0xDECAFBAD - Tag: podcasting

Frustrations in using iTunes and iPod to capture podcast listening behavior

2007-03-09T20:13:04+00:00

Update (15 Mar 2007): So, long rant, but I may have found my problem - I had set podcasts in iTunes to sync only "unplayed episodes" to the iPod, which also seems to imply that they never sync / record data about having been played. Or ratings from the iPod, for that matter. I just changed that setting to "all episodes", and podcasts seem to be showing up in my Recently Played smart playlist again. Hopefully this gets me back to where I want to be.

Update (19 Mar 2007): Hmm, nope. Recently Played playlist seems to be updating now, but the iScrobbler-to-last.fm bit seems to be ignoring my iPod-played podcasts. Bah.

Is it just me, or has iTunes been gradually losing podcast tuner functionality with respect to the iPod?

I'm seriously thinking of ditching it for Juice or something else. Recently, the podcasts were completely segregated from the rest of the audio files, stuck into a much harder-to-manage interface. Related to that, my main gripe at the moment is that I just can't seem to get my podcast listening behavior posted to last.fm. Maybe I'm weird, but I like to capture and publish that attention data from myself.

I listen to a lot of podcasts on the commute to and from work, which is part walking and part bus. In fact, I probably listened to about a dozen episodes of various serials yesterday — but none of them show up in my iPod's Recently Played smart playlist. So, subsequently, none made it to last.fm.

On the (increasingly rare) occasions I happened to listen to music on my iPod this week, those tracks showed up just fine. And while at my desk, in iTunes itself, I don't seem to have these issues. I seem to remember this working better in the past year or so. For what it's worth, my podcasts are auto-synced with iTunes, but the rest of my library is manually managed — because I don't want 20GB of music on my iPod duplicated on my laptop.

At one point, I remember that the "Last Played" criteria changed from just starting a podcast to completely playing it through. This made clean up of old podcasts nicer, such that partially-played episodes didn't get clobbered when I still intended to finish them. But lately, I've stopped podcasts before they finish, because many have lengthy themes at the end or runs of promos I've already heard during the day. So, there go the "Last Played" and "Play Count" fields.

But, I just tried manually fast-forwarding a few podcast episodes to the end on the iPod. I tried playing the last few seconds in an attempt to force the play count to trip. It seemed to work on the iPod itself - but when I reconnected to iTunes, no dice. The "Recently Played" playlist shows nothing new, and the episode itself reflects no play counts in iTunes. I'm either very confused, or things are getting more broken.

So, I thought, maybe I'll just rate the podcasts about which I want to publish my listening behavior. Kind of like giving a "digg". Seems hackish and not as effortless as simply capturing my behavior - but, nope, I can't rate podcasts on the iPod. There goes that idea, and another feature missing.

Ugh. So yeah, this is an semi-inarticulate rant about a problem whose issues and solution I don't quite yet have a handle on. It's just frustrating that I don't seem to be able to easily track my own podcast listening behavior with iTunes and the iPod the way I thought I used to be able to do.

Archived Comments

dschwarz
2007-03-09T22:29:17

As long as you're ranting about iTunes' podcast management problems, let me mention one of my pet peeves: I subscribe to a mix of time-sensitive podcasts (news programs) and other podcasts that are not time sensitive. If I don't listen to today's news podcast today, I'm not going to listen to it tomorrow. I would prefer to have my news programs 'expire' after a day or two and get removed from my iPod, while the non-time-sensitive podcasts stay on my iPod forever waiting for me to listen to them. Unfortunately, iTunes only allows you to set a global expiration policy for podcasts.

