From the any press is good press department. . .
In the August 2005 issue of Wired Magazine, an editorial intern, Suzanne Wu, wrote a nearly full page piece trashing 6 podcasts under the heading "Podcasting For The Man". Visit www.softwareland.org to see a portion of the piece. Or browse over to the Wired archives http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/start.html?pg=5 to see just the text.
The piece is graphically very curious as it has the word ADVERTISING next to a giant iPod graphic (podcast on the menu, an antenna on top) with a crowd of silhouettes clearly paying homage to the device. Quite a number of people pointed this out to me, at first, believing this to be an Apple Computer advertisement!
Ms. Wu says: "It was only a matter of time before big business co-opted the podcast, but someone must have missed a crucial memo. Their attempts to turn the guerrilla format into just another channel for corporate-speak are horribly ill-conceived."
She then goes on to comment on 6 podcasts she believes are corporate sponsored including ones associated with Unilever, GM, Oracle, and the Chicago NBC affiliate WMAQ and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (huh?).
But of course, the one that interested me was the claim that Mike's Manic Minute is a Microsoft corporate outlet and that I am a Microsoft "shill".
A "shill", by definition, is someone who conceals his association with the cause they are promoting. It is true that I work for Microsoft, but I have made no secret of since the very first podcast I posted in October 2004.
However, I produce the Manic Minute on my own time, in my own home studio, it has my own music composition as it's theme song and no one at Microsoft ever suggests something to include nor has review rights on the content of the Manic Minute.
Bottom Line: Mike's Manic Minute is the personal "soapbox" of yours truly, Michael Lehman and always will be.
Podcast of the day. . .
Mike's Manic Minute
www.manicminute.net
(Hey why not)
A personal podcast of a software industry pioneer who also happens to work at Microsoft.
Manic Minute Recommendation: Y'all come back now, ya hear!
And that's your Manic Minute for August 4th, 2005!
11:30:08 AM 
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