NevOn

The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #46: June 30, 2005

Content summary: Listeners' comments (on iTunes 4.9 and bandwidth, IABC Cafe posts, blogging the Nortel AGM); podcasts and Polish sausage; the launch of iTunes 4.9; Virgin Atlantic's New York podcasts; PR Week UK talks about blogs; IABC International Conference; IABC Fellows; FIR celebrates 50 shows on July 14.

Show notes for June 30, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 79-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Concord, California, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 32MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free iPodder, DopplerRadio or iTunes 4.9, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In this edition:

Intro:

• 00:29 Neville introduces the show; how to give your feedback; show notes; what's in this edition
• 02:05 Shel's travel-weary experience from US east to west

Discussion on listeners' comments:

• 06:04 Dan York on bandwidth issues with iTunes 4.9; IABC Cafe posts that don't identify the authors; blogging the Nortel AGM

Features:

• 10:38 Ragan Report talks about podcasts and Polish sausage - and doubts they'll ever catch on (podcasts, that is). Naturally we have a different view.
• 18:20 The launch of iTunes 4.9 - opening up podcasting to a mass market; trends in podcasting growth; iTunes vs. other podcatchers; bandwidth issues as many try iTunes as a podcatcher
• 28:50 Virgin Atlantic embraces podcasting for travellers, starting with guides to New York, and has big plans for the medium; indicators for the future and how the hardware is developing
• 33:28 PR Week UK highlights blogs in this week's edition to help raise awareness in the UK PR community - something sorely needed, it seems
• 40:45 The IABC International Conference - Shel was there and talks about the blogging experiment and how it might work for the future; impressions of three sessions (Jeff de Cagna, James Carville and Mary Matalin, and TJ Larkin); Neville and Shel on the Technorati tag for conference blog posts
• 68:57 IABC Fellows Awards - Shel describes the event (he was named a Fellow)

Short Take:

• 72:03 FIR celebrates its 50th episode on July 14. What should we do to celebrate? Suggestions?

Outro:

• 73:36 Shel outros the show; how to give your feedback; show notes; Neville outros the music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Jet Blue, Lee Hopkins.

Listeners' comments discussion - Dan York, iTunes, Todd Cochrane, Linux News Blog, IABC Cafe, IABC.com, Nortel.

Features - Ragan Report, Steve Crescenzo, David Murray, FIR interviews: Mike Wing, Josh Hallett, Siemens USA, Angela Sinickas and Tudor Williams, Dawn & Drew Show, Judy Jones, IABC New York Chapter blog, Adam Curry, GM podcasts, Apple, iTunes, FeedBurner, Forrester Research, Pew Internet, iPod, iPodder, DopplerRadio, Nimiq, FeedDemon, LibSyn, Geek News Central, Nicole Simon, Virgin Atlantic, Travel podcasts, Starbucks, T-Mobile, PR Week UK, Ravi Chandiramani, Ketchum, Fredrik Wacka, Guillaume du Gardier, Joel Cere, Steve Rubel, Andy Lark, Communication Directors Forum, Danny Rogers, Business Week, IABC 2005 International Conference, Washington Hilton, IABC Cafe, Warren Bickford, Jeremy Pepper, conference Technorati tag, Charles Pizzo, Ragan Postcard, Julie Freeman, Treo 600, Audacity for Palm, WordPress, Expression Engine, TypePad, Movable Type, Technorati tag help page, Blogger, Jeff de Cagna's conference session on Innovation, Toby Ward, James Carville's and Mary Matalin's conference keynote opening session, Shel's post: Messages and channels, TJ Larkin's conference session on channels, Shel's post: Deconstructing Larkin, IABC conference closing address from HP CEO Mark Hurd, Lee Iaccoca, Chrysler, Roger D'Aprix' Communicating for Change, IABC Fellows, Lord Gould's general conference session speech, Roberta Resnick.

Outro - Garageband.com, Day 4, Christa Couture, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We'll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday July 4...

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

iTunes podcatcher already makes an impact

The release of iTunes 4.9 a few days ago and its podcatching capability is already having an effect on downloads of For Immediate Release, the bi-weekly business podcast that Shel and I present.