This is the single thing that is going to push me over the edge to try non-iTunes solutions for podcast management. If you find a good one, please blog about it.
Craig Maloney
2007-03-10T02:45:47

Damn, you must be waiting for the new Rush album with baited breath. :)
l.m.orchard
2007-03-10T03:12:26

"Damn, you must be waiting for the new Rush album with baited breath. :)"

Why, yes, yes I am. I guess I have had Rush on heavy rotation this week. :)
Pete Prodoehl
2007-03-10T03:44:25

I recently switch to trying to use iTunes for all podcast subscriptions, bit yeah, it's got some issues, yours seems far worse than mine though. I do remember reading that when you connect the iPod you need to do the Last.fm sync first before doing anything else, or it won't work. I feel like it's all very close to just falling over and not working at all sometimes...
g.
2007-03-10T04:03:36

Maybe you implied that with the mention of the other field names, but I needed to update my smart playlists with the "Skip Count" field in order to have the old behaviour I achieved with "Play Count" earlier. I also remember downgrading the iPod firmware from a friend a while ago, because with the latest Firmware the iPod forgot how to rate songs and dynamically make smart lists.
Mike
2007-03-10T13:04:56

Not sure I have a handle on this either, but it sounds more like an audio scrobbler rant than an iTunes rant to me. I think the point of preventing the fast-forward trick is to avoid gaming your last.fm counts.

My recollection is that when uploading from the iPod the recently played must have a time block sufficient to have listened to the whole track, while when you're listening in iTunes it uses some other metric - perhaps uploading when you've played half the track?
Len Lynch
2007-03-11T00:44:45

I see Mike's point, but it may not be all last.fm's fault either.

Do you have some additional gripes with the iTunes podcast behavior changes that you haven't voiced yet? I'm not seeing features in Juice that will help in this instance. I can't help with iSproggler, not a user. I use the iTunes Agent to manage syncs of smart playlists to non-iPod devices. So I'm no help on the iPod firmware issues either.

If there is more to your comment on switching to Juice than emotion: I did switch from iTunes to Juice about 6 months ago for most of my podcasts. I kept a couple of feeds behind so I could keep tabs on the changes in behavior. Since I'm not an iPod owner, I switched to get per feed archive management and preprocessing before import into iTunes. The default behavior of Juice is to import podcasts into the Music portion of the Library, not the Podcast portion. That may or may not be a feature for you. But most of this is likely no news to you.

You're not alone at feeling like there are changes going on behind the scenes in iTunes/iPod. Since we all know that Apple can/will change behavior regularly, and some of the behavior changes are subtle, we get spooked easier/more often?

OT: Over on the PlayListMag forums there are folks swearing that the changes in behavior for iTunes 7.1, in the CoverFlow viewing mode, that play-selection navigation is not consistent...

Emotion is good, use the energy...
John Manoogian III (jm3)
2007-03-27T05:49:40

i don't speak from experience, here, but would songbird help the podcast situation at all?
megalar
2007-03-31T13:50:39

I have had nothing but headaches from itunes, thats why i switched to juice for podcasts. It still doesn't do everything i want but it lacks all the other itunes related headaches so i think im coming out way ahead. b.t.w dude I love your blog. Started reading it a few months ago and i just cant get enough. keep up the great work. hasta.
thesvelteone
2007-04-20T15:24:31

Wow, are you me? I've been ranting about this exact thing and trying the same workarounds for months now, and stumbled across this blog entry whilst searching for a solution, or at least some proof that I wasn't alone in this universe.

I just people on last.fm to appreciate that I'm an intellectual, doncha know?

tso - listener to many, many Radio 4 podcasts.

Reading Lists, OPML, XOXO, Semantic Web, and Tools

2006-02-13T17:09:08+00:00

Listening to this podcast about OPML and Reading Lists and enjoying the various perspectives on RSS, OPML, and Semantic Web tech. It's also the first time I've heard Danny Ayers' voice, so that was pretty cool after having been a textual blog acquaintance for a few years now. As for the rest of the guys on the call, I'm not quite as familiar with all of them yet, but I'll be adding them to my Reading Lists shortly.

Apropos of this podcast, I've lately gotten a bit of a fresh take on the RSS/OPML versus XHTML versus Semantic Web tech merry-go-round. Here's the basic gist: Invest time into tools that solve problems first and formats that enable possibilities second, if you want to get any attention and subsequent help.

