel recordings often being some of the longest): http://www.itconversations.com/rss/recentWithEnclosures.php

Make/DIY: Philip Torrone used to be part of Engadget but left be part of Oreilly’s Make Magazine. While at Engadget he helped to write much the great DIY (do it yourself) projects and was the host of the Engadget podcast last year before he left. Philip definitely puts across his passion for technology and the technology industry, but so far he’s just getting started with this new podcast, so it’s not as “meaty” as his old Engadget shows used to be. This podcast is just getting started with just a handful so far, but we will hopefully see a lot more in-depth discussion in them soon. For now they are primarily some personal news relating to gadgets/technology as well as some news and info about the magazine: http://www.makezine.com/blog/index.xml

The Leonard Lopate Show: an NPR-produced talk show based in New York, this show features just one 30-minutes segment of what is a 2-hour show. Leanord interviews someone, often an author about a recent book. Generally really interesting guests and Leonard is a good interviewer. I think these shows come out on a daily or almost-daily schedule – during the week: http://www.wnyc.org/rss/show.py?show=lopate

The Catholic Insider: my highly atheistic brother-in-law recommended this podcast so I was intrigued! It’s hosted by a young Dutch priest, Roderick Vonhögen, who was gotten a lot of attention lately what with the pope’s death. He does a lot of “sound-seeing tours” (where you take a recorder with you somewhere and talk about your surroundings and what’s happening around you), and so he did a lot of these around the Vatican during the time period from when the John Paul II was dying up until the new pope, Benedict XVI, was chosen. He’s also apparently done some tours which I haven’t heard yet detailing the places described in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons (the book he wrote before The Da Vinci Code, but which has similar themes). He talks about his past and his love for Star Wars and is generally very normal sounding and not the pious, unapproachable entity that is often portrayed on TV or in movies. You get the sense that he has a great sense of humor, respects all religions, and is not at all about proselytizing. He is also a good speaker, although he has a accent, and he really shows his passion for those things that excite him: http://feeds.feedburner.com/catholicinsider

Battlestar Gallactica: this podcast is produced by the creator and executive producer of the new remake of the TV series Battlestart Gallactica. Only a five of these have come out for this first full season of the show, and now that the season has ended, we’ll have to wait at least two or three months until the series starts up again this summer. For the most part, it’s like listening to an audio commentary on a DVD, although I was able to listen to it while driving and was able to follow who they were talking about. You get a lot of additional insight into the show and it seems as if it’s not at all something that is really stuck in stone the way some shows are mapped out for years in advance: http://www.podcastalley.com/redirect.php?pod_id=1819

The Brian Lehrer Show: Another NPR talk show based out of New York, and like The Leonard Lopate Show, it’s 30 minutes of a 2-hour show just about each day of the week (not weekends): http://www.wnyc.org/rss/show.py?show=bl

Slacker Astronomy: this is a short 5-10-minute podcast that comes out about once a week about Astronomy. It’s made by a couple of astronomers (Aaron and Pamela) and a production guy (Travis). It’s geared at those without a scientific background and they try to make it entertaining by being cute. This can occasionally get a bit annoying, like they are trying to target 11-year-olds, but luckily the show is in general informative and once you get over the cutesy stuff, they are fine: http://www.slackerastronomy.org/slack-live.xml

On The Media: this is yet another NPR show, but not a talk-show. The show talks about all forms of media, news, industry trends, technological trends, and lots more. It’s a really interesting show, I think. This is the first full-length NPR show to podcast its entire show of about an hour. It’s produced on a weekly basis: http://www.onthemedia.org/index.xml

I’ve been playing with this program Replay Radio which allows me to audio streams that are playing through my computer. There are a bunch of programs that do similar things. I’m going to be posting a larger piece about this soon enough, but for now I thought I’d talk a little about NPR and how the new technologies are affecting them and will continue to in the future.

NPR is a great source of news, at least as far as I’m concerned. I know some people find it too liberal, too snobby, or whatever, but I think there’s some quality reporting and as long as you keep an ears open for bias, which exists to some extent in all reporting no matter the source (based on the questions that are asked or what is decided as relevant to a given piece), you can glean a lot from the various programming on NPR.

NPR is a special case when it comes to broadcasting of course because it does not get its revenue from advertising, the way all other radio does. It gets its money from a combination of the taxpayer through government funding and through voluntary means. It’s a bit contradictory in that sense because on the one hand you have people who are giving to NPR whether they want to or not simply by their paying taxes, and another group who not only gives through their taxes but gives again through voluntary donations.

