The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Robert hits a softball thrown by Peter Davis, regarding podcasting as an inefficient medium.  Radio and television are therefore inefficient mediums as well, but somehow, those two industries have managed to survive .

Since Robert is moving to PodTech, he has to provide a good defense, which he does.  As I’ve pointed out here before, portable media players are what makes podcasting go fast.  Portable media consumption is the name of the game, baby.  It’s here to stay.  And longer than Peter Davis believes.

This is great news, as ESPN delivers a story about the Colorado Rockies baseball players using iPods and in-house video to improve their games.  I believe that stories like this will finally begin to expand the current thinking about what podcasting can become.  As we’ve discussed here before, podcasting is more than grass roots new media contributors - it’s another distribution channel for radio and tv content, and certainly is effective for training and education for people that would rather not be shackled to their computers.

Great news!  Congrats to the Rockies for being early adopters.

Fractals of Change shares the true issues at hand on ‘net neutrality and I think skewers the right people and lifts up the right people.  Thankfully, there are a few out there that get it, but it will be an uphill battle.  The boys with the big PR and lobbying dollars have been at it longer.  Let’s catch up - the games not over yet.

This will dramatically affect those of us that are dealing with large file transfers for media distribution.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - it’s not our fault that the telco’s made bad investments or that they’ve fought the wrong battles - we shouldn’t have to pay for them going forward - they should.

Robert Scoble, the famed blogger of Microsoft, is moving on, as he discusses in multiple posts here, in response to his outing by Tom Foremski and others over the weekend.

This has been a blogging and podcasting phenomenon over the past few days that is worthy of mention. One man’s career decision has made news worldwide. Previous to this, people changing firms would only generate news if there was a corporate power struggle like at Morgan Stanley last year or Jack Welch retiring. Now, we have a mid-level individual contributor that has generated more PR juice over a weekend than many high-level execs generate in an entire career.

Robert is heading to Podtech.net, home of John Furrier. It will be interesting to see what a highly visible social media guy will do with and to that startup organization. I’m encouraged that podcasting is continuing to generate this much momentum, both in audio and video formats.

I only know Robert from being a frequent reader of his blog, both on his site and via RSS feeds. While I think this will allow him to feel much more in control of his destiny, his voice may now be so influential that it doesn’t fit in a small startup where one wrong comment could impact a year’s worth of revenue in one moment of time. I believe it will make PodTech or break them - time will only tell. I wish them both the best.

Well, it’s nice to be in good company. Apparently, eMarketer is saying the same thing as what’s been running through my mind - the end podcasting device is the mobile phone. Telecomasia writes about it here. Rob Greenlee of mobile podcast pioneers Melodeo, writes about it here, commenting on the Telecomasia article.

As downloading gets easier to accomplish, I see a lot more users actually synching their phone to their computer to copy over podcasts, rather than download them over the wireless network - it gets expensive to do that, although the wireless carriers very much want that to be the workflow.

Several things need to happen to make this come about more quickly - larger storage on the phones themselves and software that easily allows updates to your playlist on the phone. Oh - and increased battery power - let’s not forget that .

Interesting article from CNET about new players from Zing that use Wi-Fi to pull down content when in a hotspot. Conceptually, a good idea; practically poor, since it only has 8MB of storage. I think cell phones will have a much great possibility of impact, as mentioned here before.

More and more cell phones are MP3/MP4 enabled and include Wi-Fi - so what’s the compelling reason to buy a Zing? Upgrade your phone instead, which will have more native capacity, as well as a flash memory/SD card expansion slot (most likely).

To say nothing about “just one device” and the utility of it all….

Well, don’t you just know that all the fun things happen at home while you’re on the road. Gio got a call from the Fort Worth Star Telegram while I was in London, that turned into this article and the subsequent posting to The Agency Blog. Blake Burris from Cocoa Radio got good mentions as well, not only for Cocoa Radio, but also for his additional distribution of CR through Media Swamp.

Since Gio has driven everything around the Media Swamp, it’s good he got the call.

6 days after returning from SE Asia, I turned around and flew to London for 2 days of a 3 day conference. I was asked to speak on a panel regarding technology and specifically on our efforts to podcast in “out of the way places”. I met people interested in utilizing this new trend (which obviously is newer in most other places in the world than it is here in the U.S.) as well as possibly funding some of the MPReach capital needs. Time will tell as to the overall interest, but I believe it was time well spent, both in terms of education and visibility. Thanks to those that made it possible for me to attend.

We were treated to nice digs, first class speakers, such as The Baronness Cox, former Deputy Speaker of The House of Lords, and great food. 1st class treatment from a 1st class organization.

Another podcast while on location (actually on the way out, while waiting for my flight at Gatwick), is over at The Media Swamp.

Or whatever. I’ve finished moving The Reach from the hosted version on WP servers to the installed version on my own servers. I think I’m caught up on writing about the recent trip to SE Asia - cities/countries we touched were: Taipei, Taiwan (but only for layovers); Hong Kong; Shen Zhen, China; Bangkok, Thailand; Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma); Bangkok, Thailand; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Bangkok, Thailand; Taipei, Taiwan. That was the itinerary, in case you wondered why Bangkok and Taipei were mentioned several times.

Well, after spending 10 days working 14-15 hour days in other countries, Thailand was somewhat of a relief. We still worked hard, but the combination of it being a more western city of Chiang Mai (very tourist oriented) and traditional business meetings made it seem a bit more like home. Include with it 90-100 F temperatures, and it felt like Dallas in the summer time - except for that it hit 100% humidity at times as well, without much rain.

Chiang Mai is in the northern reaches of Thailand, surrounded by beautiful mountains. It’s hot in the valley, cool in the mountains. Many westerners visit this city of 400,000 and those that have visited can usually figure out a way to retire here. While I’ve never lived outside the U.S., it seems that this could be one of the easiest places with which to adjust. Meaning that if you want traditional Thai food and the Thai experience, you’re on. If you want McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, et, you’re in business too. It is as inexpensive to live or as expensive. Bed and Breakfast - queensize bed, AC, garden, etc, try out Riverside House on Chiang Mai Lamphun Road for $15 nightly. Or you can find a 4 or 5 star hotel within walking distance. Your choice.
Enough English is spoken that low brow westerners like me can feel right at home. There are many educators and business people in the city that are western, so while they’re still a minority, there are enough to where you wouldn’t feel far from home.

We had great business meetings and were very encouraged by the response - there were many people who wanted to help us get a greater foothold for podcasting in SE Asia. Since there are many countries near Northern Thailand, it makes distributing audio and video content very easy in that geography.

Again, there is a podcast on The Media Swamp that I did while sitting on the patio at one of the four Starbucks on a busy corner in Chiang Mai.