And then I say "tools", I don't mean a GraphViz construct that makes really cool charts for people willing to chase down and install the dependencies. No, I mean something like the OPML Editor. The OPML Editor comes in a single package, and you launch it from a single icon. The OPML Editor is a shitty piece of software that's nonetheless helping me achieve some practical goals that I've heretofore been vaguely stymied in reaching. The OPML Editor is making me think more favorably about OPML, despite OPML being a shitty format.

The utility of the OPML Editor is giving me the motivation to build filters and workarounds to transmute OPML into XOXO and RDF formats, but only when the need arises. I could also see putting an OPML-to-triples bridge in front of a semweb crawler or tool. And, there's no reason why outlines in the OPML Editor couldn't be rendered in XOXO and RDF formats by the tool itself, if there's something useful around to consume it.

On the other hand, I've done enough with RDF and XOXO to see the clear potential in both. With enough RDF data around, you can turn the whole wide web into a single massively networked database ripe for the querying thanks to a uniform data model and clear specs for representation of that model. With XOXO and microformats, you get a Sudoku-esque solution to providing both human and machine readable data in the same format and file, while sterring close to the inherent design principles of the web.

The problem with these formats, though, is that they open potential avenues but don't provide value until there's some foot traffic on the avenues. This is just establishing a world in which there can exist both chickens and eggs, but not doing much with respect to concrete instantiations of poultry. Now, to be fair, there have been efforts to make practical usage of RDF (see: MusicBrainz) and these are early days for microformats. But, I think a lot more effort needs to be given toward making useful, personally rewarding tools - and less effort given toward expressing awe toward the potentials given by formats and models. You can have both, but you've got to pick one to start with.

And, the reason you need to make tools first that use formats second is attention. (That's been a buzzword lately, hasn't it?) You need attention if you want adoption and help. And, you can get attention - and subsequent help - by scratching someone's itch.

Now, some people's itches are scratched by the fun of abstract symbol manipulation and the perception of elegance. Others' itches are scratched by getting work done, like writing or organizing thoughts or expanding awareness of more information sources. Personally, I've got itches of both of these varieties. The problem is that there are many fewer people with itches in that first category. And, no offense to anyone, that seems to be the bulk of the RDF and XOXO fanbase at the moment. For the second category, even if things are shitty, smoke a bit and catch on fire - as long as some work gets done at the end of the day, there's a lot of tolerance to go around and a lot of motivation to pitch in to improve the situation.

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that ATOM, RDF, and XHTML-based microformats trounce OPML, RSS, and the like in terms of clear definition, affordance in manipulation, and technical elegance. But, OPML and RSS are still winning in the world because the tools using these formats are scratching some damn annoying itches. And, though towers built atop shitty tools and formats seem Jenga-shaky, somehow they never quite come crashing down. Maybe they will come crashing down someday, but we seem to be getting work done in the meantime.

So, to wrap up: My take on this whole mess is that your format will gain adoption to the degree that the tools producing it help people get work done. I can't find tools today for RDF and XOXO that are as rewardingly useful as the OPML Editor has become. When that happens, the story may change.

Archived Comments

Edward Vielmetti
2006-02-14T02:32:49

There's a lot to be said for rough consensus and running code, and there's a lot more running code that speaks OPML than there is that speaks XOXO or RDF. You can just plain sit down and get work done and not have to entangle yourself in a microstandards battle. There's a certain appeal to that.
phil jones
2006-02-14T03:03:10

Same as it ever was :

http://www.laputan.org/gabriel/worse-is-better.html

(scroll down to section 2.1)
Phil Wilson
2006-02-21T20:39:35

I know they're very different things, but is there any particular part of the OPML Editor that doesn't exist, say, in something like NVU, or a stripped-down TinyMCE?

A Long-Tailed Creative Yawp

2006-02-09T20:17:09+00:00

(Note: This is a long one.)

Reading "The slow decline of the blockbuster" on Ars Technica reminds me that this Long Tail stuff is something on which I've been wanting to write something intelligent for a long time now. This might all just be techno-hippy michegas in the end, but I'm really excited about the possibility of living in a Long-Tailed age.

You see, if I were to pick a lifelong war cry and embroider it on my own personal flag, that cry would be "Follow Your Bliss!" And my bliss is found in the course of learning, in the act of creative work and making things, and in the continual effort of self-refinement as creativity recursively applied.

