It has been a good Sunday. Lots accomplished. For one, most (not quite all yet) readers are reading this on the new server. It works very well and the transition was smooth.
I've been listening to some of the sessions from Bloggercon III. A commentary about the Podcasting session by people who were there said it's moderator (Adam Curry) was a bit of an elite. Thank you. I'm pretty sure Dave Winer will never consider it valid feedback but he should. Aside from terrible audible that makes some of the sessions almost unlistenable, the thing that has been driving me nuts is how the self-proclaimed "un-conference" is so much more elitist and snooty than the pedestrian trade shows and conferences put on by vendors.
What does all that mean... for me it's simple. I want good information. BloggerCon imposes a strange (to me) anti-commercial bent. This is supposed to mean you don't talk about your own product. There are countless times where people talked about their own products. However, when a very useful vendor started talking about how they use their own product to solve the problem being discussed, the elitist powers were there to squash them. Too bad I almost learned something.
Podcasting pet peeves
So I have some pet peeves with podcasters. First of all the name of your show belongs in the Album field. It's just plain rude to put "birds sitting in the window." As the name one day and something else the next. iTunes (and my iPod) now say there are countless albums... Also, it should remind us that just because somebody creates content does not make them an expert on the tool. For example the iPod is a great recorder for podcasts. And contrary to the repeated comments on The Daily Source code, it fast forwards and rewinds easily - just the same as every CD player I've ever used.
So the perfect gizmo that I want is a holder, that holds two iPods side by side, provides power, and uses one to record. A small mixer/fader would allow mixing the second iPod with the live microphone input. A small 2-3 pound recording studio to go. Now if I just had the time to do it.
Blogging tools aren't there yet either
There's a lot being done on the production side of podcasting. Please let's not forget we don't have good tools for blogging yet. There are some good fragments out there. There are bits and pieces that look good. There is not a single solution that works as it should. Dave Winer has the right idea. Life is an outline. There are subheads and there are links to nodes, but a perfect blogging tool will integrate with my workflow not create a second, parallel flow. Today I write a memo and if I want to then copy part of it to the blog. Same with an email etc. But it should be a flag on a paragraph or document that says send it to my personal blog or send it to my work intranet blog. Read more about Blogging, podcasting and Sundays
