Yahoo Launches New Podcasting Service

sdirrim writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that Yahoo! has just released a test version of its new podcasting service From the (short) article: "Yahoo's new service will allow users to download shows from National Public Radio, the weekly presidential address, and independent shows with subjects ranging from sports to knitting." Additionally Yahoo! Podcast users have the ability to rate shows.

Comments

Whoah!!!

[Otter]

NPR, the oration of George W. Bush and knitting!?! Truly, Steve Jobs hath led us into a glorious new existence!

Re:Whoah!!!

[slipnslidemaster]

All Things Considered...that's a breath of Fresh Air!

Re:Whoah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Initial list of offerings appears to be Public Domain and/or those with easily obtainable permission to deliver copyrighted works. Apparently no contracts in hand to deliver "popular" copyrighted works that might have elicited more excitement in you. If Yahoo promises to deliver content not under contract it puts them at a disadvantage in negotiating the contracts. If the service becomes popular before Yahoo approaches major content providers then the major content providers might approach Yahoo with deals to get their content into this medium and consequently giving Yahoo the edge in negotiations. Purely supposition on my part of course.

Re:Whoah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer the Obama podcast and quilting.

Re:Whoah!!!

[Short Circuit]

Hopefully the Talk of the Nation in Marketplace doesn't spoil my dinner at the Splendid Table.

Re:Whoah!!!

[slipnslidemaster]

But the The Tavis Smiley Show....oh nevermind.

Great!

[SoCalChris]

Now I'll get to listen to even more poorly produced podcasts put on by people who have no business behind a microphone.

Some of the podcasts are pretty good (The ones produced by NPR are generally good), but almost all of the other's I've heard I can't stand to listen to for more than a minute or two.

I wish Apple or Yahoo would come up with a way to rate the podcasts, so I know right off which ones to not even bother wasting my time with.

Re:Great!

[sdirrim]

If you RTFA, you see that you can rate podcasts for other users. I'm signing up now... once I get an iPod :P

Re:Great!

[generic-man]

According to Slashdot, "Yahoo! Podcast users have the ability to rate shows."

Re:Great!

[sdirrim]

Nvm... there is no article... i wrote this so I kind of expected everyone to have seen the reuters article... my bad

Re:Great!

[SoCalChris]

I should have clarified what I meant...

Something beyond 1-5 stars and some reviews would be nice. Something along the lines of rating the audio quality, how often there are new episodes, how long people stay subscribed on average, etc...

Re:Great!

[generic-man]

Click the name of a podcast on Yahoo! Podcasts. There is a link called "User Reviews" where people can leave blurbs about (among other things) the audio quality, new episode frequency, etc. It's not entirely what you wanted, but it's something.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP! It's not redundant, it's insightful! Most people that podcast (should be called blogcast) have no business doing so. Most peoples blogs/podcasts simply make them look like idiots. I have yet to find a podcast that I have been able to listen to for more than a few minutes. Diggnation is IMO the worst podcast I have ever listened too. It's just two "wannabe" hacker jackasses regurgitating whatever has been all over the Internet for the last month or more....

Re:Great!

[krewemaynard]

yeah, but somebody has to listen to it first. 99% of it is caca anyway. (can you tell i'm not on the podcast bandwagon here?)

you don't need an iPod to listen to a podcast

[Anonymous Coward]

goof

Ya Don't Say?

[Takumi2501]

Increasingly popular podcasts, which allow users to download audio programs from the Web and listen to them on portable music devices, have attracted interest from some of the biggest names in technology, including Apple Computer Inc..

I should hope podcasting's got Apple's attention. Rumour has it, they're the ones behind the iPod in the first place. :)

Re:Ya Don't Say?

[Chyeld]

They may have been behind the iPod, but they were late to the podcast party. It existed (and evolved) for quite a while before they even gave it a nod. Even now their current implementation is about a generation behind, having no builtin support for things such as bittorent downloads, different feed types, prebuilt OPML lists of feeds, or even feed:// links.

Rating..

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

Now, I'm starting to see some reason to get one of those pods. I'm a really cheap guy and I don't like much of the new music these days so I never had a reason to get one. But, I have a hard time catching The Infinite Mind and other PBS/NPR shows I love and I can't always listen to it over the net when I'm at my computer - it does suck up a lot of badwidth.

Re:Rating..

[ZachPruckowski]

Well, fundamentally, you still have to download it, so this is just getting the whole thing at once. The other option is to not get an iPod, but just get iTunes or Windows Media Player (they have links on Yahoo! podcasts). No need for the actual iPod, unless you want to carry it with you.

Re:Rating..