Now, the thing about bliss is that it's not just some hedonistic easy road paved with whipped cream. Bliss is a hard thing to follow—you've got to keep your eyes on it, and there's quite often a lot of pain involved. But, I believe that following bliss is the only way to get real, honest, unbounded joy out of life that builds in unfailing increment.

What does my bliss have to do with the Long Tail? Well, you see, it's easier to be creative and live creatively in the midst of a culture that is itself steeped in creativity—and I think that a Long-Tailed culture is the best bet for it. I see a Long Tail as the hallmark of a living artisan culture, as opposed to the slow death of a consumer culture that'll just leave us all fat and useless.

Why do we even have a culture that enshrines such a poisonous unidirectional flow of product to consumer? Scarcity. Mass production makes it cheap to make lots of the same thing—yet, the means of that production has historically been very expensive to acquire.

Thus, assembly lines are scarce. The same has goes for transmission towers, radio frequencies, movie theaters, and recording studios. As a perverse consequence, we've all just gotten used to the idea that almost no one is cut out to make much at all and common creativity is relegated to head-patted cottage niches who make their own soap.

What I think the growing Long Tail will tell us, though, is that for many areas of creative concern, scarcity in the means of production is evaporating. Many products of creativity—i.e. sound, video, and text—can be composed on a cheap computer and duplicated with negligible cost on the web. In fact, as things like BitTorrent take off, distribution costs actually fall with popularity and scale. (Just think, what if distribution costs can fall below zero? I'm not just talking money here.)

I've got a lot of hope in what I see happening with blogging, podcasting, and other such network-driven channels for creativity. I also have a lot of hope for the generations of kids not only growing up with computers, but also with Netflix, GarageBand, MySpace, LiveJournal, YouTube, and even YTMND. You can scoff at them all you like, but some of that stuff's got a little bit of genius in it.

We've got this entertainment industry with an ultra-rich royalty caste of supposedly super-creative celebrities, but it's all driven by the scarcity that technology is eroding away. Sure, you can find some really, truly brilliant people up there—but I'm willing to bet there are armies of people down here who just haven't gotten in the right place at the right time or who've abandoned creativity because they had no viable outlet.

So, imagine a more distributed entertainment universe populated by more creative people—with fewer big productions and even fewer gazillionaires. Creativity, attention, and time become the only significant scarcities.

Imagine more people just entertaining each other and goading each other on. Imagine making a decent living doing creative stuff you love, based on the moral and monetary contributions of intimate audiences filled with co-creators—who, while perhaps not quite friends are at least befriendable. No one gets so rich bankwise—they get by just fine, mind you—but everyone lives in a lot more bliss.

This is not unlike Orson Scott Card's description of The Crystal City in his Alvin Maker series.

I want to see a culture where restrictions on remix are given the same odd looks as powdered wigs. I want to see, as an entrenched tradition, future creative adults route around the network damage of old proprietary industries steeped in scarcity and control. After all, "the only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized."

We'll still need professional editors and crews for the really good stuff—but that's creative work too. The same goes for everyone else who plays an honest role in getting visions realized—this isn't all just about the entertainment industry. Honestly, I see the entrenchment of universal creativity as one of the few ways the United States can cope with increasingly global markets—we've got a bit of a head start in some areas, if we take it. Digging in heels and protecting aging ways of business that have long since ridden out their respective initial creative Big Bangs just won't cut it.

I want to see the 10% left over from 90% of everyone's crud inevitably exceed the total output of today's entertainment industry and spill into other industries. I want to see a new industry spring up whose sole purpose is to sift through chaff and cultivate the naturally emergent creative best. And I want to see that industry as a distributed service (versus control) industry there to help what's already happening through the application of both machine and human intelligence to homestead the noosphere.

...(deep breath)...

So anyway, that's the sort of stuff that gets me really excited lately. And, in excitement, I'm handwaving away a lot of stuff. But, I think there's something to all of this breathlessness that just might have something to do with my own bliss at the end of the day.

