Wednesday, July 19, 2006

A video of young Doc Searls in 1988, speaking Cackalacky. No facial hair. They called him Dave Searls. He's different, much younger, less serious!  

Ray Slakinski would like to see the community podcast directory breathe again. 

Almost everyone missed the political significance of the Edwards endorsement (and use) of BitTorrent to distribute video. Aside from being an efficient use of technology, it is also a non-infringing use of BitTorrent. From a legal standpoint, the more non-infringing applications there are, the weaker the case of Hollywood as it goes after BitTorrent, as they have attacked other P2P technologies. Having a major national candidate using the technology for non-infringing purposes helps strengthen the case, and while I have not endorsed anyone for President in 2008, I do thank Edwards for stepping up for technology. This has a lot more impact than the kind of things bloggers usually ask candidates to do, like blogging their personal thoughts, or have video bloggers follow them into the bathroom (sorry, that's a small exaggeration). Use of BitTorrent, esp by a Democrat, is the kind of thing that politicians can actually do to help the Internet.  

PodCamp is a "free BarCamp-style meetup for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers." 

Canada Podcasts: "This directory started its life as the Canadian node of a community- maintained world-wide podcast directory which has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. Long before the plethora of podcasting sites and self-declared-podcasting centers of the universe we now have, there was this directory, its wonderful group of volunteer editors, and it was the way to get to shows. It was clean, dynamic, open and responsive." 

The Canadian podcast directory is available in OPML. 

I've linked the Canadian directory into the Scripting News community directory. 

If there's sufficient interest, I'll happily host the root of a community podcast directory. I might even have a good domain for the purpose. Get it? It's chow for your pod.  

The Small Picture 

Reuters: "Many people see Web journals or 'blogs' as alternatives to the mainstream media..."

Who are the "many people" who see blogs that way? If the piece is honest, and the reporter actually believes it, my guess is it's the reporter and perhaps some of his colleagues.

But blogs aren't an alternative to mainstream media, he says, and we agree.

He says blogs are about story telling. And Reuters isn't? Come on. What is there that isn't story telling?

That blogs are about story telling is not saying that they're not journalism. Reuters tells a story today and every day. If you want people to understand an idea, you must tell a story.

And the story here isn't the big picture, get your mind out of the aggregate, and start thinking about the small picture. And blogs aren't driving the change in perspective, they just reflect it.

More and more I'm sure that in the 21st century, the century we're living in now, monoculture is an artifact, and the individual, the micro-journalist, the micro-market, micro-media, anything but mainstream, that defines who we are.

Dinner with Scoble 

I had dinner last night with Scoble at LuLu on Folsom St in SF. We talked about many things, of course, but the focus was on him working at PodTech. Being selfish (like many others), I wanted to know what's in it for me.

Right away, I figured that I should be able to find some new podcasts. It seems Scoble should be scouting for me and you and all the other people who read his blog. Not just interesting content that comes from his own company, but stuff from all over the podcast sphere. That's one of the reasons the renewed interest in the community directory is so timely.

Anyway, it just so happens that in the summer of 2003, three years ago, I was doing what I wanted Scoble to do. I was hanging with Chris Lydon, among others at Berkman Center, who was doing periodic interviews with the bloggers of the day. It was great stuff. Every time a Lydon interview came out, I'd copy it onto my portable MP3 device and take it on my daily walk through West Newton, and of course point to it from Scripting News, so you all could try it out too. For example, on this day in 2003 Chris released his interview with North Carolina blogger Ed Cone. The MP3 is still up there, you can listen to it today. The Lydon series is, in many ways, the first podcast. Actually, in every way.

So it occurs to me that Scoble could do a lot worse than listening along in 2006 to the podcasts we were listening to in 2003. Back then I don't know what Scoble was doing, but it wasn't podcasting.

Having dinner with my old friend reminded me how smart he is. He's going to figure this out, for sure, and we're all going to learn a lot. Because it's Scoble there's going to be a lot of kissing-up and groveling, that's for sure. But the ride should be pretty interesting!