[Quiet_Desperation]

and I don't like much of the new music these days

I'm always puzzled by this. There's probably a wider variety of music available today than at any time in history. Just last week I ran across some really great new progressive stuff out of Holland. You just need to look beyond the top 40 lists. Most of the new stuff I listen to will probably never be played by any radio station anywhere. You just have to look for it. Gosh, if only there were some sort of tool for that. Like some sort of international network or something. ;-)

Re:Rating..

[hazem]

i-podder http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php

Is a nice OSS program for downloading podcasts too. No need for spyware/bloatware/crapware from the big guys.

Re:Rating..

[BewireNomali]

dude, this is totally true. I think that the biggest thing about having so much music available to one is that one becomes aware of the wealth of music all across the world that is worth listening to. It requires a bit of work, but finding really good music is so worthwhile.

I'm listening to so many kinds of music i'd otherwise not be listening to if i let radio or MTV et al program my listening choices.

There's some really good stuff coming out of Germany and Brazil too. Mostly death metal out of Germany - more rhythmic hip hop stuff out of Brazil (plus Portugese is such a great sounding language). Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow released a couple of albums called Bombay the Hard Way, which are remixes of 70s era Bollywood spy film scores. Amazing stuff. Bombay the Hard Way - check it out.

Lol @ the tool for it. lol.

Re:Rating..

[Chyeld]

To be honest, the variety avaliable now via the internet is just as bad as the absense in variety in the mainstream media.

If it's not playing I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X lists are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible artists that I might like down to something that I could resonably listen to doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.

Re:Rating..

[DaveJay]

If it's not playing I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X lists are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible artists that I might like down to something that I could resonably listen to doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.

If it's not in my bookmarks I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X sites are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible web sites that I might like down to something that I could resonably visit doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.

Just sayin'. There are linkfilters for music, just like there are for web pages. For example, 3hive and a whole pile of others, from the ultra-corporate to the ultra-personal. There are even tools that look at what you're listening, and recommend artists that other people who listen to the same artist also like.

Re:Rating..

[ZachPruckowski]

Sounds cool. But they'll suffer because almost everyone has an iPod, so they're competing for a smaller market. That's the glory of Apple's software/hardware one-two punch.

Re:Rating..

[FLEB]

The iPod is irrelevant. This is a program that automatically downloads new podcasts to your computer, and can do things like adding them to your iTunes library.

Unfortunately, the term "Podcasting", with all its trademark inferences, was the first one to catch on. Podcasting has little to do with Apple or the iPod. Apple has even been one of the latest and least cooperative parties to come to the whole game. They had to be repeatedly beaten over the head with the popular idea just to get some iTunes support, and their software and hardware is so closed and unextensible that Apple tend to be the last ones to implement podcasting features.

Of course, the whole podcasting movement was popularized, in a large part, by folks who were Apple/iPod fans, so there was more "Gee I wish Apple would..." talk and awkward hacks to use uncooperative hard/software than people looking around and evangelizing successful and sympathetic solutions. Granted, nobody really stepped up to the plate, either. Someone like iRiver could have gained big, especially with the fact that their players come with integrated recorders and easily-hacked firmware, if they would have taken the initiative to become the Podcaster's platform of choice.

Re:Rating..

[FLEB]

The answer lies somewhere between the crapfest that was MP3.com and the crapfeed that is popular radio.

For me, the answer is in the sub-popular labels. Once you get beyond the BMGs and Warners, labels often have a distinctive style, and can act as an advocate or a guide to helping you find good music.

Me? I put stock in names like Emperor Norton, the defunct Grass label, Eighteenth Street Lounge, Polyvinyl Record Co., and City Slang (a distributor, actually, but they have good taste). There are a few that are larger, with more styles, but still have good taste: Matador, Touch and Go, and some more I can't recall.

Re:Rating..

[Chyeld]

I completely agree, the web:search engine metaphor is a good one. However, how many of these sites are really that deep in terms of what they cover? The last time I hit a "listen to what you do and recommend" site, they told me I would like George Micheal because I listened to Garbage. The last time I went to 'search' site, I came to the conclusion that the entire music world was composed of only video game soundtrack remixes, punk, and metal.

Right now, the tools out there cover maybe 10% of what's avaliable and are about as sophisticated as pre-Google, pre-altavista, Yahoo (I.E. not very). I'm sure that if I put time and effort into it, I would find some gems. But right now, I've been spoilt, I expect things to work as well as Google.

And they don't, not by a long shot.

Re:Rating..