NPR then will also charge people again if they want to obtain tapes or transcripts of recordings, or if they want to download digital versions (through Audible.com). I can understand that tapes and the writing of transcripts may mean using extra resources. Even making digital recordings can do this as well. However, one can also listen to various NPR programs via streaming audio for absolutely nothing. True, they are often in somewhat lower-quality audio (I see often 20kbps, or slightly less than what AM radio is rated at), and it is less convenient than a downloadable file, but it’s still a disparity. Then if you consider these new computer applications like Replay Radio that take that stream and convert it into a downloadable file, the disparity becomes even more of an issue.

Podcasting, of course, has made this issue all the more relevant as home-grown (and a few more professional) broadcasters have started putting out audio files that are downloaded. NPR itself is experimenting with this with podcasts of On The Media. On The Media, of course, is ahead of the curve a bit because its raison d’etre is thinking about media, media trends, new technologies, etc. I wonder if NPR is thinking about these various delivery mechanisms and how they make sense?

When Satellite Radio came on the scene a few years ago I was excited about being able to get an all-NPR channel or channels and have access to it no matter where I was roaming. But after talking to someone at XM (Sirius does carry a couple of NPR shows, but none of the bread and butter stuff), I was told that NPR didn’t want to use them because it might deplete revenue of affiliate stations.

This is where things get a little more complicated. NPR isn’t just one monolithic entity, but rather it’s a public broadcasting network and in an of itself does not do any broadcasting except over the Internet, and even with that has only been doing it for a few years. Traditionally, it’s relied on affiliate stations that pay for its content. Some of these stations actually create content themselves which is then syndicated on other affiliates, although I have no idea how this works in terms of revenue – does NPR play the middle man? Do these stations talk directly to themselves and work out compensation plans? In any case, as you can see, it’s not a simple and clear situation. Affiliates need to be able to pay for these programs, for the general NPR programs, for their facilities, for staff, etc. This is what voluntary funds are for. I wonder, though, whether any of those donations go to NPR itself and if so how much? What about government funding? Does that go solely to NPR proper or to any of the affiliates?

In any case, the issue again comes down to content and paying for that content without resorting to advertising. Certainly advertising could be resorted to, but this is what makes NPR listenable in many ways – you aren’t bombarded by ridiculous amounts of offensive ads every time you want to hear the news or some interesting stories. And anyone who listens to NPR will tell you how annoying pledge drives can get.

So, the question basically is how does NPR and all the affiliate stations make money? One answer is more government funding, but there are a lot of people who would balk at this either because they think NPR is biased and biased in a way that contradicts their own political leanings. Alternately some believe simply that people should not be forced to pay for this if they don’t listen to it. These are certainly understandable arguments, so then what’s next? Perhaps NPR really needs to be thinking about setting up a subscription-based service for “premium” listeners or members. So, basically, you would become a member through your local affiliate the way you do now, and that affiliate would get a cut of your donation, but you could apply directly to NPR as well. Instead of getting a tote bag, an umbrella, a coffee mug, or a CD, you would simply get a membership to download content from NPR or any of its affiliates. You could have graduated levels of membership that would give you access to a greater number of these files. They could package the various shows produced by affiliates, charge differently based on the sound quality (and thus file size) of the content, etc.

As a fan of NPR, and member of local affiliates, even I have difficulty sometimes justifying the fact that I’m paying extra for something that I’m already paying for via taxes. I understand why this is, but it’s still doesn’t always sit well with me. Then the fact that I can’t get the content the way I want (via a downloadable file) unless I pay yet more money, and it’s a bit frustrating. However, I’ve paid subscription fees to various other providers of content (Satellite Radio and TV, Internet Radio, etc.) and not felt it to be onerous. Subscription, I feel, is the most fair because it is opt-in. If NPR continues to receive public funding, that’s fine by me, and so taxpayers should still get access to the programming in some form, but let those who are willing to pay extra receive the content exactly the way they want. That means being able to download this content as individual files, but perhaps also as premium channels on both Satellite Radio providers. That’s my idea, anyway. Then again, as it should be clear from this entry, I’m not an expert on the internal revenue workings within NPR and its affiliates, so take this for what its worth, but I think that as radio of all kinds make a transition from the current AM/FM model of local affiliates to a more global internet-based or satellite-based model, that NPR will have to adapt just as many other traditional broadcasters will if they don’t want to be made irrelevant by the scores of independent broadcasters coming out of the woodwork that provide their content for small fees (or absolutely nothing) via podcasts or audio streaming.

