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podcasting on absinthe

Listening to:	Podcast brothers
Reading:	magazines
Weather:	29, overcast

Ed called this morning to tell me Santana was on A&E. Tres cool. I was doing my dishes at the time, so I only saw a few moments of it. During the dishdoing I started listening to the Podcast Brothers. I'm all pumped for this podcast thing, I am brewing up a podcast of my own. Ed is heading out for a monthlong bike trip, culminating in a biker gathering at Lukenbach TX. Sounds like fun. Ed. . .biketrip. . .podcasting. . .PODCAST YOUR TRIP, DUDE! That's the ticket. He's got the gear and the publishing motivation and the knowhow to make the audio files. Now for a little primer on the whole podcasting phenomenon.

First, let me voice my opinion that it's neither pod nor casting. It's not just for iPods and it's not just for portable media players, though it's great for both. It's not broadcasting, which is a push technology. It's a pull technology, where a podcaster publishes the show on the web (a little push), but it never gets heard unless people affirmative go find it and download it for themselves (the big pull).

Here's the email I sent Ed this morning:

Here's the cat's-eye view of podcasting:

What is it? It's a way of distributing audio files (typically mp3) with original content that you periodically create. It's like radio that is timeshifted, and listeners use software that automates the organized periodical downloading of the shows for portable listening.

Vocabulary:
Podcast- a combination of "iPod" and "broadcast," the podcast can be either the individual episode of a show or the show generally
Podcatching- the software that individual listeners use to download and organize the podcasts they subscribe to
RSS- the code language (a type of XML) that is used to syndicate blogs, that allows people to subscribe to a number of blogs and see headlines from each on one page with their RSSreader software
enclosure- the tag that allows the mp3 file of a podcast to be included in the RSS of a blog, so the podcatching software can find and download the audio

Cool examples of podcasts:
www.coverville.com
http://leoville.tv/radio/pmwiki.php/Main/AudioArchives
http://www.portablemediaexpo.com/audio.htm
http://www.dawnanddrew.com/archives/001160.php

Some podcatching software:
http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/

Portals where you can find more podcasts:
http://www.podcast.net/
http://www.podcastbunker.com/

Some podcast info links:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/articles/How-to-Podcast.html
http://audio.weblogs.com/
http://www.podcasting-tools.com/

And now for the absinthe. Some podcaster's site I careened across this morning on on podquest had a shitpile of links, including this one. Absinthe, aka the Green Fairy, is some crazy psychoactive liquor that I first heard about in vampire stories. It's green, anise-flavored, and was particularly popular in fin-du-siecle Paris with cats like Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde. I think the active ingredient comes from wormwood, used to kill tapeworms in medieval Europe. It can kill ya. The stuff is largely illegal in most countries. According to this commercial site who is trying to sell you $200 bottles of it, you can only get the genuine shit from the Czech republic or something. Anyhoo, kinda fascinating, no?

permalink posted by cat 9:19 AM

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