[ZachPruckowski]

No, I think you were misunderstanding what I said or was trying to say. I was the first one to say the iPod is unnecessary, and all you need is the software. what I said in my most recent post is that the OSS has to fight the popularity of iTunes, which won't be easy. most people have iPods for the music reason, and have iTunes with the pod because they're lazy, or because it works well enough (I'm one of them). It has nothing to do with the people needing the iPods.

Re:Rating..

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

If you're looking for new music outside the top-40 crap, try the NPR All Songs Considered podcast. It goes over the music used on All Things Considered, and it's an incredible variety of music.

Re:Rating..

[Anonymous Coward]

God yes. The Bombay the Hard Way albums (there's a second album too, forgotten it's name) are fantastic. DJ Shadow (Josh Davis) is an absolute genius. Definitely check out Handsome Boy Modelling school if you're into that music too. It's really hard to find these gems though, as there is so much rubbish out there. It almost forces you to jump on to P2P networks, just so you can try out albums for a few weeks at a time, and really get to know the music. Oftentimes, it's not for a few weeks/months before you really get to appreciate the albums, and then you just want to go out and buy the entire discography for the artist.

Re:Rating..

[FLEB]

Ahh, yes, perhaps. Although, the OSS does have the advantage of not being dependent for life on commercial success. If iPodder takes a commercial dip, there'll still be a few people around to use or maintain it.

Re:Rating..

[BewireNomali]

i'm totally finding a lot of this stuff on peer networks. there's a forum... mightyvibes.org or something like that, that indexes really good music in a whjole bunch of genres.

I'm getting the Handsome Boy stuff now. Thanks.

I like user ratings

[Safe Sex Goddess]

I wish there were some way to give a revenue split from advertisers to the best rated podcasts.

False...

[Anonymous Coward]

The rumor has been discredited. The iPod was created by terrorist music pirates who are bent on destroy the recording industry.

Uploading Shows

[superpulpsicle]

If someone wants their podcast show to succeed, they would have to put it on iTunes, Yahoo, and at least a couple other podcast sites. How about a single site that uploads to the multiple destinations for you. Maybe that's what people need instead.

Re:Uploading Shows

[Chuckstar]

I don't think its that hard to register your RSS feed at multiple sites. It only takes about 10 seconds.

Re:Uploading Shows

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you listened to a podcast lately? Most of these people would have trouble tying their shoes....

P.S. I just listened to the TWIT podcast and holy shit was it bad. How anyone regularly listens to this crap is beyond me....

Re:Uploading Shows

[Anonymous Coward]

The funniest thing about TWIT is that they all bash Microsoft constantly however they all use Microsoft as their primary OS except for Leo. I have to love these jackasses who praise Linux but when it comes down to it they've barely ever used it and they really don't know shit about it. I'd be surprised if these guys have ever seen a command line in their entire life. In closing, Kevin Rose is the biggest n00b of all time.

Re:Uploading Shows

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, that's exactly what you do. Upload your postcast's MP3 file to a server (your own or some other), then publish the XML postcast to the server, then submit the URL of the XML to iTunes, Yahoo, and any other syndication of postcasts. There is no need to upload either the MP3 or the XML file more than but once in order for others to publish your stream - it's called syndication.

Cool!

[Chunni Babu]

Failed to attract attention of ScuttleMonkey towards this important news earlier today, but happy to see it posted finally. Who are the other major players in this field?

Re:Cool!

[__aaliyy795]

These ones are definetely worth checking out:

http://www.loomia.com/ (similar to Yahoo's, but also has collaborative filtering)
http://www.odeo.com/ (lets you create podcasts)
http://www.podshow.com/ (Adam Curry)

Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[netsavior]

it is "Diary" not blog it is an audio file not a podcast I got a revolution for ya, lets put an audio file for download on the internet (yeah nobody has ever done that before), but give it a hip new name: "Podcast" cause you need a $400 piece of electronics to duplicate 20 year old technology. Next you will see "Podcast Novels" at barnes and noble, cause "books on tape" is just not a shiney. Get off my lawn :))

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Zack]

I have to agree. "Podcasting". What is it? Downloading mp3s. that. is. it.

"Oh, but now you can tell via RSS that a new mp3 is ready". Oh joy.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if they name it something simple enough for the old farts to understand then it's not that cool.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Tsiangkun]

Technically, sure, it's just downloading mp3s.

But, when it's done through iTunes, using RSS to autmatically grab new content from sites, it's starts to become something different. When the player keeps track of how much of the podcast has been played, and automatically manages the downloaded content according to user criteria, it becomes a podcast.

Yes, you can just download the mp3, but it's the iTunes experience that makes the system complete.
I used to think it was dumb too, but now I'm hooked.

