February 22, 2006

Shownotes for Audio Learning Revolution Episode #014

Audio Learning Revolution Podcast for Feb 22nd, 2006

January 19, 2006

Teaching English via Podcasting

Hmmm…three billion new capitalists…many of them hungry to learn English or improve their English skills.

Can anybody say “huge potential?” 🙂

Can podcasters teach English?

December 27, 2005

The Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2005

2005 was no doubt the Year of the Podcast. A year ago hardly anyone knew what a podcast was and now it’s on just about everyone’s lips. A ton of great podcasts came online this year and we wanted to highlight the best of what we’ve heard. We’ve probably listened to at least a thousand episodes a piece here at LearnOutLoud in the process of putting together our Podcast Directory and here’s our attempt at a Top 10. A few disclaimers first:

-There are no doubt some excellent podcasts that didn’t make the list. While we listened to a lot we couldn’t get to everything. That’s part of the beauty of podcasting, it’s hard to run out of podcasts to listen to. Anyway, apologies upfront for anything that should have made the list but didn’t.

-We take the “Doug Kaye approach” to listing podcasts in our directory. We’re looking for shows that are “educational, inspirational and entertaining” and we’ll take two out of three. We feel that the Top 10 listed below all fit the criteria.

-While the list is largely based on quality we also wanted to pick episodes that were representative of the year in podcasting. We hope that you’ll download the episodes on this list and burn them to a disc so that you can go back to it in the future when your children or other people ask you what podcasting was like back in 2005 when it was just getting going.

So, without further ado and in no particular order, here’s our list of the Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2005:

#10: TWiT #30 Live from the Portable Media Expo – TWiT probably takes the title as “Podcast of the Year” when you factor in both quality and popularity. There were a lot of good TWiT episodes this year but I’m a bit partial to TWiT 30 which was recorded live at the Portable Media Expo in November. The Expo was the first ever conference specifically for Podcasting so having the TWiT gang there recording live was very apropos. In addition to some of the usual suspects (Leo Laporte, Doug Kaye, Steve Gibson and Alex Lindsay) a number of special guests made an appearance including Audible.com CEO Don Katz, Chuck Tomasi from ChuckChat and blind podcaster Darrel Shandrow.

#9: Catholic Insider at the New Pope’s Coronation – Whether you’re Catholic or not, it’s hard not to like father Roderick Vonhogen. The Catholic Insider podcast gives a unique look at the Catholic Church and Vonhogen’s enthusiasm is infectious. This episode was recorded live at the Vatican during the coronation of Joseph Ratzinger a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI. Hearing Vonhogen’s play-by-play and the crowd’s reaction truly makes you feel like you are listening to history in the making.

(Note: The second episode recorded on April 19th entitled “Habemus Papam!!” is the one you want.)

#8: Jason Calacanis on The Web 2.0 Podcast – Jason Calacanis is a riot. Those of you who heard his keynote at the Portable Media Expo know what I’m talking about. Calacanis is both funny and blunt and never lacking for an opinion. His interview on the Web 2.0 Podcast is a prime example of this. He covers a lot of ground including LAN parties, Technorati bombing and of course the recent acquisition his company, Weblogs Inc., by AOL. I’d love to hear a lot more from Calacanis. Since he has a little more time on his hands these days maybe he’ll start podcasting?

#7: Small World Podcast interview of “Jessica” after Hurricane Katrina – The biggest thing to hit the U.S. this year (literally) was Hurricane Katrina. It caused unimaginable destruction and loss of life. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Louisiana in September and one of the most powerful experiences was hearing the first-hand accounts of those who survived the storm. A number of podcasts captured similar accounts bearing more testimony to the power of podcasting. The best I heard was Bazooka Joe’s interview of Jessica, a resident of New Orleans who escaped the storm. It’s an amazing interview that feels both haunting and hopeful at the same time.

#6: The Physics of Superheroes on Science Friday – It’s almost impossible to pick just one NPR podcast episode because there are so many good ones but since we’re limiting ourselves to one we decided to select “The Physics of Superheroes”, an interview with James Kakalios, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Minnesota. If you’ve ever wondered how fast Superman needs to run to leap tall building in a single bound or the physics behind the controversy over whether Spiderman accidentally killed his girlfriend, you’ll love this episode. Who knows, all the physics you learn may just help you win a bar bet someday.

