Adam Curry Likes Himself, What a Shocker
No way! You mean to tell me that Adam Curry, former MTV VJ and one of the pioneers of Podcasting, was busting editing the Wikipedia entry on Podcasting to make himself look more important?! I know, I can’t believe it either! I think the real question here is: Why does anyone give a crap?! In fact, if there is a “side” to choose, I’m with Curry. Let me explain.
So you make a encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Very hippie, very peace and love, very cool…and also very dumb if you can honestly tell me that you never thought this would happen. Of course this is going to happen! This isn’t the first time, this won’t be the last time, and in fact, its probably happening right now. People are going to want to get themselves in the world-renowned Wikipedia, what a shocker, and if they are already in it, people will want to get a bigger piece of the pie. I thought this was known, I thought this was assumed, but for some reason, someone busted Curry editing the Podcast article a few times and now people are whining and making lame titled blog posts about it.
Isn’t the great Wikipedia able to handle this? What do you do if someone changes the Chicago Cubs page to read nothing but: “The Cubs suck!” (Well thats a bad example, being thats actually true and all.) ? You catch it and change it. That system goes on all the time everyday, and no one hears about it. This is no different. If the system is as great as everyone keeps telling everyone else, this should be a non-issue, a mere blip, nothing. Fix it, add Curry’s name to the list of millions of people that like themselves and go have a Coke.
So the guy tried to change a post. So what? I say good for Adam! He rolled the dice a few times and edited an article that pertained to him. If he did it and most people agreed with the changes, then they stay and until someone deletes that post and replaces with a picture of a girl with her top off get seems bigger and everything is fine. If no one likes his edits, then the big Wikipedia gods change it back and everyone goes on with our lives. Thats the way Wikipedia works: People change things, everyone discusses, actions are taken or not. You can almost here the Lion King soundtrack start to amp up…”Its the circle of life!!!” Curry rolled the dice and this time it came up craps. Oh well. Who cares. Let move on and let the Wikipedia guys worry about the kid in Tulsa that keeps editing things so that he co-stars in all of Hillary Duff’s movies.
What’s your Podcast subscription list?
Before iTunes 4.9 added podcasting support I didn’t listen to all that much content. It was too difficult and scattered to keep track of the podcasts, and I only found the ones that were mentioned on some random blog. I followed the TWiT Cast and that was it. With iTunes though, my list of shows has grown substantially. At the moment I’m following Diggnation, Engadget, Gillmore Gang, The MacCast, MAKE, Battlestar Galactica, NPR Science Friday, Chris Pirillo and I’m still with the TWiTs.
I’m wondering for how long I can keep up with all the audio (I already don’t listen to every file I download) and what’s going to be first to be removed from my list. As far as I can tell from other people’s experiences it’s not uncommon to subscribe to a dozen feeds and whittle that down to 3-4 after a while.
Like every company wanting to push a product, Apple had good self-centric motives on adding support for podcasts. An average song is what? 2, 4 minutes max? But podcasts can go on for 30 minutes to an hour or more (damn long-winded GillmoreGang). If we’re just talking music moving from house to car is no big deal. I’m not involved in listening to music – it’s in the background so walking out on a song is easy. Podcasts though, it’s a show and I want to keep listening to that conversation wherever I go until the show is done.
Every time I have to pause a podcast because I have to take my dog on a walk, every time I have pause to go to work I get a twinge of frustration and irritation that I can’t keep listening to my show.
That twinge of frustration is immediately followed by the desire for an iPod.
And now they’ve got color screens (not like that has anything at all to do with podcasting, but dang it’s cool).
I’ll be placing an iPod order sometime soon.
iTunes meets Podcasting
Apple has finally unveiled their latest update to iTunes. iTunes 4.9‘ only real new feature is its integrated support for podcasts (Don’t know what podcasting is? Click on the last link and Apple will be glad to tell you.)
I’ve already downloaded the new iTunes on my work PC and its not bad. Podcasts are directly integrated into iTunes just as you would think Apple would do it: Very smoothly. But the question is does anyone care? For those that are very serious podcast listners, and there are plenty of them out there, iTunes’ upgrade might not be enough power and have enough features for them. For me? I really only listen to the occasional podcast so this is great. Being able to deal with all of that in one application is what I was looking for. We’ll have to wait and see if Apple tries to make this into more of a business model that just the current model which is just making you pass through their store to get to the ‘casts.