Archived Comments

Matt Brubeck
2006-02-09T23:19:13

"Why do we even have a culture that enshrines such a poisonous unidirectional flow of product to consumer? Scarcity."

My friend Patri wrote an interesting piece that gives a different answer to this question: "Our personal worlds are vastly larger than at any previous time in human history. Our population is much higher, and we are exposed to the best of the best of this huge pool of talent. This can be hard on one’s self-esteem."

"Honestly, I see the entrenchment of universal creativity as one of the few ways the United States can cope with increasingly global markets—we’ve got a bit of a head start in some areas, if we take it."

In other words, there are only four things we do better than anyone else. :-)
Aristotle Pagaltzis
2006-02-18T15:15:43

Reminds me of the comment I left on Spencer Critchley’s analysis of How Digital Production & Distribution Are Making Things Worse For Musicians, Not Better. I responded that artists should sell merch, not music:

Comic artists on the ’net have been giving away their art for years, make a living instead by selling merchandise. It works for them, and the ones I know of who made their comic their fulltime job, managed the leap when their fan base hit several thousand regular readers. This sounds like an easy goal for decent musicians who play out.

If that model works out, we will probably revert to something more like the pre-MTV days, with many local acts of moderate fame and significantly fewer artists of nationwide/international fame; in a generally much more heterogenous landscape. And now that I’m thinking about this, the more I ponder it, the more attractive it seems in many ways – it could be a renaissance for music.

Funny how I arrived at roughly the same vision as you by coming at it from a completely different angle, no?

Podcasts I like lately

2006-01-25T16:21:34+00:00

While being crazy busy, I've been thoroughly enjoying these podcasts:

Ancestor by Scott Sigler.

"On a remote island in Lake Superior, scientists struggle to solve the problem of xenotransplantation -- using animal tissue to replace failing human organs. By getting back to the root of our creation, biotech firm Genada hopes to create an animal with human internal organs. Genada's collective genius gives birth to a fast-growing evil that nature eradicated 250 million years ago -- an evil now on the loose, and very, very hungry..."

I've written about Ancestor before, and I can't believe it's already over. It's been a great ride, and if you haven't been listening, subscribe and catch up. Scott's really continued to raise the bar on himself from EarthCore through to the end of Ancestor, and he's got a third tale coming in March.
I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty.

"A podcast by a wanna-be writer for wanna-be writers. Let my stack of rejection letters and battle scars benefit you."

Oh yeah, I should be writing.
Voices of Tomorrow

"The Official Podcast of www.365tomorrows.com"

These are the sorts of stories I want to write soon. The Bitter Kiss of the Ronin's Cup is this blog's patron story. Well, if there can be such a thing.
Brave Men Run by Matthew Wayne Selznick.

"What If John Hughes Wrote Comic Books? 'Brave Men Run' is the story of Nate Charters. Born different, unsure of his origins, he's an outcast at Abbeque Valley High School, a self-proclaimed "boy freak" with few friends and low self-esteem."

This really is like X-Men crossed with Pretty in Pink—and it works for me. I got the e-book, but I just can't bring myself to read it and spoil the rest of the reading.
The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd by Grant Baciocco & Doug Price.

"If Jay Ward, creator of Rocky & Bullwinkle, had created Mystery Science Theater 3000 mixed in a little Time Bandits and gave it an educational spin, the result would have been..."

Short, tight, fast paced, and incredible punny radio adventures of time travelling absentminded scientists. They're back from an end-of-year hiatus and going super strong. In particular, check out the fight scene (to the end!) in the middle of Episode #402—and wear headphones.

"Combo attack! Body blow! Body blow! Boot to the head! Trip!"

Archived Comments

Scott Sigler
2006-01-27T21:54:59

Dude, thanks for the praise! I'm so glad you enjoyed Ancestor.

-Scott-
l.m.orchard
2006-01-28T02:18:45

Scott: You've definitely earned the praise, man!
Dr. Steve
2006-02-21T18:42:38

Hello!