Just looking at the download and referrer stats in LibSyn, our file hosting service, shows a very interesting difference already in which podcatchers download the MP3 files.

As this little graphic shows, which I grabbed this morning, iTunes (the purple slices) is the second most popular podcatcher, after iPodder (the light blue slices). I'll keep monitoring these stats to see how this looks in the coming weeks.

Having tried iTunes 4.9 as a podcatcher over the past few days, I think it is very good indeed as a dead easy way for anyone to get hold of podcasts and get them onto their iPod. That's one of the ways in which this podcasting medium will become a mass-market take-up - make it very easy for anyone to get the material.

It's not perfect by any means, but what podcatcher is?

I'll say again that podcasting is no fad. Don't listen to me, though: pay attention to one of the Podcast Godfathers - Dave Winer says the same thing.

(Related: I received an invitation last week to test Odeo, the new service for creating, finding, getting and listening to podcasts. It's still in beta and I'll be trying it out and commenting over in my Experimental blog.)

The new trust changes everything

Last month, when Fredrik and I advertised in our respective blogs for freelance writers to join us in a communication project we're jointly working on, we were taking the next steps in a Big Experiment we'd started.

This Big Experiment is to do with collaborative working and the role of blogs, and what that means for new trust relationships and new ways of working.

Just over three months ago, Fredrik and I started working together for a new client that Fredrik had secured, the European Science Foundation based in Strasbourg, France. As many of you know, Fredrik's in Sweden and I'm here in The Netherlands. We're both bloggers and both independent business communicators. We actually 'met' each other in our blogs around September last year. We built up a relationship of common interests surrounding PR and corporate blogs and enjoyed reading what each other was posting about.

Yet even though we'd not ever physically met - which we finally did for the first time in April at Les Blogs in Paris - we started working together for this client. We actually first discussed working together (over a Skype telephone call) a few months earlier. More conversations in the following months leading to getting started once the client was ready to start.

Another interesting thing, too - we started even though, at that time, I'd not physically met the client either.

Accountants can blog, too

Blogs present many business benefits to accountants, according to The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

In the June issue of the Journal of Accountancy Online, AICPA's journal, a feature entitled Would You, Could you, Should You Blog? gives a good overview of blogs and their business potential.

Most of the reasoning in the feature would apply to any business, large or small. But author Eva M. Lang has done a pretty good job in focusing the story precisely to this publication's target audience - accountants.

For instance:

How Can Blogs Benefit CPAs?
Lawyers have quickly adopted blogs, but what does this tool offer accountants, relative novices to the medium? Blogs can help CPAs enhance the marketing and knowledge management functions of their firms.

The feature includes concise reviews of the major blogging tools and services, case studies of successful accountant-bloggers plus lists and links of quite a few others with blogs.

If you're an accountant and are thinking about blogs, this well-written article is a good place to start for relevant information.

(Hat tip: Ken Leebow)

Flickr Pro gifts

I have two Flickr Pro accounts to give away. $24.95 value each. Deadline is 6pm CET tomorrow, 30 June.

I'd be happy to give them to the first two people who email me with the correct answer to this question:

Which bank has 120 internal blogs?

The answer is here in this blog!

Final decision on the correct answer is mine. Just in case anyone might construe this as a competition, no correspondence will be entered into, no discussion on the answer, void where prohibited by law, etc, etc.

[UPDATE 29 June] Both gifts snapped up pretty quickly! So now all gone.

If you're wondering, the correct answer is: Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

iTunes gives you podcasts on a plate

Apple has now released iTunes 4.9, the new version that supports podcasts. I've installed it and tried it - and it rocks.

Let me tell you - for podcasters and podcast listeners, this is what simplicity looks like. With literally just a couple of mouse clicks you can subscribe to a podcast within iTunes, get it on your PC and into your iPod. How easier would you like it?

Lots of blog talk today already.

