Wired geekipedia 2007 on podcasting.

Just like fighting the law and the law won, this paragraph sums up the state of podcasting right now as seen from the outside.

How so?

iTunes logo for the visual representation of podcasting. Podcasting is now synonymous with Apple to those outside our industry. Which is a testament to the good work done by the Apple team.

Too bad Microsoft didn't show up earlier. They can still help but it's pretty late in the game.

The Microsoft goal should be to have next year's paragraph focus on their success from promoting indie podcasters that do have high production values, content and talent. It would be great to see an MS podcasting logo along side too. Make that goal number two. Good luck Zune team.

Personally, I will keep cranking out shows . . .

And so will my people.

Show: #334
Length: 34:16
Size: 23.5mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris February 02, 2007

Why, you ask? It turns out that Media Center won't accept a feed from a device that isn't spitting out it's source from a controller box of some type or antennae. Like the ones used for cable, satellite or a direct from the sky. Forget your auxiliary input for a gaming console.

After a couple of hours and a null progress report I picked up the keys and went over to Tiger Direct and picked up an AVerTV Cardbus E501 for my laptop . . . initially I was thinking PCI card but something that was portable would be cooler.

This is what I get for trying to be cool.

Two hours after arriving home with the card and following the installation directions to the letter, uninstalling the drivers (just like the directions say), rebooting, downloading new drivers, installing new drivers, rebooting, installing capture software, rebooting, opening software for this error "The TV capture device drivers are installed incorrectly" . . . WTF, again? See, my laptop is also running XP Media Center Edition.

You get the idea. From the pic above I am sure that you can see that I got the card working but here's what it took:

1. 1) Searching for AVerTV Cardbus and finding out that it won't work with Media Center and their is a special card for this, not mine
2. 2) Doing the uninstall, reboot, reinstall thing a couple more times
3. 3) I try the last thing that might work, install the drivers for the AVerTV Cardbus MCE
4. 4) It worked

The Media Player 11 beta was released to the public, myself included, a couple of months ago. There has been not chatter or discussion over a glaring omission from the functionality of MP11 . . . no RSS support! Which means no podcast support or Microsoft podcast directory.

Maybe this is part of some super secret plan for the full release to include support for RSS and a bang up podcast directory. Whatever the reason for not including RSS, podcasts and a podcast directory into MP11 beta is beyond me.

Free non-DRM content both audio and video is waiting to be plucked from the internet by a new audience. An audience that is afraid of iTunes and less tech saavy than a user of Odeo, Melodeo or Juice is a fresh market, an eager market. Not to mention the boost that it would give to podcasters and the DIY media movement. Guess that isn't in the interest of Microsoft.

That is the part that confuses me most. You see, Internet Explorer 7 beta supports RSS with a brilliant XSL stylesheet to display the feeds. To boot, it recognizes the enclosure tag and creates a link for the media. The new MS Office beta supports RSS also. And every thirty minutes I get a hit on two of my RSS feeds from an agent that identifies itself as "Microsoft Research" and believe it or not the IP resolves to Microsoft.

So what gives? No clue.

I hope they have something big up their sleeves. They have an opportunity to blow podcasting and DIY media wide open and bring that content to new audiences. With this beta they have failed and let us all down. I say this not only as a content producer but a user. I really wanted to like MP11

Oh yeah, before I forget, MP11 has a great new addition to it's system scanning for media . . . it aggregates all non-DRM content from your iTunes library. So it is sort of like podcasting support, you just need to use iTunes first.

It was great to shoot the shit (not typically used in naper culture) with other blog and podcast nerds. Unfortunately, this time we didn't get to see two ladies making out near a bagel shop but we did talk RSS, Apple, FeedBurner, Microsoft's impending domination over podcasting when they add RSS and enclosures to WMP and blogging for law. Exciting, right?

Show: #110
Length: 31:46
Format: mp3
Bit rate: 64 kbs
Size: 14.5 mb

Croncast - Betsy and her husband Kris Ep. 69

Today's show goes out to my brother who turned 28. Happy Birthday Kyle!

And for those of who don't think that I could make your ears bleed, I will succeed with my singing of Happy Birthday.

Betsy answered her emails for Croncast and gives shout outs to some of the folks who have sent mail to her this week. Betsy also answers the life long question, "When else can you throw a ball at the head of your enemy?"

Kris rips into Bill Gates over the Microsoft campaign to outsource more jobs. Stop saying that the people don't have the skills here in the states and simply admit the fact that it is economic. My solution is for Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, Novell and any other tech company to open their own schools here in the states to teach people to fill these positions. Why shouldn't they? Cherry pick them at at early age and bring them up, open training online or face2face for people who can fill the other positions.

I'm just sick of this shit where these companies use this pretext that there are no people in this country to fill these jobs, bullshit. Quit lying and tell the truth.

On other notes we talk about our forefathers fighting for the suburbs, Anna Nicole Smith water fountains, Kris got pulled over again and got out of the ticket, and and and . . . .

Betsy is launching a contest:

1) Send an email to betsy@croncast.com with the word "Contest" in the subject line
2) Write a couple sentence bio about yourself
3) Betsy will print out all names and put them in a cookie jar
4) She will pick one name
5) Grand Prize - Betsy will be your personal Goodwill shopper. She will interpret your bio and buy you an appropriate gift for Goodwill value up to $9.99 (You could end up with a waterbed or car at that price) and ship it to your home or business.

">