But it needs Canadian financial institutions. Mint, please come to Canada!
Tag - mobile
Apple’s scheduled a Steptember 5th special event: “the beat goes on.”It’s obviously about iPods. My guess is that Apple’s now ready to take the next step. More to the point, the marketplace is finally ready for Apple to release the next evolution in iPod: mobile computing.You already see it in iPhone. And we know that OS X is underpinning future iPods.iPods have been carrying our calendars and notes for years. But it’s always been the sideshow, the off-off-Broadway down-the-lane-to-the-left non-attraction.I think the new iPods are going to take a huge leap in functionality. iPhone’s seamless reading of PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, and more will be part of the iPod experience.It’ll still be the entertainment hub – music, movies, podcasts – that it is. But it’s going to take the next step to a mobile computing platform that includes some of what we currently think of as “business” functionality and some of what we think of as “consumer” functionality – especially games.It would not shock me if concurrent with this unveiling of the new iPod we have an “iSDK,” a software development kit for iPhone and iPod.You read it hear first.
Michael Arrington reports that Odeo has just been acquired …
I’m still wondering – as I was earlier this year – what will happen to all the content that has been uploaded.
The last thing I want to see is any links get broken or content get deleted. Lots of people have podcasts on Odeo, and I for one have pieces of personal history, like this last message to my wife from her grandfather before he passed away:
[tags] odeo, sold, sonicmountain, podcast, john koetsier [/tags]Advertising this good deserves recognition:
This is marketing from people who have read the Cluetrain. This is marketing from people who give a damn. This is marketing from people who are having fun.
If all advertising was this good you wouldn’t need to skip commercials.
[tags] ad, advertising, kodak, kodak moment, guts, marketing, john koetsier [/tags]Obvious Corp is is selling Odeo.
What worries me is whether or not audio I’ve recorded there will survive the transition. Like my wife’s grandfather’s last phone message. Like my my daughter’s thoughts on the Narnia move.
Ev says they’re selling it lock, stock, and barrel:
To clarify, what we’re talking about is selling odeo.com and studio.odeo.com, including all code, the domain, brand, database of three million MP3s, etc. Not a company, but a site and platform that could be ramped up to something much bigger.
… but will there be some kind of clause protecting existing recorded audio? I sure hope so. Any company buying it would be very foolish to immediately anger the existing user community by distrupting access, but you never know.
[tags] odeo, obvious, sale, john koetsier [/tags]Teresa’s grandfather’s last message … we left it on our answering machine for almost two years, until I recorded it onto my computer.
Click the pink play button:
Teresa’s Opa (Rienk Koat) died in 2005. Here’s one of the pictures we have of him in our kitchen.
He died less than a month after leaving this message. Growing up is hard to do, sometimes.
. . .
. . .
Posting this made me think of something I wrote about Corrie Koat, his wife, and Teresa’s Oma.
Skype rocks and making group podcasts together could be so easy … if only you could record easily. Here are two apps I’m looking at that will fit the bill.
(Why Skype doesn’t include this option as an extra I’ll have no clue.)
[tags] skype, podcast, mac, record, john koetsier [/tags]
Yesterday I met Joe Laudenbach, a Bellingham, WA realtor who is wondering how blogging might be something he could use in his business. As I prepped for the meeting, I jotted down some thoughts on how blogging will fit into his business.
Note: my goal was not to get him blogging, but to give him information that will help him make an informed decision whether or not he wants to start.
Why to blog
- Better SEO
Because blogs are more frequently updated, they’re a major benefit to your site’s search engine optimization … the factors that help you rank higher in search engine results pages. - More interesting site
A blog is usually much more interesting than a website … it’s not corporate, it delivers content in quick hits, it’s more accessible … - More human face to potential clients
Building on the “not corporate” theme, a blog is where your personality comes through – which is attractive (unless you’re Attila the Hun) - Learn and develop more as a person and as a realtor
I learn more from blogging than just about anything else. Simply the process of thinking and writing and writing and listening and linking makes me much more consciously aware of trends and opportunities. The same is true for realtors or virtually any occupation, I believe. - Creative outlet
People who blog regularly come to love blogging as a creative outlet. And I don’t believe there’s a single person alive who isn’t creative to some degree, in some way. Feeding this impulse has personal and professional benefits. - Contacts, conversations, communication
Through blogging I’ve had email contact with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and many other major, well-known technology, business, and marketing leaders. They’ve made me smarter. Plus, I’ve had many more contacts with many more people who aren’t so well known … and that’s had even greater benefits. The same can be true for real estate agents or any professional/business people. Jobs, work contacts, and just plain interesting people: blogging can bring all that. It has for me.
