Nosce te ipsum

Podcasting: The People's Radio -- A fantastic piece from TidBits.

Few buzzwords surrounding Internet technologies have moved into the mainstream more quickly than "podcasting," but because of this speed and an only tangentially related name, few consumer-level technologies have engendered more confusion. So what is podcasting?

Quite simply, podcasting is creating an audio file (traditionally in MP3 format, though other formats can be used as well) and making it available online for other people to listen to. If that were all there was to it, you would probably say "So what? That capability has been around for years!" and you would be correct. What's different now is that there are simple ways to subscribe to specific shows and have the audio files automatically downloaded to your computer and placed into your MP3 software - likely iTunes on the Mac - and, thus, if you wish onto your MP3 player - probably an iPod - without any effort. Simplifying and automating that task has made all the difference.

An interesting read from a former programmer turned bicycle courier. A total switch in lifestyles and he documents what that change has been like in his life.

Once upon a time, I was a coder not unlike yourself. My day consisted of coffee, perl and java hacking, meetings, and e-mail. I had a cubicle with fluorescent lighting, my own bookshelf and two computers. And I traded it all in.

Even before Office Space, white collar workers peered out the window (if they were so lucky) and imagined a more romantic life doing real work out under the sun.

Direct from Esther Dyson's premier conference on directions in technology, Johannes Ernst asks the question Where have all the visionaries gone?

• "A PC on every desk and in every home" (Bill Gates, Paul Allen, 1975)
• "A [friendly] computer for the rest of us" (Steve Jobs, 1984)
• "The internet is going to be ... a revolutionary new way of doing business." (Jim Clark, 1994)

It's again ten years later, and we've lived through the worst crash in the technology industry's history. But does this fully explain where we are? This industry feels to me like it is hanging in suspended animation, waiting for something, but not knowing for what, whether it will be a good or a bad thing, and hiding its head under the covers just in case it might be hit by something hard.

Where are the big, hairy, audacious, even outrageous goals that used to inspire everybody? That made this the industry to be in, for the fun and importance of it? The goal of putting a computer on every desk was of course outrageous in 1975, but it galvanized a generation. They proved the skeptics wrong and the world became a better place because of it. Many other innovations followed the same pattern: e-mail and on-line forums, desktop publishing, dare I say it: e-commerce. And many others.