I like knowing which shows I've heard, and which I still need to have a listen, and being able to pick up where I left off when I get interupted. iTunes, presents this information in a very intuitive way, and just downloading the mp3 doesn't, using RSS or not.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[NotWorkSafe]

Podcast novels? Do you mean something like this? Or this? Not to mention this and this.

I wish we had something like this in New Mexico.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Anonymous Coward]

But, when it's done through iTunes, using RSS to autmatically grab new content from sites, it's starts to become something different. When the player keeps track of how much of the podcast has been played, and automatically manages the downloaded content according to user criteria, it becomes a podcast.

I like knowing which shows I've heard, and which I still need to have a listen

Even Windows media player does that stuff, and I've seen more poor reviews/ratings for iTunes than good ones (download.com for example).

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Tsiangkun]

Nice, except I don't use Windows media player, I use mplayer, and I use iTunes. Windows media player may be a perfectly fine replacement on windows, I don't know. I only know that Windows media player isn't worth two quarts of piss and a hat full of shit on any system with shell I find suitable.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[stefanlasiewski]

The name "Podcasting" is often misused to simply mean "listen to our audio file". I know you are being fecisious, but the "Pod" in "Podcast" doesn't mean that you need to buy a $400 piece of equipment to listen to a Podcast.

The word "Podcast" implies automation -- You tell the computer what shows you want to watch. The broadcaster distributes the audio file on a regular schedule. Your computer monitors the feed, downloads the files and does the work for you.

Using this method, an audio producer effectively distributes the file far and wide on a regular schedule. They have a larger potential audience, because listeners are more likely to listen to a broadcast.

Really, this is the same thing as when I was 8 years old and taped Dr. Demento. But Podcasting is more automated, and is a good use of these broadband connections that sit idle at night.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[ceejayoz]

Yeah, and that stupid "reading" buzzword just describes looking at symbols!

Honestly. You'd think every use of the term kills one of your pets or something.

If a website said "download my MP3", I'd treat that differently than "subscribe to my podcast". It's a descriptive term, and it's not going away anytime soon.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[PintoPiman]

Other stupid names:

TiVo/DVR: Just. Downloading. MP4s. Oh joy.
Internet: Just. A. Glorified. BBS. Oh joy.

I listen to 5-10 podcasts a day in the car and at work. Perhaps you wouldn't mind tracking 5-10 sites for updates, but I'm happy to have it automated.

I also don't memorize the TV guide in order to figure out when my favorite shows are on. I don't log into a different BBS in order to get information from every mailing list I'm on or site that I want to check.

Why are these automated developments not significant? Why should I not care about them? Why am I wrong for being excited and happy?

~p

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, sure, it's just downloading mp3s.

But, when it's done through iTunes, using RSS to autmatically grab new content from sites, it's starts to become something different.


Yeah. It starts to become push technology. Holy shit. We need to Party like it's 1999, cuz push content was already old hat then.

It was crap when Microsoft tried to push it on us then, but now that it comes in this new Apple flavor I guess it doesn't smell any more.

Sheep.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Tsiangkun]

Except nobody is pushing it.

I had to go out and find the content I wanted, I had to subscribe to the content in a different program than I used to find it, and I had to click the button to GET the content when the iTunes program let me know it has become available.
It doesn't have to work this way, it's the way I set it up, and it's how I like it.

Why don't you log in and post your comments,you punk ass little bitch.

Re:Oh for the love of God podcast is a stupid name

[Anonymous Coward]

This time around, there are some very positive differences. This time, non-proprietary wrappers (XML RSS) and common formats (mostly MP3) allow for great portability and multi-platform access. Unlike the RealPlayer news streams of 1998, I can use GPL programs such as amaroK to manage the new content. Because most content is available in the MP3 format, I can save the audio and listen to it when I want on my MP3 player. (This creates a portable Tivo-like way to access content available in an RSS wrapper, aka podcast wrapper.)

Is this different from offering the files via a web page? Yes. I don't have to maintain a different perl script to scrape each page.

Will the benefits of portability and multi-platform access last forever (esp. with currently available content produced by entities such as ABC or NPR)? I see DRM being used to wrap the audio files and dictating if you can use the file on your portable MP3 player. I see DRM being used to wrap the audio files and dictating which programs can play the files (or if the files are stream-only). When that time comes, most people claiming podcasts as something not new will be correct because, then, the DRM will have turned the podcasts into an iTunes edition of the long-available RealPlayer and Windows Media cotent streams.

quote

[unk1911]

The following quote seems very appropriate for this newsstory:

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
- Robert Wilensky

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Re:quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else see the irony in the above post being signed with a blog address?

music today

[everphilski]

People complain about music, but the funny thing is you have better selection today than you ever have. Because you know what? If you don't like the music being created in 2005, you can still get your hands on music from the 90s/80s/70s. It's not like that music is magically destroyed or something. Music accumulates, it doesn't go away...