I haven’t devoted a whole entry to podcasting yet, only referring to it here and there, so I thought I’d do something a little more detailed. For many this will be old news. Podcasting has gotten a lot of mainstream media attention lately even though it’s only been in existence for 6 months, perhaps a bit less. For those who are tech and internet-savvy, if you’re not listening to podcasts yet, then you have probably known about it for a while now.

What is podcasting? Basically, it is a method for downloading various audio files to your computer in an automated way. More specifically, it is kind of a combination of internet radio and blogging. Adam Curry, former MTV VJ and creator of MTV.com before corporate entities like MTV had a clue about the web, created podcasting with the help of some programmers.

To get more detailed, we have to explain a bit about blogs and RSS. Part of the success of blogs in my and many others opinion has a lot to do with a technology that is intimately related to blogging called RSS or Real Simple Syndication. Blogging services and software create RSS files that include the actual content from your blog as well as meta data like when it was written, what category it fits into and so forth. News aggregators check this file either on a scheduled basis or by the blogger “pushing” it to the aggregator. Users employ applications (news readers) which can subscribe to “feeds” via the aggregators. Feeds are basically these RSS files that contain the content from X number of posts by the blogger. Because of the meta data and the intelligence of the news reader software, one can keep up to date, delete old posts, or keep certain posts for future reference, much like you could clip articles or hold onto specific issues of a favorite magazine.

So far, all of this stuff is relating to written text. What Curry wanted to do is to extend this to audio recordings since he had been doing his own internet radio show for a while. And in fact there was no reason that this couldn’t work because RSS has the ability to include file attachments. But news readers didn’t have the ability to really keep track of these recordings, download them, etc. So Curry built iPodder, the first such program. This allowed users to subscribe to specific feeds that contained audio content, and to have these downloaded to a specific directory so that they could be easily listened to on the computer or transferred to a portable device.

As I’m sure you know, the Apple iPod is the most popular digital music (mp3-player) device out there, and so the term “podcast” stuck, however, you can get podcasting applications that work with Windows Media Player and many other MP3 players and even smartphones like the Treo 650.

In addition to iPodder, the main application that I use these days, both because it seems to be well-built, but also because it seems to have the fastest development cycles which result in the most features, is Doppler Radio. The most recent release, version 2.0, has a couple of new features which seem particularly useful for me as an iPod user. One is additional management of podcasts on your iPod. Previously you would have to manually go through and delete old podcasts, but now you can specify a method by which Doppler will decided to remove older ones. The other nice feature added is that Doppler can now convert any audio file, be in an MP3, a WMA, or something else, into Apple’s proprietary m4b file type that allows for “bookmarking.” Normally MP3’s don’t have any bookmarking capability because they were originally meant primarily for music, which is usually only 2-10 minutes long, and which you don’t have to hold in place - you just replay a song if you want. But with spoken word audio (and especially lengthier ones of thirty minutes or even more), you want to be able to keep your place as in a book. The other great thing about m4b for those with the latest iPod models (4th generation or “4G”), is that you can play the files at variable speeds - normal, sped up 20% or slowed 20%. This is particularly useful in order to get through what has become an onslaught of content at at least a slightly faster speed. While these sped-up versions have a few more audio “artifacts,” their pitch doesn’t change as in the old chipmunk voices I could make by changing the recording and playing speeds on those old micro-cassette recorders from back when I was a kid…

The other thing to note, though is that Doppler currently is Win-PC-only, no Mac or Linux versions. It also requires .Net framework to work, which might be incompatible with older versions of Windows.

As I mentioned, there is a growing list of podcasts out there, and these will continue to grow, like blogs. There are millions of blogs out there, and like blogs, it may take a while to figure out which podcasts are your favorites. But because podcasts are a little less immediate then blogs, it may take a little longer. It’s not just a matter of clicking on a link and scanning a couple of posts. Instead, one has to subscribe, download, and then listen to a podcast for at least a few minutes, but probably a lot longer, to figure out whether one is of interest. Because of this, I’ve only been listening to a few select ones so far, but I continue to look for new ones. The few that I listen to are:

Engadget (link to podcast) - I read Engadget’s tech blog religiously, and this is a nice extension of that. However, it is not an audio version of the blog by any means. Rather it is more of a rap (rant?) session by Engadget’s Phillip Torrone often with guest podcaster Lenn Pryor of Microsoft. Whereas the Engadget blog is somewhat matter-of-fact, the podcast is anything but - it is much angrier and “activist” then most of what you see by those at Egadget in written form.