#5: DSC #200 Live from Gnomedex – I can’t create a Top 10 list without including at least one episode of the Daily Source Code, the first podcast I ever listened to. There were a lot of entertaining moments during DSC episodes including the Wiki controversy, the feud with Dave Winer (among other people) and of course Adam pissing into a bottle at 5,000 feet during DSC #279. But my favorite was DSC #200, Adam’s keynote address at Gnomedex. Gnomedex felt like the start of the podcasting revolution and who better to address that crowd than the Podfather himself? A killer Guns and Roses/Beatles mash-up and the amazing music of Rob Costlow were the icing on the cake for this Source Code.

#4: ZenCast with Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam – One of the best parts of podcasts is the feeling that you are being transported to different places (e.g., “sound seeing tours”) or experiencing different cultures. The episode of ZenCast featuring Thich Nhat Hanh is a great example of both those things. Far from the shouting matches that you’ll find on talk radio and even some podcasts, Hanh’s mellow message of mindfulness will help you to relax and slow down. Listening to this podcast was a refreshing change of pace that I really enjoyed.

#3: Malcolm Gladwell on IT Conversations – Like NPR and TWiT, it’s hard to pick just one episode of IT Conversations to include on the list. Some of my favorites were Vinod Khosla’s talk at the Web 2.0 Conference and an interview of Jonathan Schwartz (another guy who I’d love to hear podcast) from Supernova 2005. But if I had to pick just one it would probably be Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote address at South by Southwest. Gladwell is both an innovative thinker and an interesting speaker. To be able to throw on a pair of headphones and listen for free to sessions like this from conferences that people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to attend is really cool. And given Doug Kaye’s amazing work and ambition for The Conversations Network it’s about to get even cooler.

#2: The Diggnation “Clip Show” – Finding Digg.com was one of the highlights of my 2005. It’s an incredibly addictive site as its astronomical growth is evidence of. The Diggnation podcast is almost equally addictive. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht are usually a hoot to listen to and sometimes are downright hysterical. My favorite episode of the year was their “clip show” which consisted of some of the funniest moments from the previous 21 episodes of Diggnation. I laughed my way through this entire episode. Nice work guys!

#1: The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast with Joe Liemandt, Founder and CEO of Trilogy – A number of colleges and universities started Podcasting this year, none more famously than Stanford. Stanford has a number of podcasts available via it’s iTunes channel but I found the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast to be the most engaging. My favorite episode was the session with Joe Liemandt, Founder and CEO of Trilogy Software. It’s an extremely intimate portrait of a start-up company that almost didn’t make it…and then made it big. You’ll love this one.

Wow. What a year it’s been huh? I can’t wait to see what 2006 has in store! Thanks to all of the podcasters that are making incredible content. It sure makes Learning Out Loud a whole lot of fun. 🙂

December 14, 2005

Two Podcasts of a Christmas Carol

A couple of podcasts of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol are being made available. Storynory.com has a dramatized version in progress on their site. It’s a neat little site which also has downloadable versions of Hansel and Gretel and The Three Little Pigs.

Now the word out of Penguin (via Corante) is that they also will be doing a podcast of the unabridged version of A Christmas Carol as well.

If you’re interested in audio book versions of A Christmas Carol or other audio books by Charles Dickens (we have 67 in all listed on our site), here a link:
Charles Dickens Audio Books

Update: Here are the links to these two podcasts in our directory:

The Penguin Podcast
StoryNory

November 30, 2005

Podcast History

I decided to take a hand at recording my own Wikipedia entry today. The results, for better or worse, can be found here with my rendition of Wikipedia’s entry for Podcasting. I was astonished to see how much the definition and history of podcasting had expanded over the past few weeks (then again, just look at how much Wikipedia itself has grown in the last year). I keep up with podcasting’s development on a daily basis so I have an incremental knowledge of what’s happening and what might happen. When you actually step back and take stock of what’s changed in this sphere over the last few months, you see the incredible strides the medium has made.