Why not to blog
- If you can’t write
Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be Hemmingway. But if you absolutely cannot string 2 words together intelligibly, forget it. Find some other way to engage your clients. - If you won’t keep it up
Don’t start if you won’t keep it up. Few things are more pathetic than an orphaned blog. However, don’t get too worried, either. One post a week is not ideal, but it’s perfectly fine for many, many professionals. - If you’re just marketing yourself
If your blog is only going to be about how your company and you are incredibly, stunningly great (not to mention handsome and wealthy) forget it. No-one’s going to read it – one Paris Hilton is enough, thank you very much. - If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing hit
Blogging isn’t a quick fix solution. It’s about telling stories and developing relationships, and those don’t form overnight. Even the blogosphere success stories such as Thomas Mahon blogged for months and months without seeing major results. The good news: all your work is always paying dividends. Old blog posts never die, they just keep attracting hits. - If you’re not comfortable being authentic, real, and non-corporate
Don’t be a stuffed shirt – let your hair down and be real. If you can’t tolerate the slightest mistake, if you can’t speak with anything other than the traditional marcom voice: forget it. It’s boring. It’s just advertising … and people are more adblind now than they’ve ever been.
What to blog about
Note: these are tailored for Joe, who’s a real estate agent. But they’re adaptable to different situations.
- Why people move to Bellingham/Whatcom county
There’s probably 10 or 15 blog posts right here … as many as there are reasons. - What areas are great for kids|seniors|adults
Another 5-7 posts … - Things to do in Bellingham
- Seasonal events
If you do to a harvest festival, blog it. Christmas candlelight parade? Blog it. - House-hunting tips
Keep it to one tip per blog posts … there’s probably an indefinite number of tips here. Organize them in a category so that visitors can see them all. - Top ten house-hunting gotchas
I know I’d love to know what to watch out for when moving … and I’m probably searching for this type of information when I’m about to move, too. - Things you realize AFTER you move in
Wouldn’t we all like to have known this – about a month before moving in. - Stressless moving
How to blog
- Intentional keywords
Be intentional about the keywords you use. Know what people will be searching for when they’re looking to find a home in Whatcom County, WA. Niche it out to the max if you want to rank in search engines, and make sure you use those keywords in titles and posts. - Regularly (at least once a week)
As mentioned above, don’t make an orphan out of your blog. - Naturally
When you’re blogging, you’re a person. Not a company. Talk to people who are also persons as you would talk to someone on the street. Anything else is disrespectful, stuffy, and annoying. - Interview people
Interview key people in your community. This is a great way to expand your circle of contacts, blog about interesting valuable topics, and grow your readership. - Talk to clients
Clients will give you all the blog fodder you need, if you just ask.
Other things to consider
- Other social media
Over time, as you become established in your blog and comfortable with the technology, why not explore other forms of social media? Upload a house video or a neighborhood drive-through to YouTube. Then post it to your blog. Or … - Podcasts
Create a couple of podcasts so that people can hear your voice. This can really give people a sense of who you are and that they know you.
These are a few of the suggestions I had for Joe. I hope that they’re applicable to whatever situations you’re in, whether you’re a small business blogger, a corporate blogger, or a social media consultant. I’d love any feedback you might have, positive or negative.
Questions/opportunties? Looking for help in your social media adventure? Let me know.
Been surfing the last hour or so listening to Jason Calacanis’ goodbye podcast – a little mix of reflection, sentiment, prognostication, consulting.
What a cool way to leave a job.
BTW, good advice to the poor founder of Gizbuzz, who sent a voice email to Jason kind of complaining about working hard blogging and not getting results. (Not like we’ve never heard that story before!)
Jason sorta gently tore a strip off him … the blog is not targeted enough, the entire business is not focused enough, and the “reblogging” thing is just not going to take you to the top. (However, he did like they guy’s youmakemedia blog … which does look like it has prospects to be very cool.)
The reality is that focus and targeting are important things for all of us to consider, myself included … perhaps, myself especially. Some thought-provoking things in that advice.
