Blogarithms

The opinions re the IT Conversations revenue model continue to come into the wiki, as do controbutions to the Tip Jar. Amazing. Thanks to everyone!

Steve Gillmor survived Thanksgiving (I think) and posted his thoughts on this and other podcasting issues on his ZDNet blog. But I wonder if we really can trust someone who both (a) claims to have been there during the ’60s and (b) says he can remember it. (I’ll only claim the former.) While the rest of us are heads-down in the midst of solving day-to-day podcasting problems, I’m glad we have Steve’s perspective of what’s really going on here. Remember, none of this caught him by surprise. He either saw it coming or made it happen–I’m not sure which.

Jon Udell has posted an audio interview on his Infoworld weblog with Ward and Jack:

On Friday I had a talk with two of Microsoft’s patterns & practices leaders: Ward Cunningham and Jack Greenfield. Ward (along with Kent Beck) ignited the patterns movement with a seminal paper at OOPSLA 1987. Jack developed NeXT’s Enterprise Objects Framework (now Apple’s WebObjects), was a chief architect at Rational, and is now a Microsoft architect for enterprise frameworks and tools.

The focus of the discussion was Jack Greenfield’s notion of software factories — a way to accelerate the process of codifying software patterns, and creating the tools and frameworks that enable people to apply those patterns.

Keep up the audio, Jon! I know the developers in the audience will be listenting. You’re da man.

The feedback to my wiki essay on the IT Conversations business model has been terrific, and it’s still coming in. More than 35 people have posted carefully considered opinions. I’ve received even more via email, and one thing has become quite clear: Listeners want a way to donate to support the site. Therefore, I’ve ceated a tip jar so that listeners can contribute via PayPal or the Amazon Honor System. Thanks to all who have pushed for this. It’s very flattering and rewarding.

The one question I’m asked about IT Conversations more than any other is, “What’s your business model?” After 18 months, nearly 300 programs and now with the New Year looming, the time has come to answer that question.

That’s the first paragraph of a two-page essay I just posted on the IT Conversations wiki. I hope you’ll read it and give me your feedback either here (as a comment) or by editing the wiki directly. I think you’ll find it relevant to all podcasters not just IT Conversatinos.

This is pretty cool. Search Google for one of the recent celebrity interviews on IT Conversations such as Malcolm Gladwell or Thomas Barnett. Are you getting the same results as I am? Do the links to IT Conversations appear in the #2 or #3 positions? Or does this have something to do with the fact that I have Google desktop also running on my machine and Google knows I’m interested in IT Conversations? I’d like to think that Google’s algorithms believe IT Conversations is that important and credible for everyone on the ‘Net, but given how much is written by and about people like Malcolm and Tom, I find that hard to believe. What results do you see?

On his Random Bytes Radio podcast, Ross Raider of Tucows has a great interview with attorney Bret Fausett who went through the process of licensing RIAA music. The interview (via Skype) begins at about 35:00 into the show. Highly recommended, and I’m sure there will be follow up from others.

I’ve now got tens of thousands of dollars invested in IT Conversations Studio 2, but that wasn’t always the case. In the beginning I did everything on the cheap, and because most podcasters operate on that kind of budget, I thought I’d pass along some of the low-cost techniques that can give you a high-cost sound. Recording telephone interviews with a minimum of gear is one of those techniques.

(Here’s the MP3 audio version.)

I want to bring you up-to-date on some of what’s happening here at IT Conversations.

One of my goals has been to create 300 programs in the IT Conversations archives by the end of this year, and when I roll out all the shows currently in the production queue, I’ll be at 291. That means I’ve got seven weeks to produce just nine more shows. That should be pretty easy.

Many new listeners are overwhelmed by the size of the archives and don’t know where to start. It’s easy to pick the latest programs from the home page, but there are scores of great — perhaps even better — programs in the vault that newcomers just can’t find.