The Dawn and Drew Show (link to podcast) - I’m not really sure what this show is about. It’s not really about anything per se, but just more like listening in on a conversation, one that is just plain goofy sometimes. Dawn Miselli and Drew Domkus are a married couple living in rural Wisconsin and just talk about whatever most of the time. Dawn has this magnetic quality to her voice that just keeps you riveted and in stitches most of the time, but damned if I know why. She continually talks about World Domination, and perhaps her voice is her secret weapon for those plans. Dawn and Drew are one of my few “guilty pleasures” in that I know I’m not getting anything practical out of the show, but I suppose maybe laughter being healthy can be spun to be practical, right?

Morning Stories (link to podcast) - Tony Kahn hosts this NPR show that’s produced at the Boston NPR Afflilate WGBHa show on stories that are produced in a similar way to NPR shows - with care for detail, professionally edited and produced. Consider them a kind of NPR light for podcasting.

Leo Laporte (link to podcast) - Leo Laporte used to be one of the main hosts on TechTV (and ZDTV before that), which was a cable channel that eventually got bought out by a rival computer gaming network which subsequently killed most of its content. He now hosts a local show in Califonia called The Tech Guy where he talks about current news in computers and helps mostly less experienced users get better acquainted with the latest technologies and issues. But Leo’s demeanor is so friendly and informative, that he’s always fun to listen to, and even those of us who consider ourselves tech-savvy can get some useful information out of the show.

Finally, one of the features that might be new in version 2.0 of Doppler Radio (but maybe I just didn’t notice it in my earlier version?) is the ability to search for a podcast. I believe it not only searches the title field, but the description as well. As a lark, I decided to type in ‘NPR’ and I came up with a podcast titled “All Things Considered.” Doing a bit more research, it seems like NPR is experimenting a bit with this new media form. Not only is All Things Considered (link to podcast) being made available, but so is American Public Media’s Future Tense (link to podcast) and New York Public Radio’s (WNYC’s) On the Media (link to podcast)!

I’m glad that NPR is making their content available in this way, but I wonder where it’s going. Up until now, the only way to get NPR content as an archiveable file was to either record it yourself, or to order a recording either from NPR itself or through Audible.com. When I first got XM Satellite Radio, I asked them why they didn’t have any NPR and they said NPR didn’t want to provide its content outside of affiliate stations because these stations would then not have a commodity that they could then fairly request donations for. They do have a point. If you are paying for satellite radio on a monthly basis and getting your NPR fix through it, why would you donate to keep a local affiliate alive? In essence you are paying NPR directly instead of the affiliate. In the same way, if you are retrieving your NPR shows off the internet in order to listen to them whenever you want and wherever you want (via your portable device), then why would you pay your local affiliate? Again, you are paying NPR directly. I don’t know a lot about how the whole affiliate structure works for NPR, but I wonder if all these new media formats including internet radio, satellite radio, and podcasting will eventually spell the death of radio as we know it, including NPR? Most affiliate stations, I think, still produce some of their own content. For example here in the DC area, WAMU produces the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm Show. So I wonder if they can somehow get compensation from NPR for producing conent? What really seems strange to me is that these affiliates have to purchase shows from NPR proper, and yet as more people become more tech-savvy and as average internet speeds and access continues to grow, more and more of their listenership can simply avoid them entirely and go right to NPR. The other really odd thing surrounding all of this is that NPR is publicly funded. Does this mean that it is legally obligated to provide its programming to anyone who wants it for free? If not, is it ethically obligated? I don’t know the answer, but as someone who listens to it, donates to local affiliates, I sometimes wonder about how the mix of public funding, member funding, and large donations by corporations and philanthropists collide and create competing interests. As a fan, I want to see NPR continue. I’m a little less sure about individual affiliate stations, except that I do enjoy the content that was created at these various affiliates. I wonder then, whether NPR should just centralize all the funding stuff and not require it’s affiliates to pay for content. Instead, affiliates could use the money donated to them only on their own home-grown content which could then be offered to other stations in trade deals or for free. Of course I’m talking out of my ass here, but it just seems unlikely that the current structure will make sense in a few years - if it even does now.

