John Furrier

Podcasting Setup Tutorial

Here is a nice setup tutorial for Podcasting.  Anyone interested would love to read this post by Steve.  Well done.  His setup is a bit over the geek top but super informative.  If everyone had a setup like that we would see more quality podcasts.  However Steve covers all the functional components of podcasting with screen shots and detailed commentary.

http://www.steve-lacey.com/blogarchives/2005/09/how_i_put_a_pod.shtml

Podcasting DemoFall

I'm here at the DemoFall Conference podcasting like crazy.  Love it and will post as soon as possible.

Love this show where somewhere is the next big thing

2006 Year for Yahoo, Ebay, Microsoft

Not so fast Mr Feld... Don't count out Yahoo and even eBay... I do agree about Microsoft but across the board the "arms buildup" has been accumulating for many months now for the big guys.  You will see some massive shifts in the next 18 months from big players with big assets.  Yahoo can't build their parking lot big enough and when they do they fill it up with cars... and they just got the best place to work award.  Then there is eBay...a company that may be written down in history as the comapny that came from Pez dispensers to most likely being the largest infrastructure provider in the Web 4.0 environment controlling all the worlds online transcations.  Hell here is even a rumor that Google may pay cash for VeriSign and take over the domanin system (not a rumor that is what I would do..and get some transaction infrastructure in the meantime)

So you have the big 4: Microsoft, Yahoo, Ebay, and Google all will make massive moves this year.  As their cards hit the table the future will be clearer.

Podcasting 1.0 - Future of Podcasting

I've been involved in a few discussions with folks about podcasting and the direction.  It's interesting to see how people view podcasting and other new media trends.  People generally fall into the classic two camps:  part of the solution or part of the problem. 

The real question is who's working on making the user experience better or developing innovation and new technology to bring on mainstream users.  As we hit the 10 years of the web or Web 2.0 - Podcasting is really only barely 1.0.

There is so much more to podcasting than meets the eye. 

Former HP CEO and Great Guy Lew Platt Died Suddenly

I spent my formative years at HP from 1988-1997 and Lew Platt took over the helm from John Young and turn HP from an 8 billion dollar company to over 35b when I left.  He was from the east coast where I am from and he was the classic HP manager. 

He will be missed and remembered to transforming HP from a dying minicomputer company to a computer products company in just a few short years with household brand names like the LaserJet and Deskjet (and many more).  Lew will be viewed by all as upholding and promoting the HP Way.

Robert Scoble is Kicking the User Generated Model Ass

I have to say that Robert Scoble at Microsoft is kicking butt being a user generated content machine... I'm jealous because he's doing video.. More on PodTech and video later...

Scoble has a great interview with Bill Gates and Microsoft's first employee Marc McDonald on Ch9 (Microsoft's media site).  Microsoft is using social media via blogging and videoblogging with Scoble.  Great stuff.

One question I would have asked Bill is:  why isn't Microsoft competitive with talent like Google.  How do you motivate employees with stock when there is no perceived upside potential?

PE Week Wire Dan Primack

I sat down with Dan Primack from Thomson (huge financial media company) for a podcast while I was in Boston.  He's a nice guy who works full time tracking the Venture and finance business.  He's kind of spetical in nature but I have to say he's more open minded than I thought.  Good guy.  His email newsletter (my opinion: should be a blog :-)  ) has a big audience.  I wonder how big it would be if it was also a blog with RSS feeds?

Dan posted today Sept 6 on his daily newsletter...

*** A few weeks back, I expressed skepticism that many content-focused podcasting companies would be able to survive without also developing innovative infrastructure solutions. Ditto for blogging and any other new media distribution tool.

John Furrier

of Podtech.net, however, sees things a bit differently during a discussion/interview that can be heard here. It is my first-ever podcast, which only is notable for the fact that it also the first time I've slighted a new technology - or at least its financial prospects -- while actually using that very technology. Maybe should cause me to reconsider.

