Indie Podcasting with Open Source (O'ReillyNet)
There have been quite a few articles and books on podcasting already, and some of them are excellent--particularly the ones that deal with some small part of the process. Quite often, however, they neglect to mention a common goal of podcasting: to be like a radio station, slick and with easily understood formats. That's odd to me. Podcasting is an ideal medium for experimentation because the costs are so low, so you should try out some off-the-wall stuff."
Posted Jun 24, 2006 1:35 UTC (Sat)
by bignose (subscriber, #40)
[Link] (8 responses)
If your audio journal is a whole lot of talking, please publish an Ogg Speex stream. If it has a lot of music, please publish an Ogg Vorbis stream. Either of those will be both smaller *and* better quality than MP3, and are implemented without patent issues.
Posted Jun 24, 2006 10:25 UTC (Sat)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jun 24, 2006 11:32 UTC (Sat)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (2 responses)
I wouldn't recommend iPodLinux to anyone except masochists and people who like seeing shell prompts on their little embedded devices. I can't see *any* actual advantages to someone who wants to, well, play music over the native firmware, and I tried :( obviously it's free and the native firmware isn't, but Rockbox has that advantage too.
Posted Jun 24, 2006 12:12 UTC (Sat)
by arcticwolf (guest, #8341)
[Link] (1 responses)
Fat chance. Somebody who's not already interested in hacking their iPod most likely won't do it - instead, they'll just not listen to your podcast. So unless your target audience pretty much exclusively consists of hackers, using any format that a stock iPod cannot play will just cause you to lose your audience (or at least a significant part of it).
Posted Jun 29, 2006 12:04 UTC (Thu)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Firstly, there is zero risk of bricking the iPod unless you do something *really* stupid: this isn't a flashing process, it's all just disk writes. If you follow the instructions, it's trouble-free.
Secondly, we see a *lot* of non-technical random users doing just that. (Admittedly for the iPod the huge flood of blind users Rockbox has seen for other platforms isn't so likely to turn up, because with its non-tactile scroll wheel the iPod really is rather blind-unfriendly, but still there are a significant number of users for a still-unreleased port.)
Posted Jun 24, 2006 12:40 UTC (Sat)
by bignose (subscriber, #40)
[Link] (3 responses)
By the same logic, it's no use offering a GNU/Linux version of a program that can't be run on the vast majority of desktop computers.
That's a false dichotomy. We've already seen that programmers can offer the same program so it's available to users of non-free *and* free platforms. This broadens the availability and popularity of the work.
It has the indirect effect of increasing the attractiveness of the free platform, because compelling works are available for it.
> I'm crazy for getting iPodLinux to work universally and PodZilla being
The only way we're going to get broad support for free formats is if there's a significant demand. The only way that demand can exist is if compelling works are available in those formats. I'm asking for those who make compelling works to make them available in free formats.
Posted Jun 24, 2006 14:35 UTC (Sat)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
They refuse to support Ogg, even though their hardware is capable of it. (rockbox proves that).
Most people that listen to podcasts do use ipods. Ipods won't play ogg files.
Most people that listen to podcasts use Itunes free service to find them and listen to them. If you stream in a ogg format or other unsupported format then Apple won't allow your work to be shown on Itunes.
Both commonly used propriatory platforms (Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X) have a vested interest in users using their respective propriatory formats. They want you to use DRM to 'protect' your stuff. Same exact lock-in mechanism you get from using Microsoft Office.
they specificly make it easy to use their formats. Make it difficult to use Free software formats. Microsoft and Apple could easily build support for ogg/flac formats into their systems. There is no royalty to pay, there is no licensing or patent restrictions. There exists code they could use. There even exists open firmwares and hardware that supports it. But they don't support it by default. Same old game.
When the platforms your end users are using are controlled entirely by people who have a very strong desire to see you fail, except in specific cases were it serves them, then your at a extremely large disadvantage.
(hint: Watch what happens to Firefox's market share as IE7 and Vista gains popularity.)
Posted Jun 25, 2006 0:16 UTC (Sun)
by bignose (subscriber, #40)
[Link] (1 responses)
Rockbox is proof that we don't need to be limited by the hardware vendor's default software.
> Most people that listen to podcasts do use ipods.
That's as irrelevant as saying most people that use a computer on their desktop use a Windows on Intel platform. It does not argue against providing the work in a free format, for existing or potential users of the work.
Posted Jun 25, 2006 22:35 UTC (Sun)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
The-powers-that-be have a huge interest in making non-favored formats and items hard to use vs Free software items. This makes things especially difficult... I am not saying that it makes it not worth doing, however. It's very much worth doing.
I think what Free software folks realy need to do is make a Itunes equivelent. Something were you can go to easily find creative content items from intellegent publishers. Something people can use to _advertise_.
Think about it.. There are dozens of smaller indie music publishers that do CC licensed music. There are 'free' multimedia media items like Elephants dreams and numerious interesting artifacts from old film that has since passed into public domain. Even CC licensed ebooks and public domain books.
All sorts of interesting intellectual and timeless items like 'The Plato's Republic'.
The hard part for those people is exposure. Most people don't know stuff like this exists, much less were to get it and how to pay for it.
So you can theoreticly setup a Free software application were people can easily download and enjoy this content on any sort of media player or viewer they like. It's just a way to access this content.
You click on a song, for instance, that looks interesting. You get a picture of the album, a short marketting blurb from the publisher or artist, a link to their website or whatnot. You download it and listen to it (preferably with a open format).
So the end user gets a bunch of free content, the publishers get exposure, developers maybe get some income, and you promote Free formats.
Everybody wins. I think something like that would be great.
My greatest desire for the audio journals to fulfil is: Please publish your audio in patent-free formats implemented in free software. MP3 is bloated, abandoned by the developers, obsolete, patent-encumbered, and way behind the leading edge of audio codecs formats like Speex and Vorbis.Promoting free software audio
... you know, the "pod" in "podcasting" comes from "iPod" (TM of Apple), This would be nice, but...
so, it's no use a podcast that can't be heard in 90% of the portable
players and in 99.9% of the not-only-CDDA car players. Don't get me wrong,
I'm crazy for getting iPodLinux to work universally and PodZilla being
more widespread, but things just aren't there yet.
Rockbox can play all *sorts* of formats. When it's up to scratch on iPods (battery life at least as long as the native firmware and both ARM cores in use, which might be tricky) then there'll be an easy answer.This would be nice, but...
It really depends on your audience, though. Do you honestly think that Joe RandomCollegeKid is gonna install unsupported software on their iPod, void their warranty, and run the risk of bricking the whole thing, just to listen to a podcast? This would be nice, but...
This turns out not to be the case :)This would be nice, but...
> it's no use a podcast that can't be heard in 90% of the portableIncrease the compelling works available on our chosen platform
> players and in 99.9% of the not-only-CDDA car players.
> more widespread, but things just aren't there yet.
The people that control the hardware (namely Apple) won't let this happen.Increase the compelling works available on our chosen platform
> [Apple] refuse to support Ogg, even though their hardware is capable of it.Increase the compelling works available on our chosen platform
> (rockbox proves that).
Just like the difficulty of simply downloading and correct burning cdroms is a huge barrier for non-technical people vs going to the store and buying a fully configured Windows computer.Increase the compelling works available on our chosen platform