Oldtimers know I’ve steadily expanded the breadth of programming on the site. Although I still call it IT Conversations, it’s not just IT for IT professionals any more. In addition to my own interviews and The Gillmor Gang, I’ve added Halley Suitt’s Memory Lane, Dave Slusher’s Voices in Your Head (interviews with SciFi writers and more), and Scott Mace’s new series of interviews entitled, Opening Move. And of course conferences ranging from O’Reilly Emerging Tecnology and OSCON to Supernova, Gnomedex, Bloggercon and Pop!Tech.

Because of this breadth, I recognize that not everyone will want listen to every program. That’s okay. The same is true for TV networks or even NPR.

My first attempt to make it easier to find what you like and ignore the rest was to create separate RSS feeds (podcasts, if you will) for each series. So instead of subscribing to *everything* from IT Conversations — as many as five or six new programs each week — you can just subscribe to your favorite series like The Gillmor Gang or topics like software development or security. If you don’t already know about those options, look for the RSS icons on the main web page for each series listed in the left-side nav bar of any page on the web site such as for The Importance of Law and IT.

The next thing I implemented was a Netflix-style queue so that you can look through the archives or new programs, select what you want to hear, then add them to your Personal Program Queue. Once shows are in your queue, they’ll also appear in your personal RSS feed. It works pretty well, but it requires that you come back to the web site and manually add new shows to the queue. Sort of a pain in the ass, particularly if you just want a podcast.

So I’m working on a new variation of this scheme: personally configurable podcasts. The idea is that as a registered member you’ll have your own RSS feeds, similar to those for your Personal Program Queue, but you’ll be able to tell IT Conversations what should and should not be automatically added to your Podcast. For example, you could tell the system to always add new editions of The Gillmor Gang, but never add my interviews. I’m even experimenting with algorithms such as “Add any program that is related to software development, has been reviewed by at least ten people, and has an average rating of 3 or higher.” You’ll also be able to exclude from your Podcast any programs that you’ve already heard and/or rated yourself.

If you have any suggestions for how you’d like to be able to configure your own IT Conversations podcast, please send them to me at doug@itconversations.com. Of course, comments and suggestions on any other topic are welcome as well.

On a personal note, I’m going to be taking two weeks off. I’m having a bit of surgery on Friday — nothing too serious — but the recovery is supposedly gnarly, so I’ve queued up two weeks’ worth of programs that will launch automatically between now and December 1st. They include the rest of the presentations from Bloggercon III and more of the terrific sessions from Pop!Tech 2004.

And don’t forget the latest edition of Dave Slusher’s Voices in Your Head that we published today, and a new Gillmor Gang on Thursday of this week.

Most of all, thanks for listening to IT Conversations.

Mark Frauenfelder’s experience with GTC and his plan to file a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission reminded me of an issue I just resolved that way with SBC. I’ve long had ISDN lines here in the IT Conversations studio for interviews, feeds to/from radio stations, etc., and I recently decided to switch my voice lines to ISDN, too. The reason is that I’m 25,000′ from the central office and the audio quality on my analog lines was awful. Can’t get DSL here for the same reason, but that’s another story. I asked SBC to quote me the costs to make the change including my Message Center services. It sounded good, so I made the change.

But when I got the first bill I noticed I was charged $22.50/mo for voicemail versus the previous $7.95. I went through the usual process of calling, asking, and complaining and finally got to a supervisor who was extremely rude and did nothing other than a CYA act, trying to put me “on the record” for understanding this and that.

I went to the California PUC commission web site and filed an “Informal Complaint” complaint using the on-line forms. That was on 9/24/04. On 10/13/04 I received a written acknowledgement from the PUC — more than I expected. But last week I got a call from a real manager at SBC — a guy who (a) knew what he was talking about, and (b) was polite and sincere. He had a copy of my complaint in front of him, ant it was clear he had researched the tariffs and other issues. Ultimately, he couldn’t give me voicemail on ISDN for $7.95, but he truly did go out of his way to offer me options and adjustments. In the end, it was his attitude and the fact that he took the complaint seriously that led to my satisfaction.

The lesson learned: If you feel you’ve been wronged, don’t hesitate to file a PUC complaint. It seems to work.

