Is Pledge Week Over?

I've been trying an experiment this week: I haven't turned on the (real) radio once. I'm trying to avoid National Public Radio's pleas for donations.

NPR is the only radio I listen to, so this means a total blackout. To keep abreast of the news -- I don't really watch tv -- I subscribe to NPR's 7 AM and 7 PM news feeds. Podcasts of hourly news feeds are available as well. I also subscribe to numerous other NPR podcasts. All in all, I don't feel as though I'm missing anything.

The only hard part is not reaching for the ON button on my radio. However convenient podcasts are, it still takes less effort to just hit that button.

So, are the pledge drives over?

Write to me at: podcastroundup@gmail.com

Podcasts about Podcasts

The other day I noticed iTunes downloading an unusually large number of podcast files to my computer -- so many that I couldn't update my Nano, which was, admittedly, already approaching its 2GB limit. All the podcasts were from the University Channel (UC)Podcast, which distributes public lectures given at universities. Many of them look interesting and I think someday I'll listen to them, though I rarely do. This week I received eight in one download, each more than an hour long.

These were the complete sessions of the Duke University Podcasting Symposium. Although the event was held in September, these podcasts are must listening for anyone interested in the podcasting phenomenon.

Topics include: journalism and the media; histories of transmission for the digital age; law and policy; hands-on tech; podcasting in the classroom; performance and identity; and business and monetization.

As some of these titles suggest, this symposium sometimes veers off into academic speak, where a simple notion such as, say, 8:00 pm, becomes part of the temporal spatial environment.

But enough non-academics -- i.e., people from the real world -- were invited to speak that there is relatively little of this.

The (non-academic) speakers include:

Tim Bourquin of TNC New Media and EnduranceRadio.com
John Frederico, of Audible.com
Michael Geoghegan, of Reel Reviews Radio
Dough Kaye of IT Conversations

Bill "DigitalBill" Douthett and Marc "MisterMarc" Asturias, of The Wizards of Technology
Sam Leven, of Griffin Technology and Inside Mac Radio
Scott Saunders, of iPodScott.com
Frances Shepherd, of Apple

Jason Adams, of Random Signal
Kelly Amienne (aka Anne Bramley) of Eat Feed
Mur Lafferty of Geek Fu Action Grip
Brian C. Russel, of Audio Activism
David J. Warner, of Dave's Lounge

JD Lasica, of Ourmedia.org
Jason Schultz, of Electronic Frontier Foundation
Michael J. Huppe, of the Recording Industry Assoc. of America

John Biewen, of American Radio Works
Tony Kahn, of the public radio program, The World and the WGBH podcast, Morning Stories

Interested in your comments: podcastroundup@gmail.com