Aztec Media

The recent This Week In Tech (TWIT) #126 podcast with Leo Laporte had an interesting snide comment at around 18 minutes in by Podshow's John C. Dvorak about Revision3's long list of new talent (including the recent Rodger Chang), and how quickly the are now going to run through their venture capital (VC) money. 

The same could be said about Podshow's spending rate, business plans, or financial status which little is known publicly.  One good thing is that they appear to still be hiring.  And they continue to have the annoying pre-roll advertisements on many podcasts on their network.

Given the apparent implosion at PodTech.net there is a lot of uncertainty in the technology new media arena as we close out 2007.

It will be interesting to watch how TWIT, Podshow, and Revision3 play out their relationships in 2008.

Back in 2006, the Eurythmics posted four podcasts that highlighted the musicians perspective around many of the songs that they had produced and released in the past.

Elvis Costello recently did the same thing with a 10 segment podcast series.  If you are an Elvis Costello fan you'll definitely enjoy the history and reflections.

There is now news from antiMusic.com that Stevie Ray Vaughan has embarced on his on podcast series to promote his new  'SOLOS, SESSIONS & ENCORES'.

UPDATE (12/26/2007): Apparently New Order has done this also but is selling the reflections and thoughts bundled around an album posted to iTunes.

There is a new mobile device coming out that lets users listen to streaming media while not connected to a network.  The device is called the Slacker Digital Player and Walt Mossberg @ WSJ.com recently did a review.  There are also some recent pictures posted to Gizmodo.

I think the device would be ideal for distributing traditional podcast material using a 'station' format based on topics or music.  An indie music channel seems like a natural.  Maybe a technology talk & news channel would be another logical topic cluster.

The first example is Minyannville Publishing & Multimedia which provides small animated clips of business and other headline news to major sites like Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, AOL Money, and Fox Business News.  The main reason is their ability to offer fresh content that brings something new and different to these big sites so that their readership remains loyal. Independent content providers have a growing amount of leverage and opportunity to let their creative talents shine in front of many with those that focus on niches becoming hot commodities. More information for those that get the WSJ via an article entitled "Portals Think Small For The Latest News: Niche Sites Offer Access To Content As Gateways Battle Traffic Slippage."

The second, is from another newspaper article, this time from the Union-Tribune with an article entitled "Background-music provider puts shoppers in the mood."  What I liked about this article was that PlayNetwork leveraged the basics of what they know with audio as a purchasing tool into a bigger business that also enables their customers to tie into new media outlets like web video, podcasts, and other multimedia services.

The AztecMedia.net's TechNewsRadio show is part of the great FriendsInTech (FIT) group.  We have been doing special Christmas and Halloween productions since 2005.

The latest one is called "It's the Great Server Chuck and Kreg" and it was posted on 10/24/07.  It is family safe and only about 12 minutes long.

This year I volunteered to be part of the post production and helped with the mix down of scenes into the final version with Kevin Devin.

I learned some great lessons:

1. Work with the best people possible. The FIT team is giving, helpful, encouraging, insightful, and very talented. It makes the project very enjoyable and you'll have fun doing it.
2. I did all my editing of my parts (the outside scenes) in Audacity.  I didn't have any major problems or issues other than at times the scenes mix downs were very complicated with 24+ individual segments.  I ended up in situations like this to do 3 intermediate mixes with each one having ~8 individual segments.
3. Having a vast special effects (SFX) library of audio is very helpful. Using sites like freesound is good, but some of the royalty free material other FIT members had was very impressive.
4. When recording lines in a remote situation take at least three takes for each line.
5. It really helps if you can do your remote lines recording with another person saying the other lines around your lines.
6. Use a wiki to develop the first drafts of the script, but then migrate to a script writing tool for final production.
7. Scripts file names and titles within the document should have version numbers or clear dates on them so you know what you have is the most current one.
8. Tools like BIAS SoundSoap2 for cleaning up audio are pretty important if someone makes their recordings in a noisy environment.
9. All the spoken word parts of a production should be processed with the same RMS settings.  We also ended up running them in bulk through The Conversations Network's Levelator.
10. Using MP2 files for distribution during post production is very efficient and doesn't diminish quality.

There seems to be a lot of stuff going on, so I thought I'd do a quick list of things I'm tracking:

1. Treedia Labs has started a beta of Podcast.com.
2. Quick review at Gizmodo on the Elgato Turbo.264 Hardware H.264 Encoder.
3. Amazon MP3 has DRM free music for purchase.
4. Lifehacker on Gmail Mobile 1.5.
5. Bias has released Peak Pro XT audio production suite which includes SoundSoap Pro and Master Perfection Suite.
6. Sound Ideas has released a new version of their Podcasting Production Toolkit 2 with over 500 audio elements, music, and sound effects.
7. The October 2007 edition of Blogger & Podcaster magazine is out.

I think #1 is important because if the domain becomes a popular user site then it will be a great site to promote material.

I am interested in #2 because it could save time in post production for any video podcasts.

#3 is cool because I hate DRM solutions for most of new media.

I think #4 should be tracked to see what effect the new version has on consumption of new media products as they move from the web to email.  What does your content look like from RSS reader to a forwarded email that ends up on Gmail mobile?  Could you make it better?

I added #5 because not everyone is happy with Audacity.  Here is an option that might fit your style better.

The pointer to #6 is because you might want some new sounds in your library.

And you should check out #7 because it is full of great information.

PodCampSoCal audio sessions have been posted using Podango delivery and hosting services.

The conference was held Sept. 25, 2007 just before the Podcast & New Media Expo (PNME).

There has been little news about new podcast catchers in recent months.  Wired is reporting about a new one called CastGrabber that is optimized to support Windows Media Player devices.

Thanks to fellow Friends In Tech member Kevin Devin I have posted my Getting Started With Audacity Presentation in QuickTime format (126-MBs) from the Podcast and New Media Expo (PNME) 2007. This is the output form Apple's Keynote with the embedded screencasts that I presented during the session. 

There is no audio yet of the actual session so you will not get to hear in the movie what I said during the screencasts or slides right now.  If you are a conference attendee you should have gotten an email with details on how to get the audio.  If you weren't a conference attendee then my recommendation is that you subscribe to the Gigavox Media's Podcast Academy channel.  It should be released over the next 6-8 months.  I will link to it when it does come out. 

More information in general (including PDF slides) about the presenation has been posted here.

The Podcast & New Media Expo (PNME) 2007 slides from the "Getting Started With Audacity" session have been posted. 

Some notes:

• These slides are a PDF output from Apple's Keynote. 
• There is a QuickTime movie version of the presentation that will be posted soon but it will not have the audio recorded during the presentation sync'd in.  The movie version has all the screen casts used during the presentation.
• The audio for the presentation is still under the control of PNME. If you were a conference attendee then you should get a link to the audio as part of your conference fee. Ultimately the audio for all the sessions will get posted over the next 8-9 months to Gigavox Media's Podcast Academy channel.
• Sometime in the future, complete screen casts of each topic will be produced and posted.
• More information on the PNME Forums and previous AztecMedia.net post.

Feedback, comments, suggestions, etc. appreciated: [email protected].