I plan to explore the new iTunes podcast directory in more detail - especially re publishing podcasts - but from a first and quick look and try, it is terrific as an easy means to subscribe to podcasts with a single program. For Immediate Release is listed, so it's now even easier for you to get your favourite PR podcast ;)

How easy? This easy:

1. Load iTunes.
2. Click on Music Store in the source list on the left of your screen.
3. Under Categories, choose Audio Blogs.
4. At the screen that appears, scroll down the alphabetical listening until you get to For Immediate Release.
5. In the Price column, just click on the Subscribe button (it's free to subscribe).
6. A dialog pops up asking you if you want to subscribe. Of course you do, so you can click on 'Subscribe.'
7. Sit back and relax as the latest show downloads to your PC.

Naturally this works for any podcast you want to subscribe to!

You can customize your podcast subscription settings for frequency of checking for updates, just as you can with your current podcatcher.

So what does iTunes 4.9 mean for podcatcher developers like iPodder and DopplerRadio as well as for RSS aggregators like FeedDemon that include podcatching capabilities? Well, it seems to me that the most obvious thing is that you probably won't need those applications now - iTunes 4.9 does it all: subscribe, automatically download, sync with your iPod.

This really is easy podcatching for the masses.

One crucial thing to note if you do download this new version of iTunes to be your podcatcher - make sure you first check that your iPod or iPod Mini has the latest firmware (as I write, the latest firmware updater was released on 26 June), and update it if necessary. Here's why, from the firmware updater readme file:

Note: iTunes earlier than version 4.9 are supported for music and photo sync only and will not sync podcasting properly with iPod.

And here's an interesting Apple note:

[...] If the podcast you download comes with bookmarks, you can zip around within it on any click wheel iPod, just as you would with an audiobook.

That needs some checking out...

If you want more info right now, Josh Hallett has posted some detailed commentaries on his first looks complete with screenshots.

[UPDATE 29 June] Dave Taylor has a good primer on how to use iTunes as a podcatcher, complete with screenshots.

Blogs are about interaction and influence

Great article in The Independent newspaper yesterday about blogs and the business benefits by James Cherkoff, the advocate for open source marketing.

It's a good overview of what's happening and makes the case well. None of it will be news to anyone in the business blogging community, but will be a great starting point for those who aren't (ie, the paper's general readership).

Key message:

[...] It's the interaction between blogs that makes them so interesting and influential. A single blog can be akin to a ranting madman on the corner. However, when linked together into massive intertwining communities, they have the vibrancy and passion of a massive street market, with information, opinions and whispers exchanging hands at light speed. And it's no longer confined to techy chats. Conversations about every conceivable subject take place. And as the quantity and quality of these conversations grows, so does the blogosphere's influence beyond the internet, including the commercial sector.

Future Tense and the confluence of forces

Congratulations to Elizabeth Albrycht and the team at Corante for the latest thought-leading resource - the Future Tense blog which, Elizabeth as editor notes, is now live.

What will we expect from Future Tense? From Elizabeth's introductory post yesterday:

[...] It is [a confluence of forces including technology, science, population demographics, globalization, education, society and culture] and how organizations are reacting to them that we will be examining here. I will be looking at them primarily through a framework of organizational communications, which is my expertise. I firmly believe that as we move to more distributed workforces, communications will be at the heart of whether or not we are successful. Other authors here will take different frames, including HR, technology, education, community development, and so on.

[...] We are starting an adventure, an inquiry, a conversation in this space. I hope you join us and pass on the word to others to stop by and add their thoughts. We welcome your ideas and your criticisms. I look forward to our interactions.

Terrific!

Podcasting is no fad

A tip from Constantin Basturea led me to the new travel podcast site from airline Virgin Atlantic, launched last week.

Produced for Virgin Atlantic by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and Manning Gottlieb OMD, and created by podcast producer Loudish, the first topics in a series of podcasts - guides to New York - is available now.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed (which already offers 5 New York podcasts) and get all the podcasts in your preferred podcatcher, or download the airline's bespoke podcatcher and segregate each podcast into discreet channels.

It looks like Virgin Atlantic is doing all the right things in their approach to using this medium as a complementary communication tool:

[...] As well as telling you about the city and what's on, a podcast will enable you to take your guide on your iPod, ensuring you get the most out of your visit. It's an excellent companion to the practical and informative information that is already on the Virgin Atlantic site.

There is a comprehensive FAQ on the site that explains how to get the podcasts, how to install the podcatcher and other info. Well written and very easy to understand.