Podcasting Future by Forrester

This is some text from a Forrester report.  I think that Charlene Li is doing the best cutting edge research but I do think that they underestimate the number of people listening to podcasts and the overall adoption rate.

Social Marketing Comes In Four Flavors Consumers' trust in traditional forms of advertising is waning. In 2004, less than 50% of consumers trusted TV and radio ads, and only slightly more trusted print ads. What's more, consumers increasingly say they're bombarded with too many irrelevant ads. These negative attitudes toward traditional marketing have led consumers to take measures to block direct mailers, telemarketers, and TV advertisers from their homes in an accelerating consumer ad backlash. Social or viral marketing -- with its minimal obtrusiveness and trustworthy sources (often other consumers) -- avoids most of the anti-ad reactions that fuel the backlash. By engaging consumers in a dialogue about their products or encouraging consumer-to-consumer dialogue, marketers inevitably lose some control over the message of their campaigns. But what marketers may lose in control, they gain in audience attention, velocity of communication, and much-needed trust from loyal consumers. Tools For Social Marketing How can marketers connect with jaded consumers who avoid traditional campaigns with spam-blockers, DVRs, and Do-Not-Call lists? Four flavors of social marketing can help:

1: Word-of-mouth (WOM) Marketing Disillusioned consumers -- those who've lost trust in marketers -- now turn to each other for trustworthy product information. This consumer-to-consumer "buzz" naturally occurs without the intervention of marketers -- 46% of North American consumers often tell friends and family about products that interest them. When marketers get involved to stimulate WOM activity -- like P&G did when it offered to donate money to an energy-saving charity if Tide Coldwater users sent along product samples -- they must relinquish the control they would have had over a traditional campaign. But this is a small price to pay for the increase in consumer trust created by WOM marketing. While Tide created a buzz arou! nd Coldwater based on environmental awareness, Burger King's successful "Subservient Chicken" Webcast created a humorous buzz for its BK Tender Crisp. 2: Blogs Blogs (think: online journal) provide a venue for marketers and consumers to open a dialogue and facilitate WOM marketing among consumers. Blogs can be a space where corporate executives post their musings and consumers respond, marketers solicit consumers to post reviews of products, or consumers connect and recommend products to each other. Blogs about kids' issues help Stonyfield Farm create a dialogue with parents. Vespa's blogs give its consumers the opportunity to share Vespa scooter experiences. 3: RSS Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML standard that gives consumers the opportunity to aggregate all of their information into one location. RSS provides marketers with many options to reach consumers: Feed sponsorships, ad placements within feeds, and ad headlines are only a few. Though current adoption of RSS is relatively low (only 2% of North American online adults use RSS today), those who use this technology now are the valuable, information-hungry consumers of tomorrow (see figure above). Marketers like Purina and Apple use RSS to inform consumers about new products, send updates about product support, and disseminate consumer-generated content from their Web sites. 4: Podcasting Like RSS, podcasting separates media from a single channel, delivering audio content in a new way. For marketers, podcasts provide opportunities for sponsorships, on-air ads, and original product-specific content. The upside? A captive audience. The downside? A small audience (only 10% of online adults are familiar with podcasting) but a growing one, especially with the addition of a podcasting library in iTunes, which lists more than 600 podcasts about technology and 100 about travel. Marketers looking to repeatedly reach a valuable, younger, tech-savvy crowd should actively explore this new medium. So while traditional one-way marketing campaigns are losing their audience to consumers' ad fatigue, multitasking, and distrust of marketing messages, marketing itself is not dead. It's just gone to the masses. Get involved in the dialogue.

Boston Globe Podcasting Story

Scott Kirsner writes a good story on Podcasting.  I think that Scott has the right read on this (disclaimer: he interviewed me for the story which he quotes me..).  Scott basically echos my thoughts.  Nice job Scott.

My quote:

''I'm concerned about the over-hype, and the bad quality user experience," says John Furrier, the founder of PodTech.net, a Silicon Valley-based site that features tech-oriented podcasts. ''I want to see more pragmatic utility. There's still a lot more work to do to make it mainstream."