Personally speaking, I’ve never had such direct access to an emerging technology much less known at the moment that I was actually taking a small part in its development. Thanks to podcasting I basically got a crash course in how the internet of the 21st century works. We started doing our own shows at LearnOutLoud last February and that seems like a million years ago now. Back then we didn’t know if anyone was listening to these things or if this whole medium had any legs at all. Now even my mother knows what a podcast is, and she’s beginning to think about trading her walkman in for an iPod nano. I still can’t predict the future of the art much less tell you what the present state of it is at any given instance. If anything I’ve come to know that technology is no longer a static thing (if indeed it ever was) and I’ve become accustomed to this constant flux.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my reading for you. It has really placed the recent past into perspective for me and I think it serves perfectly as a podcast definition. It is also a valuable primer for all of the new listeners that join the podcasting community on a regular basis. With podcasting, the history books are being re-written every single day, and every moment of this is recorded by people like you and me.

November 21, 2005

Podcast Round-up

We’ve added a lot of cool new podcasts to the site and I wanted to direct your attention to a few of them:

The BayCHI Podcast – Interesting sessions with technology leaders recorded by BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of ACM SIGCHI. I listened to the recent episodes with Doug Kaye (09/13/2005) and “Are You Ready for Web 2.0?” (08/09/2005) and highly enjoyed both.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders – A weekly seminar series on entrepreneurship out of Stanford. The session/interview with the founder of Trilogy Software was one of the most engaging podcast episodes I’ve ever listened to.

Stanford on iTunes – More good stuff from Stanford. These aren’t technically podcasts (there no RSS feeds) but there is definitely some good content here.

If you have any suggestions for other good educational, entertaining and inspirational podcasts or other audio content please send us an e-mail at suggestions@learnoutloud.com and let us know. We have 540 podcasts in our Podcast Directory and 548 titles in our Free Audio and Video Directory and we’re shooting for 1,000+ in each within a few months. We’d love your help in getting there!

November 13, 2005

Portable Media Expo, Day 2

Another great day yesterday at the Portable Media Expo. It’s amazing to see everyone so excited about the future for digital audio. Back almost two years ago when I started germinating the idea for what would become LearnOutLoud.com very few people were talking about spoken word audio. It was pretty much relegated to the backwaters of audio books and a budding, but still largely unknown, company called Audible.com.

Two years later spoken word audio is red hot and for good reason. I listened to an amazing keynote presentation today from Don Katz (the CEO and Founder of Audible.com) yesterday where he talked about the history of the spoken word. He mentioned that Plato and Aristotle were originally against text as they felt that it polluted the purest form of communication which was speech. He talked about how back a few centuries ago it was frowned upon to read silently.

Now we’re so accustomed to reading that people actually ask if it counts to listen to a book instead of reading it. Pretty bizarre when you consider that speech is the most ancient form of communication and the primary mode of communication throughout the majority of history. Don’s keynote was enlightening and if it becomes publicly available I will definitely post a link to it.

Later in the day I had a “full-body goosebump” experience while talking to Doug Kaye of IT Conversations. Doug has started a non-profit venture called The Conversations Network whose mission it is to record every live event around the world. Like IT Conversations which records many technology conferences and events, this group would record events in any of a number of areas including BioTech, Buiness, Politics and my personal favorite “ChangeTheWorld.” Mark my words. The Conversations Network will change the world. We will do all we can hear at LearnOutLoud to help.

Random shout-outs from yesterday go to Clay Cover and Dr. Greg Bolcer at Encryptanet, Sylvester Robertson at Cal State-San Bernadino and James Smith up in Olympia, Rodney Rumford over at podblaze, Emilie Cole from Audioluxe, Randy Dryburgh at Audioblog.com (very cool site, thanks for the T-shirt!) and Katie O’Shea at Chumbo Publishing (thanks for the software and how did I not realize you were from Minneapolis?).

Final thoughts on the Expo:

1. I’d go to something like this every week if I could. The energy was tremendous. The people were so much fun to talk to. The ideas that are being thrown about will literally change the world.

2. Hats off to the Bourquin brothers and everybody else who had a hand in pulling this off. It was unbelievable how well organized this event was. I expected some glitches or roughness around the edges. I’m sure there were some hiccups throughout the weekend but I didn’t see any during the two days I was there.

