Yawncasting. I feel pretty much late to the dance with podcasting.
It is a technology phenomnma that seems like it happened more or less
while I was out of the country 3 weeks in November. My colleagues D'Arcy and Brian are all over it, and I have give high credence to things my trusted colleagues get excited about.
But I'm not quite ready to join in yet-- maybe it's because I do not have an iPod ;-) Before I gripe, let me say what I like about the podcasting and its buzz:
* It's a wild spreading net meme- it is grass roots. It did not
originate from Microsoft or some MIT lab, it happened in the user space
of the web.
* It rolls together small pieces of existing and available technology,
is enabled by ever evolving open source software, distributes with RSS.
* It offers ordinary folks a creative space, a broadcasting platform, much like blogging opened up the web publshing platform.
* It is personal- there is something very human about hearing a real person's voice (not a velvet voiced announcer).
I've tapped into a few podcasts recently to sample the waters....
the MP3 I recently listened to this morning was an interview, and there
was at least 3 minutes of banter about weather, cities, chit chat, what
kind of microphones were being used, coughing, phone call interrupts
all very nice for the people ion the conversation (all 2 of them), but
even as the conversation moved into the topic I had selected via a
feed, the level of information density (in the Tuftian
sense) can be really low. In fact, the audio faded to the level of
background noise as I focused on more relevant tasks (trying to wrap
presents... I cannot tie a bow if my life depended on it).
...[cogdogblog]
One interim solution might be the pacemaker addon to winamp that
enables one to increase the pace of the audio without changing the
tone. There is some data from Kevin Harrigan that listerners can
listen at up to twice the speed that people talk so by compressing the
information density in time it might be more "interesting" and
effective use of time. I believe that this form of speech
processing has a good potential in many areas of education including
learning foreigh language where the listener can slow the pace down
without changiing the tone. My personal develoopment target is to
enable some way to do variable speed review (rehear) when the user has
something analogous to a gas peddle to dynamically smooth out the
information density to match the listerner's internal processing pace.
-- BL (PS there are other uses for a pacemaker to extend the
accessiblity of audio material to a broader range of users)
9:23:59 AM  Google It!.
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