🙂
[tags] calacanis, gizbuzz, podcast, john koetsier [/tags]I wonder if Ze Frank’s download numbers might be as wildly off as his perception of Rocketboom’s.
Just take a look, if you will, down the page to my Ze Frank post (if you’re on the home page here at bizhack). If not, check out this post on Ze Frank.
Notice something about that linked-in video of Ze’s latest video podcast? It’s loading into the page. And you haven’t clicked it or pressed play.
Ze uses Revver to distribute his video content. Revver must set their videos to start downloading right away as soon as they hit a web page … in contrast to YouTube embedded videos, which only start downloading when a visitor clicks the play button.
Revver might be more user-friendly and ready to go when you’re ready to watch, but YouTube probably has a better sense of which videos have actually been watched.
Which means that Ze Frank may not know whether people have just downloaded the video – or watched it.
. . .
. . .
Comments, insults, suggestions: please comment.
Other bloggers and news on this issue:
[tags] ze frank, the show, rocketboom, analytics, podcasts, video, john koetsier [/tags]There’s a whole lot of kafuffle right now over Ze Frank and Rocketboom and numbers. Frankly, I don’t care.
All I know is that Ze Frank’s The Show is the perfect video podcast: not too long, not too short, funny, engaging, topical. Here’s a sample:
Impressive.
[tags] ze frank, podcast, video, the show, john koetsier [/tags]
Just watching Scoble’s video podcast with the product manager of Zune, Matt Jubelirer.
Forget the Zune, I don’t like Matt’s language:
- consumers
- the device
- interacting with the community
- digital entertainment device
- the device
- content
- did I say the device?
- user experience
- quality assurance processes
- innovative
- end-to-end system
- album art experience
- customer interaction
- ecosystem
- the sharing scenario
You would never hear Steve Jobs talk like this. When will Microsofties learn that it’s about authentic simple emotional things … not how smart they are or how many buzzwords they picked up in B-school?
(And why on earth is he not calling it Zune every time, instead of device? Poor branding!)
On the other hand, he’s young and obviously pretty sharp, well-spoken, personable. He’ll learn. And, contrary to Jobs, I do think the ability to send a song or a photo to someone else is pretty cool.
The funniest thing: he obviously doesn’t want to say “iPod” or “Apple” or “iTune.” It’s amusing to see him and Scoble find numerous ways to NOT say anything related to a certain fruity Cupertino-based company.
. . .
. . .
Update:
This story just hit Techmeme in the discussion on Scoble’s video podcast (at least when it shows on the home page).
Travelling around the mulberry bush trying to log into Google Calendar this morning:
Fun, fun, fun.
[tags] google, calendar, web, usability, error, video, john koetsier [/tags]Scoble is talking to all the most interesting and cool people in the business. Too bad he’s only letting us get half the show.
For instance, today he mentioned that he’s talked to Even Krauss of Cuts, a movie editing service. The video is great quality, and Evan is interesting and articulate. Great. Excellent.
But I can’t hear Scoble to save my life.
Which effectively means that when I watch the Scobleshow, I can hear precisely half of a conversation. Or I can turn up the volume so that Evan is screaming and Scoble is just barely audible.
That’s a little annoying.
[tags] scoble, scobleshow, video, podcast, cuts, evan krauss, john koetsier [/tags]I swear, Apple Legal does its level best every single day to do whatever it can in every way to do the maximum possible damage to Apple Computers Inc.
How can ostensibly smart people – I mean, they passed the bar, right – be so absolutely, abysmally, galactically stupid?
Now they want to take over “podcasting.” Find the details at Calacanis’ blog, the Wired blog, Scobleizer, ZDnet, and MacNewsWorld .
“Podcasting” as a term for personal audio publishing online is a term that does nothing but good for Apple, the iPod, and the whole iPod economy. Conversely, coming down with the legal fireworks ticks off potential clients, alienates Apple Computer Inc., and provides fodder for rivers of bad press.
Imagine the alternative: Zunecasting.
Perhaps Apple would prefer that?
[tags] podcasting, apple, legal, lawyers, IP, trademarks, zunecasting, john koetsier [/tags]Blogged with Flock
Driving home tonight listening to the local sports station riff with call-in guests on the Vancouver Canucks’ prospects for the coming NHL season, I started thinking.