3. Digital media is an amazing space to be in right now. We are on the precipice of an era in which audio and video education of all shapes and forms will be available to anyone anywhere. That might mean a student in a developing country being able to watch lectures from UC-Berkeley or MIT. It might mean a travel-weary professional being able to stay at home with her husband and kids and listen to sessions from a conference rather than flying across the country to attend in person. It might mean someone growing up in China, Iraq or Afghanistan, learning English through podcasting and then using those skills to help form business relationships and better communication among nations. Or it simply might mean that that half hour you spend in traffic tomorrow morning will be a time of fulfillment and growth when in the past it’s been one of boredom and frustration.

Whatever it means it will mean that the world is a better place and we’re incredibly excited to be a part of it.

My all-time favorite rock group U2 is out on tour right now and there’s a part during the show where Bono offers a little fictional dialogue about how the rest of the band met The Edge, the group’s lead guitarist. He usually says something like the following (LINK):

“This,” he points stage left, “is the same sound as The Edge’s spaceship made when it arrived in the north of Dublin. Larry and myself and Adam just stood there and stared. A door opened and out came this astounding-looking man. Larry said: ‘Who are you?’ and he said: ‘I am The Edge.’ And Adam said: ‘Where are you from?’ and he said: ‘The future.’ And I said: ‘What’s it like?’ and he said: ‘It’s better!’

After attending the Portable Media Expo this weekend I feel like we got a chance to see the future. So if you want to ask me what the future is like my answer would be the same as the Edge’s answer.

It’s better.

November 11, 2005

Portable Media Expo, Day 1

The gang and I just returned from Day One of the Portable Media Expo & Podcasting Conference. In some ways, it indeed did feel like the Woodstock of podcasting as Robert Walch of Podcast411 was quoted as saying in a recent Wired Magazine article. No doubt we witnessed some stuff today that will forever change the way that people consume media.

This morning we recorded a live podcast from the LA Podcasters booth. Kudos to Lance and the rest of the gang there for setting that up. It was fun to record with David and Seth for the first time and it turned out pretty well. We spent the rest of the day attending sessions, cruising exhibits and meeting some very cool people at some amazing companies.

First up, I want to give props to the people at Taldia. A while back I thought that it would be pretty neat for someone to be able to set up a customized list of stuff that you could list to during your commute. For example, let’s say that you had a commute of 25 minutes in the morning and wanted to listen to ten minutes of sports stories, five minutes of politics and ten minutes of your favorite podcast. You would be able to set up the service, go to sleep and wake up in the morning with that content pre-loaded to your iPod.

Well, after two years of development Taldia has pulled off something remarkably like what I had envisioned. It’s a cool little service and although there are still some things that I think could be improved it could catch on pretty quickly. They have a large content pool and a clean interface. The only thing they are missing is a good domain name. Perhaps I’ll be able to interest them in CustomCommute.com (a name I registered back when I had the idea)… 🙂

Next up, let’s talk about Audible.com. They launched their WordCast service at the Expo and it’s also quite impressive. Essentially it’s a platform for people looking to monetize podcasts, either through advertising or through an upfront fee. By being the first to market with this tool they’ve beaten others like Odeo and Podshow to the punch. Their reach and experience in the space makes this look like a category-killer. Kudos to those guys for doing another thing well.

A few more random shout-outs to some people I bumped into along the way today (in no particular order): Steve Sergeant with The Wildebeat, Limelight Networks, Mel Sparks at Clever Girl Pictures, the folks at Bitpass, Dave Sampson at MixMeister, Paul Colligan at PremiumPodcasting.com, Obadiah Greenberg with UC-Berkeley the gang at ioda and everyone else who I met today and can’t scrape up a URL for.

A few final thoughts:

-Adam Curry’s reception at the Podcasting Awards was a little subdued. I thought that was unfortunate. He has done so much for podcasting and should have received a standing ovation.

-Tim Bourquin who put the event on is an absolute class act. The first day of the conference went amazingly well especially since it was the first event of its type. A tip of the hat to Tim and everyone else involved for all of their hard work.

-The podcasting community is fun. It’s pretty rare to see such a diverse group of people at a conference ranging from hard core techies to brash entrepreneurs to inquisitive academics types and much more.

I can’t imagine having much more fun tomorrow but I’ll try. And I’ll be back with another report tomorrow night.

