Prairie Garden Trust Podcast

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Tin CansMy friend Henry Domke has produced and posted the first Prairie Garden Trust Podcast. Friends and supporters of PGT can now get regular updates via podcast. While I’m not exactly an “outdoorsy” guy, I’m stoked about Henry using this new technology. He invested a couple of hundred bucks in a podcast starter set (mics, mixer, headphones, etc) and is using GarageBand3 (MacBook) to produce. In a matter of hours, he had his first show online, ready for subscribers. His first show has a couple of rough edges but he’ll smooth those out as he goes.

In The Old Days, he might have tried to find a radio station that would give him (sell him?) some time on a Sunday morning. Today, he’s global. Anybody, anytime, anywhere. If they care about his topic, they can listen. Still another example of The Long Tail at work. No topic is too obscure. If one person cares enough to produce the show … and one cares enough to listen, the costs of production and distribution are so close to zero, there is no barrier to getting started.

Record Skype calls. Easy.

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Call RecorderCall Recorder from ecamm network provides a really simple, inexpensive ($13) way to record a Skype call. For Mac users. David and I chatted for 2 minutes last night so I could check this out. I was using an inexpensive LogiTech headset/mic and I’m not sure what David was using. He sounded a little hotter than I did and Call Recorder does not give you a way to monitor levels (that I saw). But this is literally a one-button plug-in for Skype.

The resulting audio file is a Quicktime .mov file. Call Recorder comes with a few conversion tools that turns your call into an MP3 file. And one of the tools converts to two channels so you can work with either end of the call. For price and ease-of-use, I don’t know how it can get much better.

The quality will only be as good as your connection and your mics. But I think this sounds a lot better than anything you’d get with a regular phone call. And I think I can tweak this for better results. I’ve got a couple of interviews coming up that will give me a better test drive. And, as I told David, I’m sure that are Windows apps that will do this as well or better.

KATG: Please watch this trailer

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Keith and the Girl fans received an email today, touting a new movie coming out in a couple of weeks. Crank stars Jason Statham (Snatch, The Transporter, The Italian Job) and opens September 1st. The email pointed me to the trailer:

“It’s a cool ad, and it brings KATG a little scratch whenever it’s viewed. So take a look-see and pass it to your friends. And then get back to work! How are we gonna survive as a society if everyone’s watching movie promos all day?!”

I really like Statham so I was glad to know about the movie. And I’m even more inclined to watch the trailer (and tell others) because it helps KATG… and I’m a fan. Do you see how this is different than just running the ad on one of the TV networks? Would love to know how much KATG got for this. Hope it was a lot.

Problems for XM and Sirius?

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WSJ: “Many people are simply having iPod adapters installed in their cars and skipping satellite altogether, a concept that was barely on the horizon when the industry was young.”

Not sure how big a problem this is. But I’m one of those folks spending more time with the pod and less listening to satellite radio. If I had to renew today… I would. A year from now…?

Car stereo with USB port

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Eric Benderoff (Tech.Buzz/Chicago Tribune.com) loves his JVC KD-G720 car stereo, an aftermarket item into which he can plug (via USB port) an iPod, or a thumb drive filled with MP3 files. The songs play through the car stereo, and he can control the volume and song selection directly through the unit, not the iPod. When his iPod is plugged in, the car stereo charges the music player as it plays. And the song information scrolls across the stereo’s screen, telling him the artist, song name and album title. The thing can also receive satellite radio from XM or Sirius, spin CDs (in WMA and MP3 formats) And play terrestrial radio stations. All for about $200, not including installation.

JVC USB Stereo

This just makes so much more sense than some proprietary, factory-installed hardware. I might have to get me one of these. Yum. [via RAIN]

Skype from Norway

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I just spent half an hour chatting with Chuck Zimmerman who is in Oslo, Norway covering the annual meeting of the International Federation of Agriculture Journalists. More on that in a moment…

The purpose of the call was to play with Skype (and teach Chuck the correct pronunciation of fjord). Chuck’s had a Skype account for a while but –like me– really didn’t know a lot of folks using the service. I’m guessing a half-hour telco call would cost a few bucks, but the Skype-to-Skype call was free. And the quality was damned good. I’m not gonna post on this again until I can include some sample audio.

One final observation on Chuck’s coverage of the IFAJ conference. Of the approximately 200 journalist attending, Chuck guesses 95% are print and the rest are PR folks and a few radio types.

I’m guessing most of the attendees are there to drink beer, eat cheese and have a good time. Which, I assume, Chuck is doing, too. But not one of them is blogging the event. Chuck is doing it because the folks at Pioneer are paying him but, still…

Anyway, Skype was slicker than snot and I promise to get you a sample for those that haven’t played with this amazing service.

War on Terrorism

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John Seery (at The Huffington Post) thinks George Bush has lost the war on terrorism:

“Let’s face it: Osama bin Laden, holed up in his cave somewhere, must be laughing at us. He’s calling the shots, and he really doesn’t have to lift a finger. Why? George Bush is doing his bidding. His administration has suspended many civil liberties and deftly defied the U.S. Constitution. Junked the Geneva Convention. Tortured prisoners. Oversaw criminal acts at Abu Ghraib. Ignored due process at Guantanamo. Engaged in domestic spying without court supervision. Flushed billions down the toilet in Iraq. Weakened our military readiness. Set much of the world against us. The Middle East is now ablaze in terrorism. At home, we live constantly in “elevated fear” levels (whether color coded or not). Our internal politics have become poisonously divided, not united. Osama bin Laden is playing George Bush like a cheap fiddle.”

For some reason, Seery’s post reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 (Amazon notes):

“Oceania is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant “correction” of such records. “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

Update: Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche – “Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.” [MSNBC]

Is your “stuff” good enough to pay for?

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“Alltel Wireless customers will be able to access XM Satellite Radio programming via their cell phones for $7.99 per month. The deal links the fifth-largest mobile service provider in the United States with the world’s largest satellite radio company. Like its competitors, Alltel is facing the imminent prospect of market saturation, so the company is seeking high-value content to gain additional revenue from its customer base.”

Seems to me you’d have to be a big fan of XM to pay an extra eight bucks a month to listen on your cell phone. And wouldn’t that be hell on the battery? But the more interesting question (for me) is: Do you have the kind of content that someone would be willing to pay for?

As businesses figure out that they can –if they’re clever enough– take their message directly to their customers, they’ll stop paying to have their messages jammed down people’s throats. We are approaching a time when the only reason people will listen to an (unwanted) commercial message is because they can’t figure out a way to avoid doing so. If you want to talk to your customers, you better start listening to them.

If you don’t know how to do that, you’re in trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.

Niche audiences

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“While Rocketboom reaches a mass audience, Baron sees his next opportunity in niches. As an example, he suggests a program to target “high-end tennis players.” It would be natural for Wilson Sporting Goods to advertise tennis racquets and “Viewers might actually be interested in the commercials,” Baron said. He believes that while only 10,000 people might watch, it’s so cheap to do Internet video that such programming is economically feasible.”

— Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron on possible sponsorship opportunities