“User” or “consumer” generated content is nothing new. It’s at least as old as talk radio, which relies heavily on call-in listeners to stimulation conversations and generate interest.
Are there other examples of producerism that predate the internet era? Here’s the components you need, as far as I can tell:
- a shared and social media space
- a community that gathers there
- content of some kind that they create and share
Talk radio fits, I think, but the 18th-century tavern doesn’t. Am I missing something?
. . .
. . .
America’s Funniest Home Videos comes to mind. A significant difference? The centralized gatekeeper/editor. Perhaps a necessary part of the definition of producerism/user-generated content is the lack of a centralized gatekeeper.
[tags] cgm, consumer-generated media, producerism, team1040, radio, talk, social media, community, john koetsier [/tags]The benefits of social media and business blogging are not immediately apparent to all.
I recently received an email from an Ausssie who’s trying to convince a client to open up. Names changed to protect his privacy … and his relationship with his client! Also, I’ve done some very slight editing for clarity.
Hey John,
I enjoy reading your blog – your Increase your IQ: blog article caught my attention. We too have been inspired by the Stormhoek example which has been on my radar screen for some time now, and have also been trying to get corporates interested in leveraging the blogosphere …
We (name deleted) recently won a small project with (large Australian company – name deleted). We found a small group of bloggers based on geographic location and invited them to the launch party of a new brand … and … we are now endeavouring to get (the large Australian company) to have a link on their web site to all the bloggers/podcasters.
But we have found it difficult to convince (large Australian company) to do this – full marks for getting the project started but now it’s on the way it seems (to date anyway) they lack the ‘will’ to finish the job!
That, of course, is always great fun for consultants and outsourced talent: a hanging, incomplete project that the client seems to have forgotten.
My reply:
Hi Paul,
Can be tough, hey? Horse and water come to mind.
Reality is: if the client doesn’t get it, you’re probably wasting your time. Because then even if they do it they’ll do it as a tactic or as an episode … not as a new way of doing business and communicating and seeking input and telling people who care what they’re doing.
Hope everything goes well for you. I have a few buddies in Australia, on the Perth side. Where are you?
At this point, it’s probably better not to dip your toes in the social media water than to jump in and then find out that it’s way too cold, the currents are unfamiliar, and besides, you really like your old swimming hole much better anyways.
Authenticity (or lack thereof) will surface … and the social media sphere is extremely hostile to fakery, old-style marketing, or just simple BS.
The discussion about Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail has been absolutely fascinating.
The book makes the claim that in markets where physical inventory is not an issue and transaction costs are minimal, goods that are not top-sellers can be a very significant portion of sales, when taken in aggregate. So, for instance, the bottom half of songs on iTunes in popularity will make up a significant portion of sales … sales that simply would not occur in a bricks-and-mortar industry where carrying costs and inventory are very, very real concerns.
In other words, some markets are moving away from being completely hit-based – only popular stuff makes money, relatively unpopular stuff disappears – towards being more craft-based – more sellers of more stuff, each in small quantity individually but in aggregate forming a large market.
The Wall Street Journal’ Lee Gomes has essentially attempted to quash the meme, saying that the Pareto Principal and the hit machine that modern consumer culture has built are both alive and well in new media.
It would be wonderful if the world as Mr. Anderson describes it were true: one where “healthy niche products” and even “outright misses” collectively could stand their ground with the culture’s increasingly soulless “hits.”
But while every singer-songwriter dreams from his bedroom of making a living off iTunes, few actually do, mostly because so many others have the very same idea. And to the extent that Apple is making money off iTunes, thanks go to Nelly Furtado and other hitmakers. Indeed, you can make the case that the Internet is amplifying the role of hits, even in relation to misses, not diminishing them.
In turn, Chris Anderson has written a rebuttal, which asserts that, unfortunately, Lee Gomes doesn’t know math.
I have no doubt that there are many parts of my analysis and data that could be improved. Unfortunately, Gomes, in his haste to find them, stumbles over statistics and more, and in the end simply makes a muddle of what might have been an interesting debate over the magnitude of the Long Tail effect.
But I think the best perspective on the whole affair is Robert Scoble’s. And, in fact, he’s pretty well positioned to have it … due to previously being in the really, really short (but fat) part of the tail at Microsoft, and now being at the very, very, very long end of the tail at Podtech.