As Dave Slusher describes in his latest podcast, what’s appropriate to promote a podcast is sometimes quite the opposite of what works for radio. In the days of his radio program, Dave would promote the hell out of his shows in advance. It was an event. It played once, and the whole idea was to get the buzz machine going in advance to build a crescendo of listenership. The value of show immediately died after airing.

Podcasting is just the opposite. The life of a podcast builds after it’s published. In the case of IT Conversations (not really a podcast), that life can last for years. The buzz comes not from pre-event hype, but from post-publication blogging and whuffie.

And as Dave also mentioned, there’s another reason not to pre-announce a podcast: As we learned, things can go wrong.

This is cool Steve Ivy listens to podcasts on his TiVo and wants to be able to add them to his TiVo wish list.

I’ve just posted the first MP3 (and AAC/M4B) files from Bloggercon III: the session on Podcasting led by Adam Curry. I’ll be posting about one session per day until I get them all on line.

A few listeners have already asked, “Why can’t you just post them all right away?”

It takes a few hours to transfer, edit, mix, master, encode (twice), upload, write the descriptions for and track down photos of each session. That’s just they way things work here at IT Conversations. Oh, and then there’s the backlog of more than 45 programs from Pop!Tech, Digital Identity World and (shortly) the Accelerating Change conference in addition to all the regularly shows like The Gillmor Gang, Memory Lane and The Importance of…Law and IT that I’m publishing in parallel with Bloggercon III. (And wait until you hear the new series I’m working on to launch in December!)

In the meantime, to be notified as soon as each session is posted you can podcatch (subscribe to) one of the site-wide RSS feeds , the Bloggercon-specific feeds, or get announcements via email.

Thanks for your patience. I’ll get to all of them as quickly as I can.

Just got home from Bloggercon III and checked the streaming traffic.

Times shown are MST–we started at 8:15am (not 9:15) and ended at 5:45pm (not 6:45). Of note:

• Traffic built steadily during Adam Curry’s podcasting session (10:00-11:15 MST).
• The encoder died on Mike’s XP laptop a bit before 10am.
• We took a short break at 11:15 and broke for lunch from 12:45-2:30 and so did our listeners.
• The largest audience was for Robert Scoble’s session, “Overload” (11:30-12:45).
• Traffic was fairly steady for the afternoon sessions: Ed Cone/Elections (2:30-3:45); Doc Searls/Making Money (4:00-5:30); and Dave Winer’s wrapup (5:45-6:45)

The room holds 160 people and it was full most of the day. The listening audience was 2.75x the size of the in-person audience. Pretty good…IT conversations normally gets less than 1x the size of the live audience, but I attribute that to two things. First, we often aren’t allowed to announce our live coverage in advance of the events we stream because event producers fear we’ll cannibalize the paid-for registrations. Second, there was a lot of blogging activitiy during the event that helped bring in listeners.

Thanks to all who helped. Look for MP3 and AAC recordings of all of the Bloggercon III sessions to appear in the IT Conversations archives over the next two weeks.

Thanks to help from a whole lot people we’re streaming live audio from room 290 (only) at Bloggercon all day on Saturday. Click here to listen during Bloggercon hours. Requires Windows Media Player.

If you miss anything, we’ll post the audio of all sessions here on IT Conversations over the next few weeks.

Pranjal writes “According to a reuters article on Yahoo, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet — more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined — and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages.” The article goes on to talk about how BT is no longer beneath the radar of those who like to sue file sharers. [Slashdot]

There continues to be much discussion on the iPodder developers’ mailing list about bandwidth utilization. Drew (of Dawn and Drew), for example, can’t afford their success. Although BitTorrent has some problems — Drew can’t host it and can’t access it from work due to firewall issues — it’s still one of the best options available to Podcasters.

I’ve been testing BitTorrent for IT Conversations in the lab, and find that it has a few weaknesses for my needs. First, I currently have 260 programs on line, and to use BT effectively, I’d have to run 260 seed processes. Not possible. Second, BT is only truly effective when there are multiple simultaneous downloaders or at least when there are multiple peers running the BT client with the given file in their local caches. I see two solutions to these problems:

First, someone (was it Dave Winer?) suggested a BitTorrent client screensaver. Brilliant! It could dramatically increase the number of peers available at any given time.

