I came across this idea today and thought it worth sharing. The basic concept is to add a podcast to your eBay auction to add an audio story to your item for sale. The notion was written up in an article titled Podcasting for eBay sellers

Odeo gives everyone with a phone the ability to record and post a short audio podcast for the cost of the phone call to the 415 area code. The seller can create the podcast and add it to the item for sale.

Odeo should add a Skype based service and build an api to eBay. Now that seems like a business model that makes sense for eBay to fund.

Apple has produced a Podcast Creation Guide on how to make a podcast using Apple equipment and software. The guide provides an overview of podcasting, how to find podcasts in iTunes, the equipment you need for podcasting, how to record with QuickTime, GarageBand, and SoundTrack Pro, how to compress the podcast and how to post the podcast.

Apple is now offering a “Podcasting Server” for the education market. The Apple Podcasting Server is included in Mac OS X Server v10.4 and allows educators publish and syndicate online content. The Apple Podcast Server in Mac OS X Server v10.4 is based on the Blojsom open-source weblog server project and includes Open Directory authentication and access controls.

You can grant publishing access to individual users or groups on your network. The Podcast Server supports both user and group blogs, and calendar-based navigation.

The Apple Podcasting Server is an integrated service of Mac OS X Server v10.4, Apple’s Unix-based server operating system. Mac OS X Server is included with every Apple Xserve G.

A guidebook called the Podcast Backbone Guide is also available and provides more details and screenshots.

Podcast Optimization, a new site focusing on tips and tools for improving podcasting, has launched an open source podcast utilizing the community podcasting concept to generate the podcast content.

The Podcast Optimization podcast is an “open source” podcast. That means 100% of the content will come from podcasters sharing
their tips and best practices. If you have a podcasting production, marketing or monetization tip to contribute to the show, please send
an MP3 file and notes on you and your tip to mp3@podcastoptimization.com. Please limit your audio to 3-minutes and be sure to
introduce yourself and mention your show or web site. The Podcast Optimization podcast will launch as soon as content is received

Accor North America announced today that radio personality and Motel 6 spokesperson Tom Bodett premiered in the motel chain’s first podcast.

The tongue-in-cheek podcast, titled “Top 6 Reasons to Stay at a Motel during the Holidays” is available for download on Accor North America’s Web site, www.accor-na.com. Accor North America is one of the first major hotel companies to reach out to consumers through this new medium.

The podcast can be found on Digital Podcast at this link to the podcast

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Yahoo Podcasting has added a “My Subscription” feature to create a view of your podcast subscriptions. The My Subscriptions page allows you to keep track of all new episodes along with what you have and have not listened to. An RSS feed of your My Subscriptions page is also available. The detials on each podcast provides the duration of podcast, file size, publish date, and links to ratings and reviews.

Erik Markus , host of the Erik’s Diner Podcast, the was victim of a podjacking and tells his story.

Podjack: (verb) – To create an alternate RSS feed to a podcast without the permission of the podcast’s owner.

This problem has been going on since the beginning of podcasting. I first became aware of it when I wrote the Podcast Value Chain report. I was scouting around to see who was writing about the report when I came across Brad Gibson’s blog and podcast, The BradCast.

Sadly, this is what I found:

According to digitalpodcast, my site feed is http://Bradcast.podkeyword.com. That is incorrect. My site feed is http://www.bradfordgibson.net/rss.xml.

I immediately changed Brad’s feed back to the correct feed and I thank Brad for recognizing that I made the change.

This behaviour by PodKeyword has been going on for a long time ( in podcasting time that is ) and podcasting risks it becoming the equivalent of podcast spam.

We need to find a way to add some sort of feed verification into the RSS that enables directories and users to know that this is the real deal feed. This seems like a great project for someone.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School and Gartner have released a report focusing on the importance of sharing to the music business.

Key Findings from the report

• Nearly one-fourth of frequent online music users say that the ability to share music with others in some fashion is an important criteria when selecting an online music service.
• One-tenth of early adopters stated that they often make music purchases based on others’ recommendations.
• One-third of early adopters of digital media surveyed by Gartner stated that they were interested in online music discovery and recommendation technology that is actually powered by their taste in music.
• Some of the most-regular users of online music services, whether free peer-to-peer (P2P) or paid services, are the most interested in consumer-generated recommendation tools.

The report also predicts that 25 percent of online music store transactions will be driven directly from consumer-to-consumer taste-sharing applications by 2010.

Digital Music News is reporting that

Creative Technologies CEO Sim Wong Hoo recently stated that his company is on track to sell 8 million MP3 players in 2005. To put that number in perspective, the iPod sold more than double that figure (17.9 million) in the first three quarters of this year. According to analysts, Apple is expected to sell somewhere between 25 and 27 million iPods by year’s end, though some are even more bullish. That represents a sizeable lead, though the figures from Creative contradict the miniscule market share that most iPod competitors are assumed to have.

The suspicion is that some non-iPod MP3 players are really doing better than many think.

The Creative Archive is a BBC led initiative to provide access to public service audio and video archives in a way that allows the British public to find, share, watch, listen and re-use the archive as a fuel for their own creative endeavours. In other words, you can rip, mix and share the BBC.

The BBC, the bfi, Channel 4 and the Open University set up the Creative Archive Licence Group to make their archive content available for download under the terms of the Creative Archive Licence – a single, shared user licence scheme for the downloading of moving images, audio and stills. If you wish to share, watch, listen and re-use this content as a fuel for your own creative endeavours you must comply with the terms and conditions as set out in the Creative Archive Licence. For example, you must agree that you will only use the material for non-commercial purposes.