Scoble does a great analysis and then synthesis on the debate and comes up with this: the long tail can be viewed as an enormous farm club for mainstream media.
(That’s obviously not ALL it is – I’m 100% certain that Robert would say that as well. It’s first and foremost a means of self-expression and communication for millions and millions of people.)
But the point he makes is valid: a talented podcaster can make it on radio – terrestrial or satellite. A talented videoblogger can make it on TV – cable, satellite, or terrestrial. The same goes for a talented blogger.
That’s not to say that MSM has figured everything out – far from it. And it’s not to say that radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines aren’t in big, big trouble unless they can find models that make sense in the networked, digital world.
But it is to say that talent will rise to the top, and that revenue will come to those who want it, and are good enough to warrant it.
Which is about the smartest thing I’ve heard on the long tail in a while.
[tags] robert scoble, long tail, chris anderson, WSJ, daniel gomes, MSM, media, blogging, podcasting, videocasting, radio, newspapers, magazines, Sirius, john koetsier [/tags]I’m working on a social media (blogs, podcasts, and wikis) presentation for a business. While I’m still in the initial stages, here are some links, quotes, and perspectives that have been helpful so far.
Let me know if there’s something else I should be looking at as well …
Research
A Cymfony study on business blogging:
- The majority of companies surveyed (76 percent) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s)
- 75 percent of respondents reported that the initial goals of their blogs have been met
- Three-fifths of corporations have guidelines in place which outline the company’s responsibility for posting and maintaining their blogs, yet nearly two-thirds do not review content prior to posting
- 42 percent of respondents said that specific blog posts have affected the company or a brand and in the vast majority of cases it has had a positive affect
And a Forrester study:
- companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists
- Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies
Quotable quotes
- Entrepreneur (on blogs)
– they also can be used as a unique, informal way to establish a company or individual’s reputation or brand
– They improve branding by presenting a more authentic and distinctive voice for a business than canned PR or MarCom messaging.
– “for many companies, blogs have become a business staple” - CNN
– “A blog is the perfect platform for someone who really is trying to establish themselves as a thought leader,” said Web analyst Rick Bruner.
– “The blog provides a very human side to the corporate face beyond press releases, or a Web page or a corporate brochure,” said Tom Murphy of CapeClear Software. - Inc.
– “Blogs are a way for you to tell your story over and over again, and do it in a personable way. If you are blogging and your competitor down the street is not, then it can be a competitive advantage,”
– they can be an excellent tool to build relationships and create brand equity as more Internet users see them as viable sources of information. - BusinessWeek
– Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they’re losing control of it.
– Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later - Also BusinessWeek
– Customers can be your best evangelists
– Viewers, listeners, and readers are smart— often smarter than your own employees—so let them improve your products and services. - And BusinessWeek again, this time on Nike
– A strong relationship is created when someone joins a Nike community or invites Nike into their community.” Which is the point of brand marketing, isn’t it?
– Last fall, Nike started feeding video clips that spotlight Nike-sponsored soccer players onto popular video sharing sites, including YouTube and Google. It created JogaTV, a virtual soccer TV station, where it releases a new video clip every few days and fans can upload their own clips. - eMarketer
– “A year ago eMarketer looked at the business of blogging and said that blogs were a one-to-few medium, and they were not practical for most businesses,” says James Belcher, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, The Business of Blogging: A Review. “But over the past year many things have changed, including our opinion.” - Web Ink Now (on something you can put on your blog: e-books)
E-books directly contribute to an organization’s positive reputation by showing thought leadership in the marketplace of ideas. This form of content brands a company, a consultant, or a non-profit as an expert and as a trusted resource to turn to again and again.
Corporate bloggers, sites I check frequently
- Edelman PR exec Steve Reubel
- GM blog
- Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwarz
- Community facilitator Tara Hunt
- Raunchy UK ad-exec-turned-social-marketer Hugh Macleod
- VC Guy Kawasaki
- Marketing guru Seth Godin
- TED blog
- Duct Tape Marketing
- Word of Mouth Marketing
Business blogs
- Successful Blog
- Business Blog Consulting
- Online Marketing Blog
- Blog Business Summit
- Anything Goes Marketing
- Simplenomics (at least this post: 10 Post Ideas for Businesses that Blog)
There’s more, but that’s all I have time for tonight …
(And yes, the presentation is all about trying to persuade this company that social media is a very, very good thing to invest in – right now. After all, marketing is about ideas, and there has never been a more powerful way to spread ideas than the internet, and the most powerful idea-spreading forces on the internet right now are social media.)