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for directing your readers to The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd. Even though you obviously forgot to mention it, I am sure you are telling people to listen because of My performances in each episode. Though, that's just one of those "given" things. 'Humans Need Air To Live' and 'Dr. Steve Is Always Great!'

Anyway, keep listening and stay rotten!

Yours,

Dr. Steve Evil Mastermind

P.S. Fidgert says, "Hello!"
Matthew Wayne Selznick
2006-03-08T20:11:04

I just discovered your mention of my book, "Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era." Thanks very much! Now that the podcast is over, I hope you'll contribute to the "Q&A" episode next week!

Many thanks,

Matthew Wayne Selznick

Look mom, I'm on the podcast!

2006-01-07T16:24:02+00:00

I just caught a brief mention of Hacking RSS and Atom on Show #45 of the Mike Tech Show.

Thanks for the plug, Mike! I hope you enjoy the book!

Could an iPod and AV cable fit in a DVD case?

2005-10-21T18:05:54+00:00

Being able to listen to audio while in the “natural” places you listen to audio (in the car, while walking/running, on the couch, etc.) is what accelerated audio Podcasts to the phenomenon it is today. Now that there is a way to view video the same way ... that’s going to accelerate that new type of user generated content as well. I’m positive. It’s a no brainer.

Source: Russell Beattie Notebook » My New iPod: Video Podcasting Is Going to Be BIG

I've been gradually easing into subscribing to vidcast feeds, starting to find some early greats out there like RocketBoom, Command-N, and OpenAlpha. I've also started hacking together feeds for great online video shows which lack feeds. And then, there's the occasional private hack I've done to record shows with a capture card or help catch up on TV shows I find on Usenet.

To watch all of these things in the living room, I use Xbox Media Center on my modded Xbox, networked to a file server in the basement. However, there are probably very few other people on the planet who'd bother setting up a rig like mine. So the combination of iTunes loading feed-delivered video enclosures onto an iPod equipped with an AV cable and a remote sounds like a genius combination for really jump starting the next phase of the vidcasting rise.

Archived Comments

Pete Prodoehl
2005-10-21T19:27:21

I really wish I had a enough spare parts of bucks lying around to build a MythTV box, because I could create quite a freaking videoblog aggregating machine out of it, and view it all on the big screen TV... Someday... Someday...
l.m.orchard
2005-10-21T20:29:08

Pete, well, I'm not doing all that bad with just an NSLU2, a 160 GB drive, and an Xbox. :)
Seth Mason
2005-10-21T20:59:13

Thanks for the tip about Xbox Media Center. I'll have to check that out.

How did you mod your Xbox? Or did I miss a post about it?
l.m.orchard
2005-10-22T01:43:09

Seth: Oh, I just went over to ModChipMan.com and picked up a Xecuter 2.6 and soldered it in myself. I upgraded the internal HD with one from a junker PC. Very cool to dump all my games onto the drive and leave them squirreled away in their cases. And then there's all the homebrew stuff like XBMC...
Seth Mason
2005-10-23T03:59:13

Thanks for the lowdown.
Steph_B
2005-10-25T18:48:47

I wanna thanks for the tip about Xbox Media Center too. It's very useful information for me because I'm going to create videoblog instead of my homepage.

Time-release Syndication

2005-10-21T03:45:54+00:00

Want to read Cory Doctorow’s new book, Someone comes to Town, Someone leaves Town, via RSS?

This chicklet will let you do just that…doesn’t matter when you first subscribe, this feed will deliver the book to your feed reader in the right order, a couple of chapters a day, over the next month. You could even subscribe via WINKsite and get it all on your mobile phone…

Source: Surfarama » RSS for serialized content

I've been toying around with a few ideas for something like this for a few years, but have never bothered to finish any of them. Russell Beattie had an interesting implementation of this too.

But, just in case I never actually do anything with this notion, here's a free idea—I wonder how many aggregators actually obey a 301 Moved Permanently HTTP status code?

Simon Willison wrote about this notion: A reader subscribes using a clean and simple feed URL, but the aggregator receives a 301 redirect upon the first GET. This redirect shifts the subscription over to a new feed URL with a unique ID for the reader, thereby uniquely tagging every new subscription to the feed. The aggregator should then continue to use this tagged URL for all future requests.