November 8, 2005

The State of Podcasting

So with the first birthday of podcasting is in our rear view mirror and the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference just days away it’s a great time to assess the state of podcasting. It’s so hard to believe that something that seems such a big part of my daily life today (I probably average 1-2 hours of podcast listening each day) was hardly a blip on the radar a year ago.

Nicole Simon just posted a good article over on Corante summarizing her take on where things are at. For the most part I think she’s right on the map. I think that we’re at a stage with podcasting where many podcasters who jumped on the gravy train back in the spring and summer are starting to ponder whether podcasting is going to be a business for them or whether it will remain a hobby.

For those who want to turn it into a business there will have to be a clear path to revenue delineated soon. Ad insertion services like Fruitcast might offer one hope but it’ll be interesting to see how well that works. Podcast networks might prove to be another boon to the community. The recent acquisition of Weblogs, Inc. by AOL is a signal that while most individual podcasts and blogs might not have a ton of clout, by banding together a lot of value and power cna be created. Perhaps more podcasters will start charging for their podcast although it still hasn’t been shown that many people to the left of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity can get away with that. So we’ll see…

For those that are content to keep their podcast strictly at hobby level the key question will be whether they will have the wherewithall to keep it going. After all, a lot more goes into producing a good podcast than going into producing a good blog. And as podcasts in general become more professional that tends to raise the bar for all podcasts. My fear is that a lot of people will abandon their podcasts over the next several months leaving many of the directories with a ghost town-like feel due to all of the orphaned shows.

What will it take to keep this thing rolling on? Let me offer a few suggestions:

1. A solid revenue model soon – If there isn’t a good AdSense-ish type model in the next few months that allows the indie podcasters to start making a bit of money I think we’ll see a lot of people leave the game.

2. A general shift to higher quality podcasts – At first it was somewhat novel to be able to listen to some dude or dudette ramble on for an hour or so about mostly nothing because it was so unlike the pre-packaged crap on commercial radio. But that novelty is rapidly wearing off. It’s time to recognize the value of a well-produced, more concise podcast.

3. A “killer app” podcast – To this day there hasn’t really been a “Must Listen” podcast that has captured the attention of a large chunk of the podcast universe. Maybe the Source Code or Dawn & Drew but I think you could argue against either of those. I think there’s a good chance that something will soon hit the airwaves (I know…wrong word) that will knock peoples’ socks off. A podcast that’ll be on the front of USA Today or Time Magazine. I don’t know what it is yet but I’m waiting for that one podcast that gets a ton of podcast virgins to hop on board and start downloading shows.

There has been a lot of progress in the last few weeks. Yahoo’s new podcast directory is very cool and the whole market that’s opened up for video podcasting since the release of the video iPod presents some really amazing possibilities. So this week’s podcast conference should be a lot of fun.

We’ll be there representing LearnOutLoud and hoping to catch a glimpse of what the future holds. We’re incredibly excited about the potential for podcasting as an educational tool and think that the surface of that potentiality has hardly been scratched. These are fun times we live in no doubt. I’m sure that one day our kids and grandkids will enjoy reading stories about them. Scratch that. They’ll enjoy listening to stories about them.

October 21, 2005

Podcast Show Notes: Oct 21st, 2005

Confessions of an Audio Learning Junkie for October 21st, 2005

• Intro – “There She Goes” by Brother Love

• Introduction
  -Direct Link to the Show
  
  –Link to Subscribe to the Podcast

• Video iPod
  -See the new iPod [Site]

• The Dan Millman Podcast
  –Link to Dan Millman Podcast Page
  –Link to Dan Millman Author Page

• New Blog Posts
  –Link to Blog Post: “Audio Tour Guides For Travelers”
  –Link to Blog Post: “MP3 Downloads of Great Lecturers & Speakers”
  –Link to Blog Post: “Integral Naked”
  -Ride With Me Audio [Site]
  -SoundWalk [Site]
  -What is Enlightenment? [Site]
  -The Great Lecture Library [Site]
  -iAmplify [Site]
  -Integral Naked [Site]

• Brian Johnson
  -Zaadz [Site]
  –Link to Brian’s Page on LearnOutLoud.com

• Vote for Us on ChangeThis.com
  -ChangeThis [Site]

• Win a Nano
  –Link to iPod Nano Contest Details
  –Link to our Blog

• Outro – “In a Long Time” by 46 Bliss