[tags] womma, TED, business, social media, blogging, podcasts, guy kawasaki, seth godin, tara hunt, Hugh Macleod, john koetsier [/tags]Ben Hammersley had a presentation at Les Blogs recently titled “Eight ideas that will really revolutionize the 21st century (and why blogging isn’t one of them).”
I tried to watch the video, but a combination of poor quality and Ben’s hard-on-a-Canadian’s-ear English accent made it virtually impossible. (To say nothing of the pain, the pain I say, of trying to watch Windows Media files.)
Fortunately, a Dutch blogger has posted some of the main ideas. With apologies to my ancestors, I can’t read Dutch, but here’s the key bit in English.
Looks like 8 dichotomies or continuums of ideas:
– information wants to be free —- copyright
– zero distance — borders
– mass amateurisation — censorship
– more much more — network blocking
– true names — identity cards and databases
– viral behaviour — more network blocking
– everything is personal — everything is trackable
– ubiquitous computing — no privacy
Sounds very cool – I still want a complete transcript. Someone – anyone?
. . .
. . .
I’ve downloaded the MP3 audio – hopefully it’s better than the video.
[tags] ben hammersley, les blogs, ideas, revolution, blogging, john koetsier [/tags]I tried to watch Jason’s presentation at Collaboration Loop tonight.
Unfortunately Collaboration Loop uses Windows Media player, and it’s driving me nuts.
- it keeps stopping part way
- the play head is not scrubbable, so I can’t restart it partway
- and when I try to give them some feedback, the feedback form is braindead
I’ve noticed that others are having trouble too. Fix your site and use QuickTime or Flash, Collaboration Loop!
[tags] signal vs. noise, jason fried, collaboration loop, annoying, windows media player, john koetsier [/tags]My new iPod just arrived – the 30 GB video version.
It somehow feels so much better than my 4th generation 20 GB version. It seems much slimmer (probably only a few millimeters), the screen seems much bigger (again, it’s probably not actually very much bigger at all) and overall just much more delicious.
Yum!
Now I’m figuring out how to get my music on the new iPod while leaving it on the old iPod. Hrmm … multiple playlists, sync these playlists to this iPod and those playlists to the other one … couldn’t this be a bit easier?
Grumble grumble.
[tags] iPod, video, apple, john koetsier [/tags]Wired has an important article in their June issue on what they’ve dubbed crowdsourcing. What is crowdsourcing?
Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.
Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing, gives plenty of examples: it’s people uploading photos to iStockphoto where companies and people who need photos can buy them on the cheap. It’s VH1 sourcing videos that “ordinary” people have uploaded to the internet and building a show around them. It’s Proctor & Gamble finding underemployed brainiacs who solve thorny science and engineering problems at InnoCentive. And it’s Amazon’s Mechanical Turk … outsourcing fundamentally simple and repetitive problems that humans still do better than machines.
Other examples that Howe did not give but could have include the recent development of services that enable bloggers to sell their stories to mainstream media companies … newspapers, magazines, etc. … for a fraction of what a staff writer would cost. (For the life of me I cannot find that link back – help!) Or imagine excellent podcasts being paid for retransmission on satellite or terrestrial radio. I could see this happening with Venture Voice easily.
To me, this is incredibly relevant to the discussion on my recent We Are Not Consumers post. I wrote it in quasi-response to Pete Blackshaw’s Consumer-generated media blog … and Pete responded with a lengthy comment explaining why he still prefers the term “consumer.”
However, as the Wired article lists, 57% of 12- to 17-year-olds online are contributing to the web in one way or another:
Late last year the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study revealing that 57 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds online – 12 million individuals – are creating content of some sort and posting it to the Web.
This is literally changing the world. However, if you’re a company that wants to take advantage of these new opportunities to get more work done cheaper, or to get work done that you’ve always wanted to do but could never do affordably, everything that is presented here relies on 4 things:
- Digitization
All parts of the workflow must be digital. Ideally, not just in PDF form but in malleable formats: text is text, images are images, structure is structure. Everything is broken down to its component bits. - Dis-aggregation
It must be possible to route any and every individual piece wherever it is needed to whomever is needed whenever needed. This allows you to break complex tasks down into simple component chunks, which reduces specialized knowledge needed for any individual job. - Re-aggregation
After you’ve spread jobs all over the face of the earth, potentially, you need to be able to assemble all the bits and bytes back together. - Flexible smart project managers
The entire process needs to be managed by smart flexible people who are open to new opportunities and able to adapt quickly to change.
