The Gastrocast

On my ferry ride to the mainland this morning I caught up on some reading, but I also wrote up an initial reaction to Dave Winer’s Comments of Adam Curry’s Interview with Wired Magazine. The two directions podcasting seems to be going was made even more relevant given that at the end of his Friday the 13th Morning Coffee Notes, Dave wishes Adam all the best on his Sirius Podshow.



Dave has some mega-valid points in his comments on the Wired article.  Anyone stumbling on the Wired piece, approaching podcasting for the first time will get a completely different version of the truth and some of  the rest of us have.



Adam is doing himself and indeed, podcasting at large, no good service by mis-representing the truth of the issue. People will find out.

And to call one of the better known podcasters–Father Roderic of the Catholic Insider–"That Catholic Priest". . .come on! Call him by his name and mention his podcast damn-it–Catholic Insider, Father Roderick–quit making it seem like your doing everyone a thumping great favor that they couldn’t have done themselves because your the "podfather".  You’re not so great, we’re not so small. It is an error of judgement of the worst sort from someone who is suspposed to be promoting the podcasts of everyone–not just his "hand-picked" favorites.  Ah. . . . no wonder my requests for promo airtime have not been heard. I’m not a hand-picked favorite.



Dave Winer’s Morning Coffee Notes for Friday 13th, then become very apt RE podcasting and my previous statements.  Keep the creativity. Quality does not matter–content must be allowed to thrive.  Let’s not judge too harshly the creativity of others, their choices and format. Let’s just enjoy all there is to enjoy in podcasting, and the non-DJ, anti-radio movement which is growing. I don’t want to be a Radio Star, I don’t want to be a podcasting star–I just want to podcast, to share my thoughts and ideas and be recognised within a community where every that may be.



I hope you can view these thoughts as relevant to a site about food, and culinary issues. I hate to take up so much space on it, but I feel these are important times and the outcome of this directional split in podcasting will have an outcome on niche shows like the Gastrocast and the future ability for other shows to share the same platform.



Here’s hoping you have a great day.



Podchef

Popularity: 4% [?]

I have never before heard a commentary on the poor audio quality of podcasts, and difficulty listening to and downloading of podcasts in such a piss-poor, painful to listen to podcast.  Rok Hrastnik’s interview of David Berlind walks that double edged sword of trying to promote a technology while criticizing its methods, creators and equipment. Not promotion at all. More like a case of sour grapes. The mere fact that the download the "mp3 link" left me with was a real audio only file, should have been a head’s up. Still it is worth listening to if only to see what the other camp is saying. The whole interview is made all the less credible when David claims there is no way of tallying how many times a podcast is downloaded, in the same way you can tell how many hits a website is getting.  That’s just wrong. I might not be able to tell when you listen to my podcast, or if you listen to the whole thing, but I do know you are downloading them. I can also trace hits to my website and all the data that provides and form a pretty cogent picture of listenership. But what does that matter, unless you are trying to cram commercialism down the throats of your listeners, right? It is clear that advertising in podcasting will not work via standard radio paradigms. So let’s leave that debate and start trying to develop a podcast friendly advertising paradigm which will work for those who want it to, and be palatable for the rest.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you use Firefox to browse this site–an I know you do–you should check out this extension: Foxipod.  This extension allows one click mp3 downloading. As an added benefit it shows you a click link at the source of any mp3 file. It is great. It uses the Greasemonkey script engine so you’ll have to download that as well. It is helpful for those sites you don’t subscribe to with RSS and just want to grab a file on. Foxipod also will load the file into iTunes, or onto your iPod automatically. I am not sure if this is Mac only–if it is, it’s just one more reason. . . .

Popularity: 4% [?]