-everphilski-

Re:music today

[ceejayoz]

Music accumulates, it doesn't go away...

You post on Slashdot and you haven't heard of DRM? ;-)

I don't care about NPR Story of the Day

[camt]

Ho hum. It looks like the NPR offerings are the same as in the iTMS Podcast Directory.

Let me know when they offer A Prarie Home Companion in a Podcast.

Re:I don't care about NPR Story of the Day

[Anonymous Coward]

A Prairie Home Companion is produced by Minnesota Public Radio / American Public Media, not NPR, so don't hold your breath waiting for NPR to clear the rights. Meanwhile, you can get Prairie Home Companion as a podcast by Audible, but it's not free.

I still prefer just right-clicking on mp3 files...

[ThatAdamGuy]

...and saving and/or playing them in the player of my choice. Despite owning a portable music player (a gift), I never did quite understand all the excitement of podcast time/placeshifting. When do people find the time to listen to all this stuff anyway? (commutes, I suppose, but beyond that...?)

Anyway, the idea of a podcast directory is nice, and I'm neither surprised nor unhappy that Y! has stepped up to the plate. However, some of the whizbang stuff they've tacked on isn't, well, very user-friendly.

For instance, clicking on "listen" under a listed podcast brings up a little window with a mini-player... which (at least on Firefox) doesn't even let you skip forward or back in a broadcast. Huh?!

The integration with Y!'s player -- Yahoo! Music Engine -- is, however, pretty useful and generally well-done.

Podcasting to a simplified existence

[digitaldc]

The next big thing is going to be listening to a podcast of a guy telling you how you should simplify your life into a state of analog nirvana. The podcast will tell you the joys of reconnecting to your friends and family by ditching the mp3 player and getting off of the computer.

smart

[jonathanduty]

Rather than spending time trying to make something that will one-up the Apple Podcast technology, Yahoo will use existing technology to make money. As long as there are no legal hurdles that seems like a good idea.

Diary not blog?

[ThatAdamGuy]

Hey, even as a "blogger" myself, I agree that the whole blog thing is obnoxiously overhyped. Okay, easy publishing, we get it. Neato.

But calling blogs 'diaries' is kinda lame, too. Though you can still see a zillion angsty "I hate myself, I love my cheese sandwich" blogs, there are a ton more that aggregate or commentate on interesting tech stories or political issues, and so on.

Nothing too special

[Transcendent]

NPR already allows you to download a "podcast" from their website. Yahoo just collects it and gives you another link to it.

Works with iTunes

[freaktheclown]

It works with iTunes, too. When you click Subscribe, it opens up iTunes and downloads it automatically.

Free podcasts?

[Stian Engen]

OK we get it.. podcasting is gonna diminish the power of global media. Just like blogging, the internet and linux on the desktop... Jeez I wonder when we'll see podcasts.google.com

Re:Free podcasts?

[ForumTroll]

I know you're being sarcastic however it's really quite funny how many people actually think that blogs and podcasts will revolutionize the way we get news. Blogging has had a very little effect on changing global media. The vast majority of people don't read blogs nor do they care what some random person has to say over the Internet. Most blogs are incredibly poorly written and it shows almost immediately. Podcasts generally are incredibly poorly produced and often have little to no content. Most of the people that are creating podcasts are very young and frankly they offer nothing of value to their listeners. I have yet to find any podcasts that I would regularly enjoy listening to.

I think the one thing that blogs and podcasts have shown very clearly is that people who want to write stories or produce their own shows really need to be educated to do so; otherwise they're more than likely to end up creating more trash.

Re:Free podcasts?

[fupeg]

Blogging has had a very little effect on changing global media.

Whoa, where have you been? Perhaps you were not around a year ago when it was blogs reacting to exit poll data that were first claiming that Kerry was going to dethrone Bush. News outlets turned around and reported much the same thing, but only after the blogs focussed attention on it. Mainstream media didn't want such hasty conclusions, not because they were wrong, but because they wanted people to stay tuned all night long.

Even more recently, it was bloggers that started the cries of outrage over the US government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Again, mainstream media is very reluctant to openly criticize politicians for fear of being accused of lacking impartiality and (more importantly) because they must rely on these same politicians and don't want to burn bridges. Look at 9/11. It tooks months before criticism grew and it had to have its roots with the victims' families. This time things were much, much quicker because of bloggers. Bloggers don't care about being impartial and don't care if they upset politicians.