Last Sunday Teresa and I had dinner with her family … including her uncle Cal Koat, who is the creative spark behind Worldbeat Canada, “Canada’s home for contemporary global music.”
Cal does a weekly radio show on Vancouver radio station CJVB, does the Celt in a Twist top 10 list of Celtic music, and interviews world musicians for radio and podcasts.
Well worth a visit, if only for the great pic on the first page of the site!
This past Friday I spent some time publishing a course on my iPod. (Find out how you can, too).
It’s fairly simple to create a course to run on an iPod, but there’s one problem: installing.
Installing the course takes too many steps for the average person … dragging the audio content into iTunes, syncing, then putting the iPod into disk mode, and dragging the course’s text files into the Notes section of their iPod. (More info on installing.)
There has to be a better way – and there’s a couple of forms it could take. One is very simple and immediate. The other is long-term and strategic … and that’s the one that I think Apple will do.
One: iPod Markup Language, zipped course packages
Option A would be for Apple to extend the markup language that iPods already speak, making it just a little more sophisticated. In this scenario, Apple would invent some kind of configuration format that would tell iTunes just what to do with all the course components.
Example:
A course might consist of audio content, text content, some pictures, and perhaps a few videos. The configuration file would simply be used during installation – telling iTunes what’s included, where to put it, and how it’s all linked together.
Then content providers could zip up course packages and distribute them online. People who want to install the courses would just download the file and import it into iTunes. During the next sync with their iPod, iTunes would put the components in the right places on the iPod, and users would find the courses either in the Notes section of their iPod as they currently do, or, preferably, in a dedicated courses/learning section.
Two: iTunes Education Store (and library)
That’d be a great easy solution, but here’s what I think Apple will actually do.
Apple will do for iPod-based e-learning exactly what they did for podcasts: build in the ability for content providers (both professional and amateur) to register their content at the iTunes music store.
They’ve already done this for major universities, in a sense. Currently, it’s only for audio and maybe video content. But eventually, it will be for complex content that is a mix of text, audio, video, images, and even assessment.
Once that’s been done, then Apple will make it discoverable for people browsing the iTunes Music, err everything store. You’ll be able to can “subscribe” to it just like a podcast, and bango-wango, it’ll auto-magically appear on your iPods.
There’ll be a free option for free content (that’s the library part) and, you guessed it, a commercial model for courses people and companies want to sell.
(As an aside, this is why Microsoft is so worried about Apple’s iTunes/iPod empire. It’s not the music, it’s the ecosystem. What Apple has built is a media-delivery monster, and the only limit to what this pipe can carry is the rate at which people can absorb new uses for it without getting information overload and reacting against it.)
This will be completely revolutionary, because now you will not only have an easy way to create and publish courses, you’ve got a popular, common platform on which to do it. Who needs e-books? iPod is already here!
The content is easy to create – it took me about an hour to get from having no clue how to do it to successfully publishing my course on my iPod. And the reach of the platform is unparalleled, with probably 45 million iPods in the wild today.
It’s a content provider’s dream: fairly cheap, extremely portable, good battery life, flexible, easy to publish to, a built-in distribution model, and an ecosystem full of people used to paying for content.
Is this what Duke University had in mind when they did their iPod Duke Digital Initiative? Perhaps. I’m convinced it’s going to happen.
The only question is when.
Friday nights, Friday nights. Friday nights are supposed to be for fun. For long dinners and late movies, and then a little nightcap before going to bed.
Except for geeks.
I’m only a mini-geek, so I only spent about 3 hours fiddling with technology.
But this past week Friday I got my first course up and running on an iPod. And it’s unbelievably simple.
The course consists of a series of text components – which can be basically any text you want – and some audio tracks. You access the course via the Notes menu in your iPod, and when the audio tracks are referenced, you simply click the middle select button on your iPod to play them while you continue reading the note.