A Netimperative story yesterday provides further insight into Virgin Atlantic's plans for podcasting:

[...] Breda Bubear, head of advertising and communication at Virgin Atlantic said: "We believe that providing travellers with relevant destination content will help them plan their trip, and giving it to them in a portable format will enable them to make the most of their time away."

The podcasts are to be followed by guides to other destinations as well as more in-depth broadcasts on the airline’s destinations, from live radio shows to what’s on guides and personal experiences.

If anyone still needs convincing that podcasting as an effective communication channel, whether personal or business, will not be simply a passing fad (David Coursey at ZDNet - are you listening?), moves like Virgin Atlantic's is strong evidence of that.

This is no fad.

Related NevOn post:

• Podcasting: Adding the human and informal touch

The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #45: June 27, 2005

Content summary: Listeners' comments (on wit and wisdom from FIR; being stunned by Tudor Williams and Angela Sinickas; the heroes from Siemens USA); nice London hotel: blogging the IABC conference; bad press for the EC and the waste of the EU; the PR, blogs and press releases mashup; MIT surveys blog usage; Todd Cochrane's podcasting book; blogs, RSS PR and SEC requirements; long podcasts and listening to FIR.

Show notes for June 27, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 49-minute conversation recorded live from Washington, DC, USA, and almost live from London, England.

Download the file here (MP3, 20MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

• 00:29 Shel introduces the show; how to give your feedback; show notes; what's in this edition

Discussion on listeners' comments:

• 02:33 Judy Jones says she gets wit and wisdom from listening to FIR
• 03:24 Lee Hopkins is stunned by the interview with Tudor Williams and Angela Sinickas on employee communication measurement
• 04:46 John Ridings declares the two guys from Siemens USA are his heroes

Features:

• 06:36 Neville likes his hotel room in London; on the IABC International Conference and the posse of bloggers; how the European Commission London office is rebutting negative press coverage; perceptions of the EU as a 'wasted institution' as the Wall Street Journal writes about Brussels
• 18:27 Shel highlights the opening day of the IABC conference in Washington; on messages, sound bites, PR candour and blogs: fire PR people and just engage bloggers - it's an absurd notion!
• 31:32 Neville talks about blogs replacing press releases: what Steve Rubel, Tom Murphy and Trevor Cook said and asks why shouldn't blogs be a PR channel; MIT's blog usage survey; just received Todd Cochrane's book on podcasting
• 38:24 Shel again on press releases and blogs: repetition of messages, how blogs or RSS won't meet regulatory requirements for disclosure (needs push not pull)

Outro:

• 42:17 Shel plans to head on out to the conference and get some podcast interviews done; on the length of podcasts and thanks for listening to FIR
• 44:07 Shel outros the show; how to give your feedback; show notes; music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Listeners' comments discussion - Judy Jones, IABC New York Chapter blog, Lee Hopkins, Tudor Williams, Angela Sinickas, John Ridings, Big Chief Tablet, Siemens USA, Associations Unorthodox, Jeff de Cagna's IABC conference session on Innovation.

Features - Road Weary, Hilton Paddington, IABC international conference, Shel's conference session on the best of the web and intranets, IABC Cafe, Warren Bickford, Jeremy Pepper, Charles Pizzo, IABC conference Technorati tag, Alex Bellinger, SmallBizPod, EC UK Representative Office, EC London press rebuttal page, Margot Wallstrom's blog, Wall Street Journal Europe, Siim Kallas, Holocaust Museum, IABC conference opening session, David Kistle (PDF), James Carville's and Mary Matalin's IABC conference keynote opening session, CNN, Todd Cochrane, Geek News Central, Gnomedex, Chris Pirillo, Lockergnome, Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Steve Rubel, Burson-Marsteller, Marqui, Shel's rant on blogs and press releases, Tom Murphy, Trevor Cook, Sally Saville Hodge, Marketing Profs, vSkype, MIT's weblog survey, Amazon.co.uk, Podcasting: The Do It Yourself Guide by Todd Cochrane, Raytheon, Securities & Exchange Commission, Dow Jones, Investors Business Daily.

Outro - iRiver, PodcastNYC, The Law of Fives, Love Lies, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We'll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday June 30...

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)