In both cases, "the news" changed because of bloggers. That's where the power of blogging comes from. It allows a broader range of people to define what is news.

Re:Free podcasts?

[ForumTroll]

"Whoa, where have you been? Perhaps you were not around a year ago when it was blogs reacting to exit poll data that were first claiming that Kerry was going to dethrone Bush. News outlets turned around and reported much the same thing, but only after the blogs focussed attention on it. Mainstream media didn't want such hasty conclusions, not because they were wrong, but because they wanted people to stay tuned all night long."

Most of the blogs were wrong so I hardly see how it paid off in the end. News outlets waited and didn't make hasty conclusions because they don't want to make false calls as they have some level of accountability. Bloggers have no accountability so they can say whatever they want and more often than not they're poorly written, uninformed and factually wrong.

"Even more recently, it was bloggers that started the cries of outrage over the US government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Again, mainstream media is very reluctant to openly criticize politicians for fear of being accused of lacking impartiality and (more importantly) because they must rely on these same politicians and don't want to burn bridges. Look at 9/11. It tooks months before criticism grew and it had to have its roots with the victims' families. This time things were much, much quicker because of bloggers. Bloggers don't care about being impartial and don't care if they upset politicians. "

In regards to Hurricane Katrina, this is just untrue. There was plenty of outrage in other media outlets including mainstream newspapers. The people that were suffering through the tragedy and their families were the ones causing most of the commotion and it was hardly the bloggers that deserve credit. Some bloggers wrote about the story. Wow. That hardly gives them the ability to take credit for changing the situation... Even on many television news programs people were outraged. Blogs are only read by a very miniscule section of the population and most bloggers/blog readers give them far too much credit. "In both cases, "the news" changed because of bloggers. That's where the power of blogging comes from. It allows a broader range of people to define what is news."

I hardly think that the news changed significantly in either of those cases directly due to bloggers. Yes, it allows a broader range of people to define what news is however more often than not these people are not educated, not qualified to be doing so and are factually wrong. People that blog/read blogs regularly give themselves way more credit than they deserve. I admit they have made small changes but nothing like what most bloggers give them credit for.

Re:Free podcasts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a grip. None of those situations were altered significantly by blogs. Maybe the 1% of people that actually read blogs thought that they made a big difference but out here in the real world nobody cared what the bloggers had to say and rightfully so. Bloggers are so quick to pat themselves on the back when in reality it's only a very small percentage of the population that pays any attention to them. Anyways, keep thinking that you're "giving it to the man" by writing crap on a shitty little web page that barely anyone reads.... You bloggers are really on the verge of changing the world.....

No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[_flan]

Yahoo! just seems to be agregating shows that already exist. They do not have whole NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts that are already available from the NPR site.

I'm still pissed that NPR abandonded Audible.com with no backup plan. I mean, what the hell? Who had the brilliant idea?

"I know, let's turn of this service that is generating a revenue stream and replace it with ... ground seashells and sand! I wonder if anyone will notice."

Feh.

Re:No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR turned into a shadow big-money corporate entity some years ago. It's now nothing more than a corporation with it's own "we're different, honest!" theme but just as irresponsible and biased as anything on Fox.

Not allowing the complete and free distribution of their programming is merely an end result of the typical corporate culture. :(

Re:No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some complete NPR shows. For example, On The Media, Living On Earth, Justice Talking, Latino USA, and Talk of the Nation Science Friday are all NPR shows avaliable in their entirety by podcast.

There's also complete PRI (Public Radio International) shows like To The Point, Le Show, and Pacific Time also avaliable in their entirety by podcast.

What you don't have is Morning Edition or All Things Considered avaliable by podcast. Instead, NPR takes stories from ME and ATC and puts them into different formats, like "Most E-Mailed Stories" and "Story of the Day" that aggregate most popular stories, and podcasts like "NPR: Technology" and "NPR: Health & Science" that aggregate by topic.

Considering ME and ATC are both two hours long each day, some would probably find it more convenient to get these in a repackaged format, and the radio stations probably feel less threatened by this tactic. Unfortunately, NPR could have done a better job of organizing things -- there's no "NPR: Politics" category, for example.

Re:No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[TrekCycling]

Here here!! I didn't like Audible.com. In fact I hated that company for many years. They had terrible customer service and surly workers. But at least they could deliver content (like All Things Considered) to a number of various devices. It really frustrates that me if I want to listen to National *Public* Radio, I have to use iTunes or an iPod. Why can't they just toss an MP3 up on the site and call it good? And an MP3 of the whole show too, music and everything. It's insanity.