How to publish a course on iPod
iPod speaks a subset of HTML – a very small subset, as far as I know. (Oddly enough, the files you transfer to your iPod have to be simple text (.txt) files and not HTML (.html) files.)
The syntax will be very familiar to anyone who has any experience with HTML:
- Page titles: <title>this is the title</title>
- Links: <a href=”link.txt”>this text is a link</a>
- Line breaks: the standard <br>
- Paragraphs: the standard <p>
- Song/audio links: <a href=”song=My Unique Song Name”>Link to song</a>
There’s a few more – check Make Magazine for details.
Here’s a critical one, though, if you want to link audio into your course but do not want users to leave the environment of your course. Use the song/audio link mentioned about, but add the following meta tag to the top of your page: <meta name=”NowPlaying” content=”false”>. That will make the song (or audio track with training content) play while the text content remains on the screen … which is what I wanted for my little app.
All-in-all, very simple, and very cool.
My kingdom for an installer
There is one shortfall, however: no installer app or standard installer procedure. Apple needs to build something in for automatic installation.
Right now, the install procedure is as follows:
- Drag song/audio tracks to iTunes
- Sync
- In iTunes preferences, enable Disk Mode
- Drag notes bundle into iPods Notes area
That probably involves connecting/disconnecting the iPod twice, not to mention futzing with preferences. Dragging the notes bundle into the iPod notes area is dead easy, but I’ve seen way too many dead easy procedures on a computer give … umm … inexperienced users fits to believe this this is not a problem. And I haven’t even listed the part about re-connecting your iPod and disabling Disk Mode so that you can sync your music again.
Realistically, I think Apple sees the potential of iPods as learning devices with both audio and video content. Hopefully that will impell them to create some sort of mechanism that is drag-n-drop friendly for users – for example, download a zipped course, drop it on iTunes, and based on some metadata, iTunes just knows what to do with it.
Probably, however, Apple will create some kind of solution based on the iTunes Music Store.
And this is how I think they’ll do it.
More, more, more
As far as I can find out, however, there is no way of affecting either the font or size of the text you publish on iPod.
That would be a very nice feature, since (as you can see in the screenshot above) the default iPod Notes text is rather thin and spidery. I’d like to be able to beef it up a bit … make it bold or something like that.
In terms of courses, adding assessment is always a nice feature – even if it’s just self-assessment for the learner.
Currently, the only way you can add assessment to an iPod course is via branching: asking a question with a number of answers, each of which is a link. By following the link of the selected answer, the user both selects an option and (by virtue of what you put at the linked file) finds out if he/she is right or wrong.
Summing up
Adding a course to an iPod is incredibly easy … and will probably get even easier.
It would be nice if Apple would publish some specs on what you can or can’t do with Notes (in terms of tags that are supported). I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that in the medium-term future.
But I can already see that iPod could become a very strong e-learning platform over the next 2-4 years.
Since both Aidan and Ethan were doing podcasts tonight (Aidan on his third birthday, and Ethan on his favorite games, Gabrielle could not possibly survive the night without doing her own.
So we did.
And here are Gabrielle’s thoughts on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which we watched tonight on DVD:
Since Aidan just did a podcast about the presents he received for his third birthday, Ethan wanted to do one too.
So we did a podcast together of his favorite games … one card game (Skip-Bo), and one computer game (Nanosaur 2).
Voila:
Aidan and I do a podcast about the presents he received for his birthday …
OK, “Odeo is incredible” is a fairly giddy title. But frankly, that’s the way I feel.
I’ve been using and building web technology for over a decade … but Odeo blows me away.
It’s the best of what’s sometimes referred to as web 2.0: simple, beautiful, social, searchage, taggable, mashable software. (Mashable in at least the very weak sense that I can import it right into my blog with one line of code, and possibly in more involved ways that I’m not aware of.)
In the past 2 years, I have never had any real interest in creating podcasts. I did it for a client that used podcasts to teach English-as-a-second-language students, but it was not a passion of mine by any stretch of the imagination.
But Odeo caught my eye recently and I’ve been using it – more for fun than anything else.
The kids and I made a “happy birthday” podcast for their grandfather – over on my personal & family blog: Art & artifice. Aidan, my youngest son, and I had some fun the other night.
It’s just so easy and instant. Two minutes, and you’ve got a podcast. Add one or two to post it on your blog, if you wish. It’s literally child’s play.
Incredible!