However, tagging a subscriber with an RSS radio collar implies that you'll have a database on the server maintaining notes tied to those IDs. That might be cool if I'm trying to gather some metrics, but for simple time-release syndication I don't really care about tracking a person. I want to track a start time.

What if this post-redirect feed URL had the time of initial redirect in it, and the time release was just a function of the duration since that initial redirect? Anonymous and no need for a database. My notion is that I'll just need a PHP script and a fully-formed "master feed" on which the time-release feed will be a time-bounded "viewport" informed by a little date math.

Or, maybe I'll have a pile of pre-prepared content in a folder and munge that into a feed. Imagine a podcast like Scott Sigler's Ancestor, all queued up and ready on the server, but doled out automatically on a weekly basis from the beginning from the point you subscribed. I'll leave as exercises for the reader issues of "obfuscating" URLs so that people can't easily skip ahead through the story.

Archived Comments

kellan
2005-10-21T04:16:34

My favorite example of this is Matt Webb's service which offers RSS feed of your personal light cone
Martin Atkins
2005-10-21T07:06:00

This scheme falls down in two ways. Firstly, people have a tendency to share URLs, and when they do they tend to just take whatever's in their user-agent (your timestamped URL) rather than your pretty entry point URL that lives only on some HTML page somewhere.

Secondly, lots of people use "shared aggregators", which reduces load on your server but requires that everyone is seeing the same content.

It's a nice idea, though. Its a shame that syndication tech ended up making it so tricky.
l.m.orchard
2005-10-21T10:54:22

@Kellan: Heh, I thought that one was kinda silly, but neat... It's in my subscription list.

@Martin: D'oh, that's right. Even podcasts are being heard via shared aggregators now like Odeo.
Pete Prodoehl
2005-10-21T17:14:17

Delta Park Project is a podcast that provides you with your own RSS feed url. I'm not exactly sure what they do with it, but for now I trust them not to do any evil.

Spaceship Radio is nifty

2005-10-20T21:09:43+00:00

Remember when I wrote that I wanted to do a podcast of old time radio scifi? Well, I've been beaten to the punch by Andy Doan of Spaceship Radio.

Hooray—he's doing a briliant job, so I don't have to! Now, if I can just find the spare time, I might work on some story idea submissions for the original content he's looking for...

Threshold, the sci-fi with 5 blades?

2005-10-07T02:50:44+00:00

I'm starting to get into CBS' Threshold tonight, having gotten 4 episodes of it. Seems like network TV goes through sci-fi cycles, and this must be the latest. This particular show looks like it might shape up to be combination sci-fi slasher and forensic drama. But, still, I find myself comparing it to a podcast.

Also, what's up with "triple-helix DNA"? Is this a concept that's popped up somewhere—other than being an early guess at our own DNA's structure—like, on UFO conspiracy boards and whatnot? Or is it just double-helix-plus-one so as to be extra spooky alien? (Kinda like a 5-bladed razor?)

Double helix DNA, I think I understand: It's very convenient in copying. Unzip it, dunk it in a soup of free-floating spare parts, agitate, and you end up with two self-assembled copies. But how the hell would a triple-helix work?

On the upside, I do really like the Blit-like concept involved in the "bioforming sound signal" which mentally and genetically alters those who hear it.

Yeah, I think about this crap too much sometimes. Whenever I get around to writing the stories I keep meaning to write, I want to avoid these things.

Archived Comments

Bob Aman
2005-10-07T16:55:05

In a particularly bad episode of "Walker: Texas Ranger", Chuck Norris had to do battle to the death with a genetically-enhanced thug who had triple-helix DNA. He was all bullet-proof and big and stuff, so Chuck tossed him out a window into like a pile of welding tanks and then he blew him up! Or something like that. I wasn't paying attention.

Then Walker went back to kicking normal unenhanced thugs in the head like usual.
l.m.orchard
2005-10-07T17:22:25

That almost sounds like Walker had Real Ultimate Power, though last I knew, he wasn't a Ninja.