Geek News Central Podcast Statistics



Podcast StatisticsIf a picture is worth a 1000 words the following graphic was captured from my Podcast Statistics account at RawVoice. In the third graphic I was completely blown away that Zune Podcast consumption has now surpassed iTunes.

I have also seen a trend of more people using podcatchers to download my show and over the past 6 months the number of web consumers has decreased.

You will notice in the first graph that bots and crawlers are represented in the graph. This only means a bot tried to download a media file.

Percentage of Mac users match national averages for Mac usage. One thing I do not show in this graph is that the iPhone direct download of the podcast represents. 0.5% of all downloads of my podcast. But the Nokia platform makes up more than 3.6% of clients downloading the podcast.

Interesting to say the least. This is just the tip if the iceberg of data we provide podcasters on our downloadable media statistic service.

Todd…


Coping without Internet, and a quick thanks



I have been in Perth this week, which for those who don’t know is the capital of Western Australia and a 4hr flight from my home in Melbourne. This was to work on a fairly major problem so long hours mostly at the customer site. In a geek tragedy the hotel i was staying at had potentially the worst Internet access I have ever encountered. While they claimed they had both wired and wireless broadband, connecting to anything ended up being an exercise in futility. Apparently they were having problems with their provider.

In the end my only connection to the outside world was a dial up connection to works VPN. This was less than ideal. It managed to keep me up to date with my email but not much else. This was particularly frustrating as it limited my ability to do my job. Being in a technical field working on a customers issue I really needed to get a lot of technical documents which was taking large amounts of time.

I didn’t really learn anything from this experience but it seriously annoyed me and I felt the need to vent.

On a side note it has been nice to see the concern expressed by GNC listeners and some of the other blogs and podcasts for those affected by the fires over here. I am a suburbs guy so my family and I were safe from the direct effects, however I have a good friend who lost his home and entire farm in Steels Creek and I have another friend who is in danger from one of the fires still burning. While we in Australia take bush fires as a natural part of summer the sheer ferocity and speed of what transpired last Saturday was frightening. I hope all of my fellow Victorian GNC readers, as well as any SA or NSW readers and their families have been safe from the fires.


GNC-2009-02-13 #451 Really great Show!



It’s Friday the 13th but this is a bang up show. Amazing what happens when you actually have some normal sleep and not suffering from Jet Lag. There is a pile of good tech news. Also I have some strong words for Ustream.TV tonight.

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Listener Links:
Twitter Scam I think
Tab Mix Plus
Many Analog TV going off air Anyway
Salvation Army Donation Australia
Australian Red Cross

Show Notes:
Malware Sites Target Digg Users
Neuros LINK
Satellites Collide
Postal 2.0
Apple Massive Security Update
Asus Reduces PC Models
Asus sells 4.9 Million Eee PC
Bounty on Downadup Worm
YouTube Joins Downloadable Media Bandwagon
Google No Longer Selling to Old Media
Twitter Click Danger
Netflix on a Massive Upswing in Subscribers
Charter Filing Bakruptcy
SecondRun.TV
New Sniffing Technique on BitTorrent
Palm Pulls Plug on Palm OS
Ancient Tribal Dance Copyright Protected
Rep Conyers needs to be Called Out!
Original Content Creator Protectionism
Vizio no longer to Sell Plazma TV
Shorty Award Winners
Progress to ISS
Mozilla Bespin
Spokenword.org Launches
Whats wrong with this!
Macbooks Owners Frustrated
EMI Boss P2P Battle Useless
Green Packaging gone Bad
Silverlight for Linux Users
Great Personal Branding Article
Got to have one of these!
New Starbucks Business Model
Pioneer No more TV Sales
iPhone Breakup


The Kindle, Copyright, and Neil Gaiman



Amazon has announced the release of the second version of the Kindle. Not available for sale yet, it promises to have some pretty nifty upgrades. It is thinner, lighter, has longer battery life, holds more types of files, etc. And, for those of us serving people with disabilities, one very promising update has been offered to the Kindle. It now comes with a developing text-to-speech function. This means that you can plug in headphones and listen to the book.