At just around 6 months podcasting in general has quite a way to go to become a “mature” media format, but its fast rise in a relatively short period has obviously made some big waves in traditional media. Perhaps print and broadcasting taking the blogging phenomenon for granted for so long and because of it suffering the consequences have motivated a much fast reaction and even adoption of podcasting by these same dinosaurs in an effort to avoid extinction. Traditional media is far from extinct, of course, but there’s a big danger. Even now podcasters are beginning to get small sponsorship deals akin to NPR. They are not commercials in the modern sense, but just paid little blurbs describing a product or site. As convenient as Doppler has become, it can’t get around the problem of the source material. What I mean is that I’ve had the problem that with a bunch of podcasts, only the last episode or the last few are referenced and thus retrievable by the application. Obviously one could easily become overrun with archived podcasts, but it seems like a good option to give people who might want to and have the time to “catch up.” Even now there are some who are not just using audio but actually doing video podcasting. I haven’t tried any of these out partially because my portable device being an iPod, I can’t view video on it. And of course video is much more costly in terms of storage space and bandwidth than audio. Eventually, though, we may see the Internet providing a place for ordinary people to create their own equivalent to TV programming just as podcasting has become an alternative to radio. The broadcasts are in enough trouble as it is, and young people today are apparently turning away from the TV more and more and opting for spending at least some of this time online. I’m hopeful that what blogging has done to smash the traditional media’s hold on what information we receive will be mirrored in a similar way by audio and eventually video podcasting. Such democratization of media can only be a good thing. Traditional journalism has its strengths in professionalism, editing, and financial resources, but many of these are double-edged swords. I don’t think we will see less “professionalism” in these new forms of media. After all, many blogs out there produce such reliable, professional, and thought-provoking material, that they make most of what “professional” media produce look like a joke! Yes many podcasts are generally not quite as streamlined, but this will come with time, especially as former pro journalists become podcasters themselves, and as journalists to be start considering podcasting as a viable career path in addition to traditional journalism.

As I become more and more addicted to reading news from a collection of blogs and other sites, I have been trying to come up with ways to get more of this reading done faster.

Newsreaders have been a favorite tool for some. It’s a program that one downloads and installs on a computer and lets you subscribe to and read just the content of each entry of each feed without having to navigate to different addresses. This blog is actually a default syndicated blog for one such newsreader, called Project DU.

While such applications serve their purpose and do make things easier, I haven’t quite taken to them yet. This may be simply because I haven’t really played with many, and I might find them to be much more useful than the alternative I list below. But the main problem I see with these is that they are somewhat proprietary, meaning that I can’t just use them on any and all platforms I want. They are usually designed for the PC, or for Mac, or for a mobile device, but not all of them. Plus I don’t want to go around installing programs on a friend’s machine and I’m not supposed to install any programs on my work machine either. Finally, I have a Treo 600 Phone that theoretically could serve as a way to read some of these feeds, but the Treo newsreaders I’ve played with so far have left me wanting.

I want something that I can access from all the platforms I use, be they my home computer, work computer, phone, or a friend’s computer. With this in mind, it seems, the perfect solution is something along the lines of a web-based newsreader. My Yahoo! has a beta that incorporates RSS feeds, and it’s probably only a matter of time before Gmail supports them as well. But so far the site that has been most useful to me is Bloglines. The features make reading news very flexible. I can wade through the dozens or even hundreds of messages and check off the ones I want to come back and read later. Those will stay until I tell them to go. It remembers what I’ve read and what I haven’t. It just makes managing the reading a lot easier. And I just found out that it has a mobile version, woo hoo! Of course, the mobile version seems to be lacking some of the main feature I find the most useful! Hopefully, though, they will be added it soon.

I’m not stuck on Bloglines by any means, but currently it suits my needs the closest. I think in the future I may start downloading “podcasts.” Currently podcasts are primarily audio content that is normally listened to on the net via streaming audio – internet radio programs and such. But I see the potential of this idea combining with the popularity of newsfeeds and weblogs to compel bloggers and others to actually create audio versions of their content so that they can be listened to in addition to being read. This would tremendously increase the amount of feeds one could keep track of, especially for those who do a lot of driving and/or exercising, or other activities where reading simultaneously is an impossibility. There does seem to be so much development in this area that it will become easier and easier to find ways to manage and keep up to date with your favorite feeds almost anywhere.