Yes, I may be grumpy. No I did not get an iPod for Christmas. Despite this extreme hinderance, I have sampled a few more, and am still feeling a yawn reflex or hearing the strumming of lowdown 12-bar blues.

I was thinking of the old (and still alive) Movie-A-Minute site:

Let’s face it. There’s a lot of movies out there and very little time to watch them in. Well sit back and relax, because your troubles are solved! We here at Movie-A-Minute have come up with a solution. We’ve taken several classic and contemporary movies and extracted the important stuff, cutting out all the filler. (You’d be surprised how much filler there is sometimes.) With our ultra-condensed versions of your favorite films, you can experience whole movies in just one minute! As an added bonus, Movie-A-Minute protects against torture by bad movies — if you don’t have to sit through them, well, you don’t have to sit through them.

For example, one of my favorite movies as a kid, the Bridge On The River Kwai is condensed down to:

Sessue Hayakawa
Build a bridge.

Alec Guinness
Only if you ask nicely.

(Alec Guinness helps the BRITISH by building a BRIDGE for the JAPANESE.)

Alec Guinness
What have I done?

(Everything blows UP, and everyone DIES.)

James Donald
Madness madness madness.

(War is bad.)

THE END

So what happens if you pour a podcast into the kettle or put it outside in the Arizona summer sun, and let all of the fluff evaporate, what do you condense out?

Over at Contentious, Amy Gahran is exploring podcasts (I take a potshot here, but I read and respect her ideas and thorough writing), in her first 2 Mb podcast, we glean:

Amy is learning to use audio tools.
Amy does not like the word “podcast.”

THE END

Or over at Xplanazine, the Flash audiop from Rob Reynolds speaks on “Ignoring Something Beautiful for Something New”:

As a kid Rob had an expensive dud of a train.
Teachers should focus on content, not shiny technology

THE END

C’mon and play! Listen to a ppodcast, and see if you can boil it down to something less than 100 characters of summary.

I hope it is obvious I am having some fun here, not picking on people and their technology. Or maybe I am very sour at being among the 4% of the population who lacks an iPod… Yup, that is the case.

The post "Essence of Podcasts" was originally cracked open and scrambled from a rotten egg at CogDogBlog (http://cogdogblog.com/2005/01/essence-of/) on January 5, 2005.

5 Comments

  • Steve Dembo teach42.com

    Ok, first of all, don’t listen to my podcast. It’s full of drivel, rambling, and has about 1 minute of content for every 5 minutes of blathering. It still blows me away that anyone subscribes and listens to me drone on. Aside from that though, methinks that either A) you’re listening to the wrong podcasts, or B) you don’t listen to the radio, watch TV or go to the movies too often :) Most of what hits the screen or the airwaves right now couldn’t pass your ‘test’. The way I figure it, the podcasts I listen to are far more in tune with my interests than what I hear on the radio and most of what I see on the TV. And that’s part of the beautfy of the podcast. I like having something to listen to while I drive home, while I walk the dog, and while I go jogging. And I’d rather be listening to an educator or a geek who I have something in common with, than some schmoe that got a radio station to fund his show. Anyway, I go into a much longer rant on my blog, but this is the boiled down version :)

    Oh, and for the record. Podcasting is a horrible name. Using an iPod to listen to podcasts is like using an flame thrower to light a candle. Voice is so small that those cheapo 64mb MP3 players are plenty for listening to podcasts. Unfortunately, I think the name has stuck.

  • Yes, more well deserved slaps today!

    I must start writing with more smilies/winkies as some of this is not to be taken seriously. Of course there will be great, lousy, and in the middle podcasts. And no one, least of all me, who lacks a pod of any sort, can be an all powerful critic.

    And correct- I have sampled just a few, but I lack the time and the place (like a long commute or drifting to sleep in a hammock) to listen to these. I can see them filling a sort of niche as personalized radio shows, and certainly it can be another long tail phenomena where a small numer of listeners support a large number of interests.

    So I was wrong to imply that all media should be condensed to its essence, and the Movies in A Minute site should never be taken seriously. For the record, I enjoy NPR radio on the way top work, or letting the 6 disc CD changer slide through my horrid collection of 60s rock music, and I dig being at the movies. I pick time and place for these. I use my walking / exercising time to do some offline thinking. Perhaps if I actually keep up my pledge to be running daily, I may change my tune.

    I am hoping, buit not really seeing (well perhaps someone is podcasting it) more about the consideration of who to use this as a different media form. The Xplana site is merely an audio version of the blog- actually a great service for accessibility. But again, audio “casts” are mushc different forms of information than blogs- being:

    * linear

    * not easily skimmed

    * you cannot directly link to say, the content from 3:40 to 4:28 of a stream

    But also, look at the skills, tools, and time it takes for production of audio- yes, Audacity, and other tools make it easier, but it is still quite an ambitious undertaking, and not nearly as lowered a threshold as blogs made for what was once complex web publishing.

    So to state for the record:

    * I am intrigued by the podcast -> rss technology

    * I support and am eager to see how personalized audio develops just as personailzed web publishing has blossomed (blogs) or personalize photo syndication (flickr)

    * I agree that podcasting is a poor name, but am not going to lose any sleep or hair over it

    * I stil lack an iPod

    * I will likely (but never say never) not engage in any podcasting

    And finally, I do not have an iPod ;-)

    thanks for bothering to comment…

  • Steve Dembo teach42.com

    What is it about me that can’t just leave blame well alone? I must retort!

    Podcasting is as complicated as web publishing used to be :) Blogging made it WAY easier, and there will definitely be better tools for it. So far as I know, there is no actual software designed for recording podcasts yet, everything is basically creative workarounds. Actually, since I’m a lazy sonuvagun who hates complicated processes, I’ve got it down to starting two apps, a live recording and then an upload. Dat’s it! I’ll blog about the process to avoid redundancy, but my process is essentially idiot proof. Unfortunately, that does mean that I don’t edit out things like email chimes if I forget to quit Entourage and school bells. But I sacrifice a bit of audio quality in order to maintain the stamina needed to continue doing shows.

    The reality is, right now podcasting is dominated by the early adopters, the geeks who are always looking for the next big thing. But it’s only going to get more mainstream and easier. I can’t wait to see when an 8th grader has the choice of typing a journal, publishing a weblog, or producing a daily podcast. When foreign language teachers have a podcast to provide an audio supplement to the nightly homework. When schools that can’t afford a radio antennae have amateur podcasters clubs where students create their own radio broadcasts complete with interviews, music (creative commons) and even local commercials :)

    And I’m glad you didn’t say never, because I get the feeling a Cogdogblog podcast would be… well, interesting to say the least :)

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  • Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom weblogg-ed.com/2005/01/06#a3007

    Podcast (Kind of…) #3

    So having said last week that I was pretty much done with the podcasting stuff , here I am, back with what I guess is Podcast #3.
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