Don’t get any grand illusions that using this function will give you the true experience of an audio book. An audio book is professionally recorded, using a human voice, and plenty of post-production work to make it perfect. Hearing audio produced by text-to-speech software has no pre- or post-production; it reads the words straight off the page, in a monotoned electronic voice. It’s not something most people would choose to listen to. Its true value exists for those in the disabled community who for whatever reason cannot read traditional printed text. For these people, text-to-speech is a God send. Text-to-speech allows them equal access to materials we certainly take for granted, like web pages, books, newspapers, blogs, etc.

But of course, any time something like this is introduced, author groups and publishers, ala the RIAA, have to scream copyright infringement. This time, it’s the Authors Guild, who has informed its member literary agents that the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech is a violation of copyright because using such a thing makes it a derivative work and therefore illegal to use.

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Mr. Aiken is misguided. The purchase of a book gives me the right to do what I want with it, including reading it aloud, or having someone read it aloud for me. I can use it to prop up the leg of a coffee table if I want, too. That could, on the fringe, be called a “derivative work” as well. But no, the book is mine, I can read it out loud, I can even record it onto tape and play it in my car if I want. I can read it out loud to my kids, or read a passage or two of interest to a friend or colleague. I can even type a paragraph or two of a book right into my own blog, which is considered fair use by all copyright standards. The text-to-audio feature of the Kindle 2 is no different than using the buttons on the Kindle to enlarge the text, in my opinion.

And I’m not alone. Neil Gaiman’s blog entry for yesterday gives his short version of the argument he had with his own literary agent over this issue, along with his assertion that text-to-audio software is no different a use than reading a book out loud with your own voice. Neil Gaiman is one of those artists who “get it,” and has for a long time. Kindle’s new and wonderful feature is not in any way a threat to publishers and artists. Believe me, no person wants to listen to software text-to-speech conversion unless they need to. It’s not something anyone would pay money to buy. And besides that, the person with the Kindle presumable already purchased the book, or it wouldn’t be on the Kindle in the first place.


Podcast Ad Campaign GotoAssist Express Podcasters Wanted!



Reaching outside our community. We have had huge success with our Advertising campaign from Citrix Online. In a few days RawVoice is going to be launching a new ad campaign and I am looking for a few more podcast for the ad buy the criteria is quite specific but a perfect match for some shows.

This campaign will be from Mid February through end of June. I have posted the podcast show requirements on the RawVoice Blog. See the details here


The Power of Vertical Podcast Markets



I have revealed tonight a little bit of the strategy that RawVoice is moving forward on in 2009 among our other strategies. Building upon the success we have had with the Tech Podcast Network and the recently launched independently run Pro Med Network we are now looking to expand the vertical markets we are involved in.

For the full details check out the full post over on the RawVoice Blog.

Todd…


GNC-2009-02-10 #450 Back In Honolulu



Major case of Jet Lag tonight and we lost the ustream.tv Feed half way through the show tonight which makes me to start to wonder about the reliability of their service. I catch you up on what is happening with a full bevy of tech.. But it is always fun doing the show with very little sleep over past 36 hours.

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Listener Links:
Televisions with Contacts
Kindle 2
Virgin HiTech Offerings
OLPC Reboots
Mac’s in Government?
Look at the Inauguration Picture
Wireless Change Facts by Sweetwater
DTV Switch Could Leave Many in Dark
www.virtualbox.org

Show Notes:
Living Doll of Cancer Cells
Can I Scan you Please?
Bolivia next South Africa
23 Linux Applications
Kindle 2 Review
Geek Valentines Chart
Free Vomit Comet Rides for Ideas
President Obama names new Cybersecurity Chief
Psystar wins a round in Court
VUDU Box 149.99 50% Discount
Archos to release Android Phone / Tablet PC
AMD 5 New Chips
Steve Ballmer Speech to Politicians
Top Throw away Email Address Services
New York Magazine talks to Twitter
Firefox no Bundling with Windows please
New IM Wars?
Online Book-Keeping
TweetDeck and AlertThingy Head to Head
STS 119 delayed
More Worm Attacks
3 Apps only on Windows 7 Starter Edition
RIAA and Congress team up against Traditional Radio
Blogging you can make Money?
Sync Contacts and Calendar <-->
Spain Energy Positive
Dial Up Still Big