Podcasting

Popcasts is an aggregator of ‘most popular podcasts’ (e.g. top 10 podcast). It lets you see at a glance, on just one page, what is popular in dozens of different podcast directories, without you having to constantly check the individual directories for the latest ranking results. It scans and synchronises with pre-registered podcast directories or ranking sites every hour and generates RSS feeds for each top 10 podcast. The sites registered to Popcasts include: Apple iTunes Podcasting, Odeo, Podnova, podfeed, iPodderX, PodcastPickle, Podcasting NEWS and Podcast Alley. Link.

The babelcast (RSS feed) is perhaps the first algorithmic, computer-generated podcast. Using generative algorithms available in the open source, cross platform, Python-programmed athenaCL system to control Csound, this series is a sort-of political media-talk mash-up. Sounds of politicians and commentators are collected during a period of days or weeks, and then algorithmically processed, recombined, and mixed with noise and percussive textures into a fragmentary, distorted landscape of sound. Link. It’s mesmerizing.

It’s been an interesting week for the world of DIY audio -podcasting. A couple new issues have presented themselves, the first- it seems Feedburner gave out the number of subscribers to “This Week in Tech’s” show. Leo, the show’s host, says is against the privacy policy and also wrong Link. The second is PodShow’s policy on music licensing as covered on BoingBoing, it appears to prohibit you from referencing “software piracy (warez, cracking, etc.), hacking, phreaking, emulators, ROM’s, or illegal MP3 activity” in your shows Link. Opinions?

Rev Dan Catt is up to some neat stuff – In much the same way you can add audio (.mp3) and video (.mov) links. Geobloggers places audio and video in enclosure tags in its RSS and geoRSS feeds, making it possible to easily use geobloggers to create your own Podcasting feeds. Needless to say this turns PodCasting sideways. You don’t need to subscribe to single users or site, you can subscribe to an area around your home, regardless of who the podcaster is. Same of course applies to Video, again a How To is coming up. All this throws out to Google Earth, CSV and normal RSS too. Link.

Thunderstone Media just released iPodderX Public Beta for Windows. For you podcast fans (and historians) iPodderX was one of the original podcasting clients and newsreaders – now you can run it in Windows and get the same features. Link.