Re:No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[tedit]

So, to get at the reason behind this, you have to understand NPR's revenue model. If you think "*Public*" means government supported, you're almost certainly wrong - only 2% of total revenues come from government grants, and a good portion of the rest comes from local member stations which pay the national arm for programming like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

So given that member stations rely on their listerners to pitch in to the basket so they can fund the national programming, how do you think the local stations would feel about MP3s or podcasts of the entirety of the flagship programs being put up on the internet (potentially, on the west coast, hours before they actually air)?

NPR relies on its local stations to raise funds, and the local stations rely in turn for NPR's quality programming for their local audience, particularly during commute times when an iPod plugged into a car stereo would be a viable alternative. Unless NPR's internet revenue streams vastly increase in the near future (when's the last time you bought a tote bag from the npr.org shop?), their decentralized fundraising model pretty much guarentees that the most you're going to get from the flagship shows online are streaming audio.

Re:No NPR shows, just the crappy podcasts

[/dev/trash]

What happened to that huge inheritence NPR got 2 years ago?????

Rate shows? Karma? Cool!

[davidwr]

Imagine if NPR shows could get rated and get karma like /.:

Postitive: Interesting, Insightful, Informative, Underrated, Funny, and just for radio: timely
Negative: Offtopic, Troll, Flamebait, Redundant, Overrated, and just for radio: yesterday's news

What I want to know is: Do high-karma contributors start out at +2?

Yahoo! Music Podcasts?

[ObligatoryUserName]

I've looked at the Yahoo! Music Engine (they emailed me about a job, but never got back to me) - and the one thing I don't understand is why they don't have special Yahoo! only Podcasts - YahooCasts or something -- something they aren't doing with this initiative. If you're sane you're asking "Why would they make Yahoo only podcasts?" - because their Music service is on a subscription model. People could make music show "podcast" (obviously in some sort of format specific to this service) with all the commercial music they want, and all the subscribers could listen to it without copyright concerns. It's something that might actually make their service appealing.

I'm an iTunes/iPod user and shuffle always gets annoying, and I don't have the time to keep making new playlists (which don't duplicate the "surprise factor" of radio anyway). If there was a subscription service where I could listen to podcasts with Music on my portable device I would be quite interested. Of course, Yahoo! would still have to deal with the iPod lock-in - their service currently requires WMA music players, which I'm not likely to buy in the first place.

Re:Yahoo! Music Podcasts?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're describing already exists with LaunchCast and their paid music service.
Podcasts are more like talk shows on any and all subjects, rather than music radio.

Re:Yahoo! Music Podcasts?

[ObligatoryUserName]

I don't think LaunchCast is what I'm talking about. LaunchCast seems to be a streaming music service (similar to the Radio section of iTunes, as well as a wide variety of streaming services). Its main innovation seems to be that it can create custom radio stations for you based on your preferences.
One reason that Podcasts are mostly talk-radio shows is the lack of a royalty license agreements similar to what commercial radio has. This is something that would be very difficult to set up with traditional Podcasts because they are in the MP3 format, and there's nothing to prevent a song that was "broadcast" from being easily saved with no degredation.

The reason I was thinking about Music broadcasts is because when I'm on the go - listening to my iPod. Sometimes I really like having the Podcasts on there - they're like short little NPR vignettes in between the music. Often, however, I am wanting to listen to music, and the talk segments are annoying and instantly skipped over. I'm looking for DJs to make "music radio" for me to listen to on a portable device.

Re:Yahoo! Music Podcasts?

[ObligatoryUserName]

I just saw this article about Podsafe music, music that can be used in Podcasts, and thought I should add it to the thread.
http://www.ipodarmy.com/2005/06/how-to-find-podsaf e-music/

Unfortunatly it doesn't look like much commercial music is Podsafe.

Re:Yahoo! Music Podcasts?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are describing, as I understand it, is sharing playlists to put on a device right? Yahoo (Rhapsody and maybe others) allow you to create playlists, export/share them, which other subscribers can then import and download the songs to a compatible device. The problem is finding the "DJs" on your service of choice that share their playlists.

Oh for the love of god you're a moron

[That's Unpossible!]

It's not a diary unless your version of a diary lets other users subscribe to it and post feedback.

It's not just an audio file, a podcast is the entire mechanism of easily subscribing to a audio program, and having it sync up automatically to your listening software/hardware of preference.

Please actually research what you're talking about before sounding like a moron by trying to make fun of something you don't get.

remember DEVO?

[SethJohnson]

but the funny thing is you have better selection today than you ever have.

WHen I read the gp post and then the responses about the selection being better now than ever before, I couldn't help but think of Devo's song, Freedom of Choice.