Second — and here’s the new idea — in order to increase siumtaneity I would like the ability to announce a schedule of torrents. I know…this sounds antithetical to the ideas of on-demand and timeshifting, but hear me out. Suppose I could publish a schedule in XML that specified a rotation of IT Conversations shows. For example: The most-recent Gillmor Gang would be available every hour, on the hour; my most-recent interview at ten minutes past the hour; Halley Suitt’s most-recent Memory Lane at twenty minutes past the hour, and so on. It would in essence be a broadcast-schedule playlist.

Now imagine a more-intelligent podcatching/BitTorrent client that can process such schedules/playlists and can manage a listener’s queue of requests by mapping them to the schedule. All the BT requests for the latest Gillmor Gang would come in at roughly the top of the hour. All the BT requests for Memory Lane would hit the BT “network” at 00:20, and so on. From my end, I’d start a seed for each of the scheduled programs at the specified hour.

The effect would be dramatic because it would shift otherwise non-simultaneous requests into siumtaneity. Normally, you want to avoid such peaks in requests, but in the case of BitTorrent, they’re actually to your advantage. Since podcasting is based on asynchronous delivery not on-demand in real time, there’s no problem if an automated client such as this has to wait an hour or two to gain access to a desired file. If all of this happens during off hours (which admitedly vary by geography) so much the better for all.

If there’s support for the idea, then we need to kick around the specification. How much of this (if any) might be added directly to RSS? How much to BitTorrent? Or should it be an entirely separate specification? Then again, perhaps it’s a lousy idea that I just haven’t fully thought out. I’m sure you’ll let me know.

David Sturges is teaching Digital Media for Management and Marketing in the Department of Management, Marketing, and International Business for the College of Business Administration at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.

The textbook is audio. It contains a series of .mp3 files of panel discussions from conferences sponsored by ITConversations and other audio files. The topics of this course change so rapidly that no traditional textbook adequately fills the need. These panel discussions were conducted between October and December 2004. As additional topics are conducted, they may be incorporated into the text. You may access the .mp3 files in any of the following options.

• Download them from the text site and place them on your .mp3 player.
• Download and create a cd-rom with the .mp3 files to play on a cd player with .mp3 capability
• Download the files to your computer and play them on an .mp3 player in the AV software of your computer system (Windows Media Player for PC or iTunes for MAC).
• You may request a set of CD-ROMs from the instructor that has the .mp3 files.

Very cool.

If you enjoyed any of the Pop!Tech sessions on Human Nature (Malcolm Gladwell) or Connected Politics (Andrew Rasiej, Adrian Wooldridge, Joe Trippi and the Q&A led by John Sculley) you should check out another view from the grass roots level. Valdis Krebs offers this chapter (PDF) from his book, Extreme Democracy.

If all goes well, I’ll be recording the sessions at Bloggercon on Saturday. Apparently distribution boxes are available, so you can bring your own recorder for a high-quality feed.

Unfortunately, I can’t get the phone line I need for my broadcast-quality streaming setup, so we’re looking for alternatives. Two ways you can help us:

1. If you can stream from your laptop (i.e., you have an off-site server), we’ll have WiFi that should let you get out. Don’t plan to stream directly to clients via WiFi; there won’t be sufficient bandwidth to run a server for all the clients I expect will want to access the audio.
2. If you have a Windows XP laptop with a decent CPU, WiFi and USB that we can use for streaming, let me know. If (!) we can get a dedicated IP address over WiFi and if (!) we can have port 3690 forwarded to the laptop, I can use it to reach the Limelight Networks content-delivery network and from there reach everyone worldwide. My only Windows laptop is a wimpy Sony Vaio Picturebook with a Transmeta CPU that isn’t fast enough to run the Windows Media Encoder.

Thanks. And see you at Bloggercon!