Freedom of Choice is what you've got...
Freedom FROM Choice is what you want...

The GP is probably suffering from too many choices and has given up the search for music.

Seth

Re:remember DEVO?

[MightyYar]

You know, it's true though. There is just too much information out there for the brain to process. I like solutions such as Pandora, where experts have classified the music for you so that it is easy to search.

Actually, I'm selling Pandora a bit short. They have done far more than just classified the music. The algorithm they use to help you find new music is the really redeeming feature. It's like the TiVo interface: you give it a "seed" song, and then start rating songs with the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down. It tries to decide what you like, and it seems to have quite a high batting average compared to other similar services. Best of all, they have included a bunch of non-RIAA artists, so it really puts all music on a level footing. The RIAA should probably leave down-loaders alone and make sure that this goes nowhere... it is the end of their relevance if it catches on.

Re:remember DEVO?

[SethJohnson]

Thanks for this recommendation. I hadn't heard of it. I've mostly been depending on internet radio through iTunes to find different music, but a lot of the stations I listen to don't really broadcast the artist info, so I end up continuing to listen to those stations for those sounds rather than seeking out individual artists.

I'll check out Pandora.

Appreciatively,
Seth

This American Life

[Skim123]

I like many of the PBS radio programs, but it's frustrating that (IMHO) their best show - This American Life - is not podcastable. Boo.

Re:This American Life

[Short Circuit]

Act IV: Listen to how one suburbanite geek downloads his "news" and listens to it later.

You Don't Need Yahoo to...

[slideroll]

... listen to NPR Podcasts.

Anyone know how to rip an NPR stream to MP3?

[TrekCycling]

It's frustrating to be one of the few people on the planet who doesn't have an iPod AND wants to listen to All Things Considered in its entirety. Something that used to be available via Audible.com, but now is no longer available. Anyone know how to rip an NPR stream to MP3? I can do it from a member station MP3 stream, but then it comes out as a 128 kbs MP3 that is HUGE. I'd like to be able to downsample to 64 kbs.

Re:Anyone know how to rip an NPR stream to MP3?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a program called http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/Audio Hijack Pro to record internet streams for later playback on my iPod.

Re:Anyone know how to rip an NPR stream to MP3?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you "think different", you prove how "progressive" you are by owning an iPod. If not, you don't need to hear NPR in it's entirety.

Simple, really.

Re:Anyone know how to rip an NPR stream to MP3?

[/dev/trash]

I use this:

# Small Script to download the previous day's StarDate episode.
# Copyright 2005 Steven Patz
#!/bin/bash
DATE=`date -d "yesterday" +%Y%m%d`;
NAME="sd$DATE.mp3";
DIR="/home/sp"

if test -e $DIR/$NAME;
then printf "\n\nFile exists, nothing to do.\n\n";
else
wget http://stardate.org/audio/mp3s/$NAME -O $DIR/$NAME
printf "\n\nDone!\n\n";
#sleep 1;
mplayer -vc dummy -vo null -ao pcm:file=$DIR/$DATE.wav $DIR/$NAME

fi

Re: Ipodder

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleh, it's borken on amd64. Crashes everytime I try and browse the directory.

when to listen?

[Anonymous Coward]

When do people find the time to listen to all this stuff anyway? (commutes, I suppose, but beyond that...?)

Who's got time to listen to podcasts while commuting? That's my slashdot time, buddy!

Poscasting is a stupid term

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY DO YOU GUYS CALL IT PODCASTING?
What happened to the term "streaming audio?"

The word "Poscasting" just makes the entire scene sound so much gayer than it should be. For god's sake, you can upload downloaded streaming audio on to, dare I say it, OTHER MP3 PLAYERS.

No sense of humor...

[DwarfGoanna]

Oh well, I would have modded it 'Funny'. =)

Yahoo introduces Yahoo Search! With hyperlinks!

[RubberDogBone]

This just in....

Buoyed by their success with Yahoo Podcastg, Yahoo today announced a revolutionary system tha will allow internet users to "search" for "things" and eventually "find" them too.

As part of that process, Yahoo also introduced a technique they are calling "hyperlinks" where users can "click" on a "search result" and actually see the result!

Yahoo predicts "lots" of people will be using this system real soon!

Innovation is everthing! Next they'll be offering up email and maybe even auctions.

Re:Yahoo introduces Yahoo Search! With hyperlinks!

[carlivar]

This just in... (headlines)

Google releases Google Grocery Lists, techies go wild!

Yahoo unveils Perpetual Motion, techies respond with derisive sneer.

Carl

try last.fm

[majid_aldo]

which uses audioscrobbler to profile your taste and connect you with new music